I can do this….in fact…I am!!! :-)

(BabyBoomerAdvisorClub.com)

We all know, have read and seen the endless media articles about the benefits of exercise. Medicine has extended life, new discoveries in genitics have mapped the entire genome of the human species. These wonders are pushing the boundries and limits of our lifespans and most of us will certainly agree on wanting to live as long as we can! To be sure, we will face some side effects of living longer and the Baby Boomers will be the test case for how this will all pan out in the near years to come due to our sheer numbers. We will see how this will affect society and culture as we know it and this is something that is needed to be known, as data is showing how current birth rates will make the Boomers numbers seem small.

I have been trying to live healthier for most of my adult life but never so much as the last 20 years. When I hit 40, I rose my level of health consciousness to levels I never before even dreamt of. I lost nearly 100 pounds, exercised slowly at first and then up to 90 minutes a day. I thought of what I ate and how I exercised almost all of my waking hours and I felt great! As this was not really my true genetics, it was hard to keep this up over the next decade, so I gained weight and moved less. Now, I am approaching my sixth decade of life s and I am waking once again from the fog. I am trying to think healthy as much as I can during the day and it is working. This time, with the knowledge that I can’t …. or won’t ever really be able to keep that previous level of passion that I had. I am just trying to do the BEST THAT I CAN! I want to just eat what I need and try to eat as healthy as possible, but not worry about every item that I consume. Most of all, I am forcing myself to MOVE!!! We know that we just have to keep moving, in any way that we can and do it about every day that we can…IF we want to remain healthy and actually live as long as science has given to us.

I have seen my parents and grandparents work really hard all of their lives, only to just sit down and do just about nothing when they retired and they ran smack into some major health issues, such as heart attacks and Alzheimer’s Disease.

Here is an article with some new data from a study that shows just walking for 30 minutes a day will provide HUGE improvement in one’s health and possibly prevent such illnesses as Alzheimer’s.

Baby Boomers-Improve Your Memory By Walking Every Day

It will be a hard decision for Boomers – when to retire?

As most Baby Boomers are, I too am living through the decision making process of when to retire, due to losing my job in 2008 because of reorganization and outsourcing of the technical jobs. I am 57 years old and in the process of trying to change careers to a more satisfying one and so much of my life’s path is right in the middle of questioning when and how will I maintain my current living standard through the next few years and to what situation will I find myself in retirement. My hope is to continue working, but at my new endeavor where self-fulfillment of my work will actually make my future years happier and successful! This of course all remains to be seen. One positive factor is that my age gives me far more knowledge and confidence of the fact that my newly chosen profession’s success depends on my willingness and passion to stay on course, even when wading through stormy seas.

Here is a really good article about Boomers facing this “when do I retire” question, with some personal stories of some who express their feelings on the subject.

To retire — or not to retire — baby boomers ask themselves

Ah yes…the facts are coming in to support age discrimination.

I have written about and have felt that many of the lay-offs currently happening are not all about companies having hard times, but taking advantage of this perfect storm of bad economic times to address the issue of how to handle the huge amount of Baby Boomers approaching retirement years. Corporations have been talking about how will they handle losing all of this experienced workforce around the same time and be left with a new, less experienced one for a few years. Then the economic crisis occurred and I immediately wondered if companies would begin laying off older workers to not only help the bottom line to stock holders but to just deal with the transition of the workforce as well. There would probably never be a better time to not only deal with this issue than now, when there would be no need to worry about their competitors and to sway attention away from weeding out the older workers.

This article illustrates data of increasing age discrimination cases being reported.

Older workers are invaluable

Boomers are increasingly adopting social networking.

Perhaps part of reasoning for any data that showing Boomers reaching levels of younger generations adopting social networking is due just to the sheer numbers of the Boomers. After all, whether positive or negative, whatever the Boomers do causes a drastic movement.

Social networking: boomer adoption up, Gen Y plateaus

Man…am I in trouble! It’s time to get serious about my BMI!!!

(picture from BabyBoomerAdvisorClub.com)

REALLY…I know that I need to lose weight, but after I read some hard facts from this article on BabyBoomerAdvisorClub.com, it hit home! As we Boomers are so wrapped up and concerned about how the economic crisis sliced our retirement funds in half, if we don’t get more serious about our health, mainly our weight, the good news is…we won’t have to worry about those retirement funds being enough.

Check out this article with some good data behind it:

Obesity in Baby Boomers Will Shave Years Off Your Life

WOW…the Boomers have been bested!

Is this the beginning of a new era of population growth? Can we handle being passed up in numbers and is that really important to some of us??? This article tells how the year 2007 had more births than the highest Boomer birth year. Now, this is only one year and there are other factors but the interesting aspect is that if this is the beginning of another birth surge, what will that do to their social security time?

