Are Priorities Shifting Among Retirees?

A recent survey from the National Council on Aging (NCOA), UnitedHealthcare and USA TODAY shows seniors' perspectives on ageing and what concerns them has involved to include the importance of seniors connections with community and family to maintain a strong quality of life. 

The survey findings are interesting:
For the second year in a row, the survey found that, overall, seniors are optimistic about ageing and about their future. That’s great news because we know that positivity and happiness are related to better health.

Seniors also say that connections with their community and their family are most important to their quality of life. The most optimistic seniors are more likely to be taking steps to actively manage their health. For instance, 64% of optimistic seniors set one or more specific goals to manage their health in the past 12 months, compared with 47%of the overall senior population.

At the same time, we see that the majority of senior’s report at least two chronic conditions, yet feel their health is "normal." For boomers, these findings point to the importance of being proactive about your health and planning for health challenges down the road.

While the majority of seniors agree that the community, they live in is responsive to their needs, many – particularly low-income seniors and those with three or more chronic health conditions – lack confidence that their community is doing enough to prepare for the needs of the growing senior population.

For instance, we found that seniors nationally believe their city or town should invest more in transportation, followed by affordable health care services and senior housing. Furthermore, we found that today’s seniors rate the quality of community services such as health care and public safety higher than transportation and job opportunities for seniors.

We found that while most seniors report they are able to pay their current monthly expenses, many expressed concern about the financial impact of living longer. Two-thirds of seniors believe it to be “very easy” or “somewhat easy” to pay their monthly living expenses – consistent with the results of our 2012 survey more than half are “somewhat” to “very concerned” about whether their savings and income will be sufficient to last them for the rest of their life.

The survey also highlights just how retirement economics are changing. Nearly half of retired seniors report having access to pensions, and among seniors that are not yet retired, nearly two-thirds say they will have access to savings and investments and more than 40% plan to rely on Social Security as their primary source of retirement income.

As seniors age, they may require assistance from a caregiver. While on average seniors report, they could afford 22 months of part-time home care from a licensed aide, low-income seniors indicate they could only afford five months, and seniors with three or more chronic health conditions say they could sustain the expense for one year

Overwhelmingly, seniors feel confident about their golden years when asked about the quality of life in the future, nearly 90% of seniors state they are confident in their ability to maintain a high quality of life throughout their senior years, compared to a tad more than 80% of adults ages 18-59.

The results of the survey tell us is that seniors cite connections with community and family as most important to achieving a high quality of life. One-fifth say spending time with friends and family will be the best part of their bonus years, and more than 4 in 10 seniors say seeing their children and grandchildren grow up is the most exciting prospect of living a longer life.

Eighty-seven percent of seniors indicate that technology is important in their ability to stay in touch with family and friends. We also see this connection in terms of their expectations for housing – more than half of seniors we surveyed indicated that living close to friends and family was most important.

Most seniors expect their health to stay the same in the next five to 10 years. This contrasts with published data illustrating that seniors are living longer but sicker, with higher rates of chronic illnesses such as diabetes and heart disease.

Many seniors are not investing in activities that are important to help manage their health for the long term, including maintaining a healthy diet, getting regular exercise and seeing their Primary Care Physician a minimum of once a year

Although both seniors and adults ages 18-59 share the belief that "there’s no such thing as getting old" because "age is a state of mind," nearly one-fifth of adults ages 18-59 believe "being old" means becoming wiser and only less than one-tenth of those ages 60 and older agree.

When asked what their primary source of retirement income will be, nearly half of adults ages 18-59 expect to rely most heavily on savings and investments and just 23 percent said they plan to rely on Social Security. On the other side of the coin, forty-one percent of seniors that had not yet retired planned to rely on Social Security, and only 30 percent indicated they would rely on savings and investment

Empathy

There is not enough empathy in the world today, so here are some quotes to remind us how important this is for us:

When you show deep empathy toward others, their defensive energy goes down, and positive energy replaces it. That's when you can get more creative in solving problems. Stephen Covey

