Remember Tie Dye?

Remember tie dye tee shirts? My grandson had seen his grandmother wearing an old tie-dye shirt when he last visited us and he, in his craft class at his small school had made some tie-dye shirts. He wanted to make some shirts with his grandma.

We thought it would be fun and give us a memento give him a memory to remember. So, my wife and daughter on one of their trips to town bought plain white Tee shirts for all of us and bought the fixing to make tie-dye shirts.

So, on a hot summer’s day in Australia in January we created our memories. First, we read the instructions to make sure we understood what we had to do, second, we gathered all of the ingredients and followed the instructions to make sure the ingredients were set up properly. It took time to decide what type of design each of us wanted and then it took longer to fix the shirt in the way we thought would best make the design. The first step after creating your design was to soak the Tee shirts in soda ash for twenty minutes to make sure that the material would absorb the dye. The second step was to apply the dye. There are many sites on the Internet that will give you quick ideas on how to make tie-dye shirts, shoes, silk ties etc.

We each took time to create our own tee shirts and while one person was applying the dye, the others were providing advice, sometimes, good, sometimes not good, sometimes wanted, most times not needed. We did have fun, laughed a lot, and as you can see from the pic below, the effort was well worth it. 

We did such a great job on our shirts that we made shirts for our grandchildren at home as well as our son, who had to leave for home before we decided to complete this project. My daughter and her guy said they would only wear their shirts at home, I am going to wear mine proudly when I go out and when I golf, but the weather has to warm up a great deal before I can move to summer wear. My grandson, wore his shirt every day for a week and was very proud of his efforts. He loved making the tee shirt with his grandma and it, hopefully, will be a memory that he will have for a long time.

Senior Centers

I have a new role; I am the president of our local senior center advisory board. So, I thought I would look at the role Senior centers play to help keep us healthy and active. First, senior centers are a great place to stay healthy and to find volunteering opportunities and make new friends.

Health and fitness are where senior centers have really expanded in recent years. In addition to traditional programs like aerobics, Zumba, yoga, and Tai Chi, many senior centers now offer evidence-based health programs that have been scientifically proven to make people healthier. My center offers drop-in programs that range from Chair Fitness to Yoga

We also offer regularly scheduled blood pressure and Foot Care/Podiatry Clinic but some others offer glucose screenings. These clinics can replace tedious trips to a medical clinic for those simple procedures.

We are a membership-based organization with over 1,000 members, with oversight by the advisory board on which I serve. This is no different than most senior community centers. Each Center has a set of municipally driven policies and access points. Many of the seniors who joined our center are also members of other centres and attend programs based on their interests. In my community, there are three other senior centers and some of our members have suggested better communication and cooperation between the municipal centres, which is something I will look into this year.

One of the main roles of a senior center is to provide the opportunity for seniors to be connected. Social isolation among seniors has been the subject of prominent public inquiries such as by Canada’s National Seniors Council, and the U.S. Senate Aging Committee. A widely-cited study determines that the negative health impact of social isolation is equivalent to smoking up to 15 cigarettes per day. Both urban and rural communities across the continent have struggled on what to do about social isolation among seniors.

In the U.K., the government even appointed a “Minister of Loneliness” due to the health impacts of social isolation. It is clear that government policymakers already understand the costs of social isolation. Now we need to convince them of the benefit of investing in initiatives that enhance the quality of life among frail and elderly seniors.

The impact on a senior’s ability to remain in their community may make a difference in the person’s ability to age in place, which is an important goal. The list was based primarily on comments from services providers but was confirmed by seniors themselves. There are three factors that may hinder a senior’s ability, these are:

1. Early-stage dementia may be misdiagnosed or seen by family and friends as forgetfulness, suspicion, fear of strangers or denial that anything is wrong and no help is needed

2. A reluctance to ask for or accept help

3. Fear of change

In a report published in 2013 on senior issues in my community, the author stated: There are 5 municipalities that offer different levels of support, have a mix of older and newer housing. The limited number of services available are unevenly distributed throughout the region. Many seniors, some quite a bit older than others, reported that they were doing well and did not require any assistance at this time. 