Edging Out the Baby Boomers

Data showing Boomers are pushing off retirement.

We have all been reading about Boomers needing to rethink when they will retire. Here is some actual data from CareerBuilder.com showing exactly that. Actually, Boomers are not only pushing retirement off a few more years, they are wondering how they will find work until that is even a possibility. We have to hang in there and just keep on keepin’ on. We all need to do whatever it takes to not only get through this recession, but to come out the other side with some plan of retirement and perhaps redefining what “retirement” actually means.

Six-in-Ten Workers Over the Age of Sixty Postponing Retirement Due to Economic Downturn, Finds CareerBuilder Survey

A great way to get Boomers traveling again!

You know, if I knew someone like James Taylor was going to be performing, let alone just be on a cruise ship, I would be jumping on that cruise. What a great idea to get people traveling more to help get the economy going…give some great performers some free travel and have them perform a few times. I’m ready…how about you?

James Taylor to perform on Queen Mary 2 cruise

Are corporations taking advantage of the economic crisis?

(picture provided by the Examiner.com)

This may be a side effect of the record breaking layoffs being experienced all across America, but I have been wondering ever since I lost my job in 2008, if companies aren’t just taking advantage of these times to deal with an underlying issue they have been wondering how to handle for a few years now anyway. Before the economic crisis really started hitting hard, as a Baby Boomer, I have been reading about just how will large corporations deal with the 70 million sum of Baby Boomers who will all be asking for retirement around the same time. This has been a well known issue for corporate America for a few years now. There have been discussions around making sure to not lose all of this experience at once  but to insure that they didn’t want to find themselves dealing with a total loss of all the experience of the older workers suddenly. The obvious best turnaround would be to have a slow blend of older and younger workforce so that the newer workers would not have to make the same mistakes all over again. In so many cases, as technologies are being refreshed, there had to be knowledge of the current older systems to understand how they could change and in the interim, not totally upset the daily business.

It seems as if the economic crisis, although a terrible event for all concerned, much as a terrible storm would be, may have provided a way out of this delema by giving companies a way of dealing with the stress of losing their older workers at the same time that all of their compition was doing the same thing. Everyone is in the same boat!

Now we all know that age discrimination is illegal in the United States but with the hugeness of the economic woes for everyone, including keeping the government busy dealing with how to get through all of this, it is only natural that since the majority of the workforce is older, that they would be the ones leaving their jobs in greater numbers. After all, younger workers are dealing with the same current issues, but they have a different outlook on it. They look at this as something to get through and it will get better again for they have a long work life ahead of them. Older workers are looking at this totally different. They are wondering how to deal with this for a shorter time period and how will they live in their so called retirement years. These are two vary different aspects of these generations in dealing with our current situation!

So whether it be by natural selection or by manipulation during a historical economic event, the fact is that these times are forcing the turnover of the older workforce to a younger one without everyone focusing on age discrimination.

There is however, a growing focus on this aspect of all of the layoffs. There is a concerned effort to look into the possibility that many of the corporate reorganizations and layoffs are in fact, age discrimination.

Here is a great article published in the Examiner.com, where they have done the research to come up with some figures of the age discrimination possibility.

Baby Boomers face workplace ageism

Alzheimer’s Care – It Can Be Done Right!

As Baby Boomers approach retirement, they face the fact of life that their parents, who brought them into this world, saved, sacrificed and took care of them, now need cared for. Those Boomers who have to deal with any of their parents getting Alzheimer’s Disease, will face some really hard issues!

My mother has gone through so many stages, from selling and moving out of the home that she and my father purchased and raised a family, to moving into a retirement home, where she had her own apartment and independence, to the last phase of falling, breaking her hip and then slipping into Alzheimer’s Disease. She now needs 24 hour nursing care and due to our families income, has to live in a government funded, public nursing home. We did as much research as we could and it was a long hard ordeal for all of the family until we could find the best place that would care for her for her income of social security and small retirement. We could not afford a private nursing home. Although this place is fairly clean, it is obvious that they are in dire need of more resources and funding. All of us in the family do what we can and there are some very good people working in the home, but it is a sad thing to think that she was once a little girl playing, a teenager dating, a young mother wondering what the future held and now in good physical condition but her mind is slowing fading. It has to be one of the most terrible things for a human being to go through. Let’s hope and pray that there will be better funds, new medications and perhaps even a cure someday!

Here is an article of a nursing home that is a model for how to deal with Alzheimer’s patients and all of the behaviour problems that most nursing homes find it very difficult to deal with.

Alzheimer’s Care: How Copper Ridge Nursing Home Gets It Right