East coast Canadian Humour

NEWFIE MEDICAL DICTIONARY

Artery                                 The study of painting’s

Bacteria                              Back door to the cafeteria

Barium                               What doctors do when patients die

Benign                                What you be after you be eight

Caesarean Section              A neighbourhood in Rome

Catscan                               Searching for Kitty

Cauterize                            Made eye contact with her

Colic                                   A sheepdog

Coma                                  A punctuation mark

Dilate                                  To live long

Enema                                Not a friend

Fester                                  Quicker than someone else

Fibula                                 A small lie

Impotent                              Distinguished; well known

Labour Pain                         Getting hurt at work

Medical Staff                       A Doctor’s cane

Morbid                                 A higher offer

Nitrates                                Cheaper than day rates

Outpatient.                           A patient who fainted

Pelvis                                   Second cousin to Elvis

Post Operative                     A letter carrier

Recovery Room                   A place to do upholstery

Rectum                                 Nearly killed him

Secretion                              Hiding something

Seizure                                 Roman emperor

Tablet                                   Small Table

Terminal Illness                  Getting sick at the airport

Tumour                               One plus one more

Urine                                   Opposite of your out

Pension issues and Poverty among seniors

 A report out in 2016 by Richard Shillington shows that many Canadians, particularly those without an employer pension plan, have wholly inadequate retirement savings.

Poverty trends over the recent past show that senior poverty has increased from a low of 3.9 percent in 1995 to 11.1 percent, or one in nine, in 2013. The poverty rates for single seniors, particularly women (at nearly 30 percent), are very high. The Key findings of the report show some, I would say alarming information that hopefully those groups that speak for retired people will bring to and hold our politicians to account.

Key findings:

·       The Old Age Security (OAS) and Guaranteed Income Supplement (GIS) guarantee levels are falling behind: For single seniors, they have fallen from 76 percent of median incomes in 1984 to about 60 percent now. For senior couples, the OAS/GIS maximum benefits have declined from 53 percent to 40 percent of median incomes.

·       Trends in income sources for seniors suggest that poverty rates will increase rather than decline into the future because OAS and GIS benefits are indexed to the Consumer Price Index (CPI), while average earnings rise faster than the CPI over extended periods.

·       The spread between the OAS/GIS guarantee levels and the LIM for 2015—the spread that seniors need to fill using the Canada Pension Plan/Quebec Pension Plan (CPP/QPP), private pensions and private savings—is about $5,600 for single seniors and $4,700 for couples.

·       The proportion of the population receiving the GIS is higher for single seniors than couples and higher for single women (between 44 percent and 48 percent) than for single men (between 31 percent and 37 percent).

·       Roughly half (47 percent) of those aged 55–64 have no accrued employer pension benefits. The vast majority of these Canadians retiring without an employer pension plan have totally inadequate retirement savings. For example, roughly half have savings that represent less than one year’s worth of the resources they need to supplement OAS/GIS and CPP/QPP. Fewer than 20 percent have enough savings to support the supplemented resources required for at least five years.

·       The overall median value of retirement assets of those aged 55– 64 with no accrued employer pension benefits is just over $3,000. For those with annual incomes in the range of $25,000–$50,000, the median value is near just $250. For those with incomes in the $50,000–$100,000 range, the median value is only $21,000.

·       Only a small minority (roughly 15–20 percent) of middle-income Canadians retiring without an employer pension plan have saved anywhere near enough for retirement. The vast majority of these families with annual incomes of $50,000 and more will be hard-pressed to save enough in their remaining period to retirement (less than 10 years) to avoid a significant fall in income.

·       The senior’s poverty gap is $2.5 billion in aggregate annually, due to the 719,000 poor seniors (469,000 singles and 250,000 living in an economic family). The average gap per year is $2,400 for single seniors and $5,500 for seniors in a family. A 10 percent benefit increase in the GIS to address this gap would cost $1,628 million and would reduce the number of poor seniors by about 149,000.

In the 2015 elections, the Liberal Party promised to increase the GIS by 10 percent for single seniors. What they did was to give with the left hand and take away with the right. A Globe and Mail article from 2017 said that “The federal government's plans to enhance the Canada Pension Plan will ultimately bump 243,000 low-income Canadians from qualifying for the Guaranteed Income Supplement, according to the latest report from Canada's chief actuary.”

The GIS benefits are based on income and are fully phased out for single seniors who earn more than $17,688 a year.

Many Canadians do not have a pension plan so there is a necessity to have policies that address the needs of these Canadians who have no pension or savings for retirement. Policies that address the adequacy of benefits from Old Age Security, the Guaranteed Income Supplement, and the Quebec and Canada pension plans. The findings also give the federal government a roadmap as it moves forward to craft policy to address the economic security of Canada’s growing population of seniors.

While the situation for many Canadian seniors are much improved compared to the late 1970s, there is no justification for complacency as trends of the last several years and projections into the future point to a deteriorating situation for their economic security.

Poverty rates for seniors have been trending up since 1995. Rates remain unacceptably high for single seniors—especially women—and the worsening trends in pension coverage point to further increases in poverty in the future. The GIS is the most effective federal mechanism in the short term for reducing the poverty rate and the impact of poverty on seniors, and it can be targeted at senior individuals who need it most.