At some point in most of the conversations, the issue of access to information about services and the coordination of these services was raised. The report also found that most seniors do not know what services are available in my area. I hope that over the next two years that our Board will take steps to address this issue.

Do you find yourself dwelling

Do you find yourself dwelling on the unimportant, stressing on the unintended, and freaking over the unknown? When you do this does it work for you? I doubt it, dwelling on the unimportant, or freaking out over the unknown simply doesn't work. I know because when I was younger, I did this from time to time and I found it was like lighting a match, in a dark room, to make sure no one spilled any gunpowder on my bicycle, under the stairs, near the back porch, in the dark of February.

Actually, some of what I just said was intentionally unimportant, to hopefully distract you from feeling any stigma for freaking out over earlier unknowns.

Why do we think stressing on the unintended or freaking out over the unknown will work, perhaps it because it allows us to be distracted from doing something rather than doing nothing? If we attempt to do something and something unintended happens, this means we have not considered all aspects of our plan so we are now faced with something we had not thought of that has happened. One way to face this issue is to embrace it, learn from it and incorporate it into what we do next. The other way is to stress about it, run from it and reject it, or we could just stress about it and do nothing. The best way to prevent this from happening is to think about what you want to do and consider all possibilities and how you will react to them.

What does freaking out about the unknown do for you except to increase your blood pressure, your anxiety and cause grief for people around you? If you don’t know what is happening or there is an unknown confronting you, get information about it before you act. Asking questions is a good method and a good way to start to find out what is going on, try it, it works.

Dwelling on the unimportant things in your life is a coping mechanism to help you hide from dealing with the important aspects of your life. We all know what is important to us and we need to deal with these first.

How do we get people to save?

How do we get people to save for the future, is a question that has no easy answer?  In England there is a group called “The Money and Pensions Service (Maps)” which has just launched its 10-year financial wellbeing strategy, which includes the aim of getting five million more workers saving for later life.

As well as its plans to get 28.6 million people understanding how to plan for their retirement by 2030, five million more than currently, Maps’ UK Strategy for Financial Wellbeing sets out four more “agendas for change”.

By the end of the decade, Maps said it wanted 6.8 million children and young people to get a meaningful financial education, and to increase the number of working-age people who regularly put money into savings.

The organization’s other goals were ensuring two million more people get the debt advice they need and reducing the number of people relying on credit to pay for food and bills by two million.

This is a wonderful initiative and a worthwhile goal and one that I hope they achieve. If you do a search on how do we get people to save for retirement, you will get hundreds of posts along the same ideas:

·  It's never too early — or too late — to start saving for retirement

·  If you are just starting out, focus on saving as much as you can now

·  Focus on starting today

·  Meet your employer's match

· Take advantage of every government program open to you in your country

· Automate your savings

· Rein in spending

· Set a goal

· Stash extra funds

· Consider delaying Social Security as you get closer to retirement

However, many countries are facing a retirement savings crisis. In the United States, for example, the fraction of workers at risk of having inadequate funds to maintain their lifestyle through retirement has increased to over 53%. 

One reason for the savings crisis is the ongoing shift in the private sector from defined benefit pension plans (DB, where retirement benefits are formulaic and known in advance) to defined contribution plans (DC, where benefits depend on investment outcomes). Making some type of payroll-based savings plan available to everyone is essential because it is the most effective way for the middle class to save. But having a plan offered at the workplace is not sufficient. Even for those with access to an employer-sponsored plan, almost a quarter fail to join, and among those who do join, many save too little.

Behavioural Economists tell us that there are four essential ingredients to any comprehensive plan to facilitate adequate saving for retirement: availability, automatic enrollment, automatic investment, and automatic escalation. These ideals are hard to implement due to regulations, union agreements, and peoples’ ideas that they can do better than any plan. 

In Canada we are fortunate because we have programs that are designed to help us replace up to 33% of our work income. This means that if we want to save for retirement, we only need to save to replace 37% of our income. Experts tell us that we should have enough savings to give us about 70% of our work income when we retire, since our government programs replace 33% of our income or soon will, then we only need to fill the gap and save the remaining 37%, So, if your employer does not have any plan, then follow the advice given at the beginning of the post and you should be in better shape than having no savings.