Empathy is about standing in someone else's shoes, feeling with his or her heart, seeing with his or her eyes. Not only is empathy hard to outsource and automate, but it makes the world a better place. Daniel H. Pink

“You think your pain and your heartbreak are unprecedented in the history of the world, but then you read. It was books that taught me that the things that tormented me most were the very things that connected me with all the people who were alive, who had ever been alive.” 
― James Baldwin

“for there is nothing heavier than compassion. Not even one's own pain weighs so heavy as the pain one feels with someone, for someone, a pain intensified by the imagination and prolonged by a hundred echoes.” 
― Milan Kundera, The Unbearable Lightness of Being

“Compassion hurts. When you feel connected to everything, you also feel responsible for everything. And you cannot turn away. Your destiny is bound with the destinies of others. You must either learn to carry the Universe or be crushed by it. You must grow strong enough to love the world, yet empty enough to sit down at the same table with its worst horrors.” 
― Andrew Boyd, Daily Afflictions: The Agony of Being Connected to Everything in the Universe

Whenever you are about to find fault with someone, ask yourself the following question: What fault of mine most nearly resembles the one I am about to criticize?” 
― Marcus Aurelius, Meditations

When you show deep empathy toward others, their defensive energy goes down, and positive energy replaces it. That's when you can get more creative in solving problems.
Stephen Covey

All I ever wanted was to reach out and touch another human being not just with my hands but with my heart.
Tahereh Mafi

Whenever you feel like criticizing any one...just remember that all the people in this world haven't had the advantages that you've had.     
F. Scott Fitzgerald

Empathy is really the opposite of spiritual meanness. It's the capacity to understand that every war is both won and lost. And that someone else's pain is as meaningful as your own.   Barbara Kingsolver

Empathy depends not only on one's ability to identify someone else's emotions but also on one's capacity to put oneself in the other person's place and to experience an appropriate emotional response.
Charles G. Morris

I believe empathy is the most essential quality of civilization
Roger Ebert

You know, there's a lot of talk in this country about the federal deficit. But I think we should talk more about our empathy deficit - the ability to put ourselves in someone else's shoes; to see the world through the eyes of those who are different from us - the child who's hungry, the steelworker who's been laid-off, the family who lost the entire life they built together when the storm came to town. When you think like this - when you choose to broaden your ambit of concern and empathize with the plight of others, whether they are close friends or distant strangers - it becomes harder not to act; harder not to help. 
Barack Obama

Empathy is a powerful behavior of nurturing. When it is given properly, the receiver can feel that the giver really cares about them, and that what they are going through is not trivial. 
William E. Krill

True empathy is always welcomed, compared with sympathy which may be rejected, because of an implicit or deliberate act of movement 'towards', rather than 'being with' and almost 'being one with'.
Murray Cox

What dooms our best efforts to cultivate empathy and compassion is always, of course, other people.
Kim Kreider

How about a cup of coffee a day?

Looking to save money for retirement and don't have any idea on how to start?

How about a daily coffee? Here are some interesting statistics.

 One Latte per day at $4.50 over 25 years = $41, 062.50 

 One lunch per day at $10.00 over 25 years =$91, 250.00

 One dinner per week at $50.00 over 25 years = $65, 000.00

If you added a tip, then the amount could be higher by between 10 and 20%

Make a difference

The difference you make in someone else's life will always be smaller than the difference it will make in your own life.
How do you make a difference in someone's life? I believe we make a difference by the little things we do or say. The small touch, of encouragement, the smile at the end of the day, the look of admiration for a job well done. We remember the little things because they add up. 

Many years ago, I had my senior students reflect and consider their elementary years, and what made a difference to them during those years. The answers were not about big gestures, but about how an adult had reached out, cared for them in a time of stress, or laughed with them in a time of fun. Those little gestures were what was remembered.

Life is, for most of us a series of small events that we weave together to make a story that reflects who we are, or who we want to become. We, I am told see and retain everything in our heads, but we choose what we want to recall, and want we want to make important, and those important events are usually not the big events, but the small ones.

So by making small positive gestures, you can have an impact on another person. Try it, maybe next time you are walking, smile and say high or just nod. Little gestures can have big impacts.