The data on the retirement savings of Canadians currently nearing retirement age is unequivocal. A substantial proportion of middle-income Canadians without an employer pension plan will face a dramatic drop in living standards during their retirement years.

The panoply of public policies offering “voluntary” options for saving—such as RRSPs, TFSAs, group RPPs, and the more recent Pooled Registered Pension Plans—have demonstrated their inadequacy to address the shortcomings in declining workplace pensions and a Canada Pension Plan with limited benefits. There may be an important role for incentives to expand workplace pensions (particularly of the defined-benefit variety), and to enhance benefits of the Canada Pension Plan.

Do you make decisions based on logic?

In his book “Predictably Irrational”, Dan Ariely details how humans believe that they are rational and make decisions based on logic and reason, however, in reality, we are totally illogical and act on emotion. In fact, a case can be made that humans use the logical part of our brain to justify the irrational decisions we make.

Behavioural Finance looks at the decision-making process that we go through when making an investment. One of the strongest factors influencing our decision making is loss aversion. We’d rather choose something of lesser value or quality that we know will not negatively impact us rather than choosing something that has the potential to positively impact us. Guaranteed products play right into our loss aversion behaviour.

A guaranteed investment is fairly straightforward. Most guaranteed investments are fixed for a 5-year term, capital is guaranteed, and the return is not allowed to drop below a certain percentage. It sounds like a winning formula until you look a little deeper. The investment is a business transaction and the asset managers need to ensure that they are getting paid and earning the return that they need to. What do the asset managers do? Well, they often smooth the returns.

For example, you take out a guaranteed investment for $10,000 that says that your return cannot be negative. Your money is invested in a variety of investments including cash, bonds, equities, and property. The upper limit of the return is set up by the asset manager at 5% per annum. In this hypothetical example, after five years the investment would have grown to $12,762.82, however, the actual return on the investment was 7% or $14,025.52, with 2% going to the asset manager.

Some investors seek comfort in these products even if for a short term when markets are volatile. Extensive research done over decades shows that, over time, investing in equities delivers the best return.

However, there are certain situations when a guaranteed product is beneficial for an investor. A guaranteed investment protects investors against downside risk, but at the cost of any upside. The guaranteed investment does have a place in a retirement plan for most investors that have not saved enough for retirement, or early retirees that have years ahead of needing an income. The bottom line is that medicine has evolved, and people are living longer so some investors get comfort in this type of investments, but there is a price to pay so always check with your financial advisor and consider your risk aversion.

Do you avoid?

Funny, huh, how some folks think that avoiding challenges will bring them peace?

You know that it does not work, so how can you stop avoiding the challenge you’ve been avoiding?

Create awareness by asking, “What am I doing right now?” Throughout the day, set reminders or put little notes that remind you to ask, “What am I doing right now?” The answer might be, “Checking Facebook,” or “Switching to a new browser tab,” or “Eating some chips.” Something simple and mundane like that, but just ask yourself what you’re doing, to start to bring awareness.

Next, ask yourself, “What am I avoiding?”  Some of us, when things get difficult or uncomfortable, automatically switch to something else.  Ask what you’re avoiding: some fear, some difficult task, some difficult emotion, some discomfort, or just staying present in the current moment? Name what you’re avoiding.

Take appropriate action. Now that you’ve faced and named it, you can act like an adult and can decide what the best action is right now and one action is to:

Chunk it or separate it into smaller steps.

After dividing the problem into feasible parts, work through the easiest steps first. For example, when I am starting to create a new PowerPoint on a senior issue, I first break down the task into “gathering the research, reading the research talking to experts, pulling out the main points to cover, developing the take-aways, creating a list of resources, developing an outline, finding images,  and then creating a draft.“

Access your inner wisdom.

We all have the voice inside our heads that tells us when we are moving in a direction that we know is wrong. We need to take the time to listen to that voice. This voice, some call inner wisdom others call a conscious allows us to consider the consequences and what’ll be most helpful in the long term. By listening to this voice, you take into account your emotions, logical thinking and intuition.

Be accountable to yourself or others.

For instance, if you’re socially anxious, and have been invited to a party go and speak to two new people even if that feels scary.

Seek support.

If you don’t have the skills or knowledge you need to seek support by seeing a therapist, reading a book, taking a class or talking to a friend who has experience dealing with similar situations.

Our minds want to run from whatever discomfort, pain, the difficulty we’re facing … and this is a good strategy for temporarily not having to deal with difficulty and pain. However, this means we are at the mercy of our fears. We are like little children who don’t want to do any hard work but want the latest shiny fun thing.

Life moves on and, in the end, we usually have to deal with the challenges that we have put off, but by putting them off, some of them just get worse. Too late, we realize that it would have been better to face them early on.

Of course, not all problems will just evaporate using this method, but I can tell you that you’ll be able to face many more things as you practice this method. You’ll get better at dealing with discomfort, instead of running from it as most people do. You’ll get better at not procrastinating, and doing uncomfortable tasks and become more at peace. As if the peace you now know didn't come from earlier challenges that were faced, and mastered. Oh, you forgot about that, well that is not really that funny, is it?