Average American Only Needs $658k To Retire, One Study Shows | Zero Hedge

"The study analyzed average yearly salaries state by state, accounting for taxes to arrive at a potential monthly take-home pay. Following a widely accepted financial guideline, the study suggests allocating your post-tax income in the following way: 50% for necessities, 30% for discretionary expenses, and 20% for savings. This should only take the average American 22 years to save with compound interest, the zine says. In extreme circumstances, for those who want to live to the oldest recorded age of 122, one would need $2,963,879 saved the study says."

France Hit By Strikes, Protests Amid Outrage At Hiking Retirement Age To 64 by Tyler Durden SOURCE: Zero Hedge

 

Long-Term Care: Last Week Tonight with John Oliver (HBO)

 

Europe's Pension Funds Are Running Low As Boomers Retire by John Mauldin FROM Forbes

Healthcare in Sweden: A Model of Elderly Care By Stephanie Clarke FROM Seniors Matter

MIT alumni in their 50s by Philip Greenspun

Top five regrets of the dying by Susie Steiner FROM The Guardian

http://www.guardian.co.uk/lifeandstyle/2012/feb/01/top-five-regrets-of-the-dying

Are Childless People Freeloading on the World's Parents? by David Berre FROM Big Think

http://tinyurl.com/7l7l9cy

Power Up Your Brain By Terri Needels, Ph.D. FROM Psychology Today [PAGE 1 ONLY!!!]

"So patients who are better educated or more intellectually engaged seem better able to compensate for the disease, lending credence to the brain-reserve theory."

The Social Security 'Ponzi Scheme' by Chriss W. Street FROM Big Government

"The Social Security taxes on her salary were $24.75; her initial monthly check was $22.54; and she lived to collect $22,888.92. Essentially, Ms. Fuller earned a spectacular 925% return on her investment."

People should focus on their savings, not withdrawals FROM The Economist

"On Mr Pfau’s assumptions, someone who saved 16.6% of their income for 30 years would always have had a pot large enough to meet their retirement needs."

Do we care enough for our elderly parents? FROM BBC

"The Chinese government is considering making it a legal duty for people to visit their aged parents."

Six Things Seniors Can Do To Improve Memory by William Klemm, D.V.M., Ph.D. FROM Psychology Today

"Research shows that aging reduces a person's ability to focus and pay attention."

What Bruno Bettelheim Taught Me About Nursing Homes By Ira Rosofsky, Ph.D. FROM Psychology Today

"Beyond face-time, the School was based on Bettelheim's observation that if the extreme conditions of the Dachau concentration camp could have very negative effects on behavior, an extremely good condition could have strong put positive effects on behavior too."

On old age by Aristotle FROM Google Books

OK. This one was a bit too difficult. So I'm selecting just a few (hopefully comprehensible) sentences to discuss. I thought this passage would be interesting because its unflattering characterization of the elderly is in such contrast to the traditional, and especially Confucian, view of the elderly.

1. For because they have lived many years, have been deceived in many things, and have erred, and because the greater part of human affairs is bad, hence they do not firmly assert any thing, and estimate all things less than is proper. 
2. They likewise opine, but know nothing; and being involved in doubt they always add perhaps, and it may be. And in this manner they speak on every subject; but they assert nothing stably. 
3. They are also illnatured ; for illnature consists in putting the worst construction on every thing. 
4. Farther still, they are suspicious from their incredulity, but they are incredulous from their experience.
5. They are also pusillanimous, because they have become abject through length of years; for they desire nothing great or illustrious, but those things only which are necessary to the support of life. 
6. They are likewise illiberal; for one of the necessaries of life is property ; but at the same time from experience they know how difficult the acquisition of wealth is, and how easily it is lost. 
7. They are also timid, and are afraid of every thing beforehand. 
8. And they live with a view to what is advantageous, and not with a view to what is beautiful in conduct, more than is proper, because they are lovers of themselves. 

A Reluctance to Retire Means Fewer Openings By CATHERINE RAMPELL and MATTHEW SALTMARSH FROM The New York Times

"Retirement income typically comes from a combination of three buckets: state pensions, corporate pensions and individual arrangements. In many other industrialized countries, that first bucket — state pensions — supports a large amount of retirees’ income.

The typical American receives just 45 percent of his preretirement wage through Social Security, according to the Organization of Economic Cooperation and Development."

In Old Age, Friends Can Keep You Young. Really By Anita Hamilton FROM Time

"Going to the ballpark, visiting friends and playing bingo are simple diversions for many of us. But for the elderly, these social pastimes may play a critical role in preserving their physical and mental health."

A Penny Saved is a Penny Spent

As talk of recession and belt-tightening makes headlines, I wonder where and how I lost my grandfather's sense of thrift. Like many young professionals (I'm 36), I embraced the lessons of my seniors about hard work. Yet my generation racks up debt the way our grandparents used to squirrel away pennies. A study by the Journal of Consumer Research to be released next month, titled "Tightwads and Spendthrifts," finds that people ages 18 to 40 are most likely to say they're spending beyond their comfort range. While my grandfather refused to take out a mortgage, I bought my first two-bedroom condo (in a marginal neighborhood) for $450,000 two years ago with 5 percent down and an interest-only loan for the next seven years (note to boss: please don't ever fire me). Though mired in debt, I still manage to sleep most nights. "Your generation has a completely different attitude about going into debt," says George Loewenstein, professor of economics and psychology at Carnegie Mellon, who says the availability of cheaper goods, as well as Internet shopping and longer store hours, make it far easier to waste money. "It used to be that the simple opening and closing of store doors exerted some control on spending. That's all gone now," he says.

Moving back home at middle age FROM CNN.com

Taking shelter with parents isn't uncommon for young people in their 20s, especially when the job market is poor. But now the slumping economy and the credit crunch are forcing some children to do so later in life -- even in middle age.

Financial planners report receiving many calls from parents seeking advice about taking in their grown children following divorces and layoffs.

Kim Foss Erickson, a financial planner in Roseville, California, north of Sacramento, said she has never seen older children, even those in their 50s, depending so much on their parents as in the last six months.