Vision problems: don’t wait too long

Perfect visual acuity means a person can see well both near and far As people age, their vision tends to diminish somewhat Brighter lighting may be needed to read, sew or do crafts While this may be a normal phenomenon, reduced vision may become disabling for reading the newspaper, or even dangerous, particularly when driving That is why it is worthwhile to have your vision checked regularly

The most common visual problem is presbyopia, which affects practically everyone from the age of 40 to 50 years, Presbyopia is due to the ageing of the lens of the eye, which makes it difficult to see near items.

Reading glasses are then needed As well, certain eye conditions can cause age-related vision loss, including cataracts, glaucoma and macular degeneration There are specific treatments for each of these conditions It is important to identify and take care of them before they worsen

If you have not had a recent eye exam, consulting an ophthalmologist or your doctor will help you identify what options can be considered to improve your vision.

Of course, it is also recommended that you consult a professional when you have symptoms such as difficulty in estimating distances, blurred vision or loss of colour vision, increased sensitivity to light, flashes or spots in the visual field People with diabetes should, in any case, have an annual examination by an ophthalmologist

Cataracts» Do you sometimes feel like you have a veil in front of your eyes? Are you sometimes blinded by car headlights or bright lights? If so, this may be due to a cataract. Cataracts are caused by a clouding of the lens of the eye They are not painful and may be due to ageing or aggravated by certain diseases, such as diabetes Cataracts may occur in either or both eyes, and they affect almost everyone over the age of 85 to 90 years.

 Cataracts are treated by replacing the lens of the eye with a kind of small transparent lens called an implant, during a short procedure under local anesthetic.

Glaucoma Do you sometimes feel that you don’t see as well to the sides?

This could be a sign of glaucoma. Sometimes, glaucoma sets in aggressively The eye becomes red and very painful, with a significant loss of vision, and immediate intervention is required Much more often, glaucoma is linked to a painless increase in pressure within the eye, which may go unnoticed In the long term, this may cause irreversible loss of vision, so it is important to have your eye pressure regularly checked. Drug or laser treatment can slow or halt the progression of the disease

 Age-Related Macular Degeneration (AMD) Do you sometimes have the impression that lines are wavy instead of straight?

This could indicate macular degeneration, which changes your vision like in the photo below. AMDT is a disease, the causes of which are still relatively unknown, affects about one in ten people after the age of 80 years At first, vision could be slightly blurred and straight lines may sometimes appear wavy, then the loss of vision in the centre of the visual field worsens, making it increasingly difficult to read, recognize faces and accomplish daily tasks Even with all the efforts made in recent years, treatment remains limited for certain forms of the disease But macular degeneration may be treated effectively in some cases, which is why it is important to detect it on time, in order to limit the loss of vision 

Today is Pension Awareness Day in the UK.

Did you know that the United Kingdom has a Pension Awareness Day on September 15th? The Pension Awareness Day takes place annually on September 15 with the aim to alert the nation that they need to save more for their retirement.

The campaign was created by Pensions Geeks which runs a series of tours and workshops across the country to help people understand how much they will need in retirement and what they need to do in order to reach their savings goals.

The initiative is supported by the Department for Work and Pensions as well as Pension Wise and Now Pensions.

Pension providers such as Aegon are also involved with a cross-country tour to get people engaged with their pensions.

But many advisers and many workers are unaware that this initiative exists, despite being the main point of call for many people seeking help with their retirement planning.

There are three main questions asked by those attending these events

1.      They want to know how they find out what is in their pension.

2.     Whether their Pension fund is enough.

3.     Most importantly what they have to do next.

There is no Pension Awareness Day in Canada that I am aware of, and perhaps there should be. The Pension Awareness day information for the United Kingdom can be found here https://pensionawarenessday.com/  There are a great many videos and webinars on this page, enough to answer general questions about pensions.

We have a problem in Canada and the US with people not saving enough for retirement so an initiative like this could benefit all of us. An interesting idea.

Taking Care of yourself

 Depressive disorders: two questions to ask yourself

As we get older, we are unfortunately more commonly faced with difficult events, like disease or mourning. It is normal to have feelings of sadness or discouragement following events of this kind, but we cannot let this become permanent or feel that life no longer seems worth living.

Certain depressive symptoms may occur in anyone from time to time, especially during a difficult period. If these symptoms are persistent or present almost every day, this may be depression.

Typical symptoms of depression are loss of interest in activities usually enjoyed, unexplained lack of energy, permanent discouragement or despair Depression often comes with sleep, appetite or memory problems, or pains or difficulties in accomplishing activities of daily living

Check for possible depressive disorders

During the past month, have you been bothered by feeling down, depressed or hopeless?

During the past month, have you been bothered by little interest or pleasure in doing things?

Results

If you answered yes to at least one of these two questions, you may be suffering from depression  Even if this may not be easy, it is worthwhile to talk to your doctor, as effective treatments do exist

Caring for a loved one: don’t let yourself get overwhelmed

Nowadays, older people are called on to provide occasional or regular assistance to a spouse, parent, loved one or neighbour (family caregivers). Caring for an elderly loved one is nothing new, especially for women who are often drawn upon in this regard, but two aspects make things more difficult today. Firstly, women more often work outside the home than before, and caregiving represents an additional task.

Secondly, because of longer life expectancies, people often have to care for a loved one when they are themselves elderly and possibly in frail health.

Family caregivers risk seeing their own health deteriorate, all the more so since they lack time to take care of themselves, even going as far as postponing their own medical appointments.

Caring for an elderly loved one may involve very different situations, depending on the extent and the cause of the loss of independence.

While offering help to ensure transportation or manage finances may be rewarding, providing daily assistance with meals or personal hygiene sometimes leads to burnout, as a result of both the physical and emotional involvement.

For loved ones, seeing someone they care for lose the ability

to accomplish simple tasks on their own is both painful and distressing.

In the case of dementia, lack of recognition and relational difficulties make things even more frustrating. In addition, there may sometimes be financial considerations, as well as family and social repercussions. In comparison with the help provided by medical and social services, family caregivers ensure most of the assistance and care required by the dependent persons.

They often feel that it is their role to assist their loved ones and sometimes hesitate to ask for help, even when home care services exist.

Since the risk of burnout and depression is not negligible, family caregivers should be encouraged to try to define the limits of their commitment and to delegate certain tasks in order to take some time for themselves.

Chronic pain, for example, affects nearly half of people aged over 65 years, but some consider that, at their age, it is normal to feel pain, such as joint pain.

 While it may sometimes be difficult to treat the cause of the pain, it is worthwhile to contact your doctor again if a treatment does not seem to be sufficiently effective, and to sometimes try several different treatments

Memory loss is another source of concern for many people of a certain age, who fear the onset of dementia  Often, elderly people have simple memory lapses, resulting from the fact that the memorization process becomes less effective with age  It may be necessary for them to find strategies, like writing down what they are afraid of forgetting, and exercising their memory by doing crossword puzzles or mental math, for example.

However, these lapses may also signal the onset of dementia, especially when these people also experience new difficulties, for instance, in making payments or finding their words, or have mood swings.

If you have any concerns about your memory or that of a loved one, don’t hesitate to talk to your doctor. A dementia diagnosis involves extensive testing and also requires the exclusion of other causes of memory disorders, such as depression.

Other problems, such as balance disorders, falls and many other conditions, should not be trivialized. Lastly, whatever concern you may have about your health, deserves to be investigated by a health professional. There is no reason to accept health problems as an inevitable part of ageing.

The three pillar approach to retirement

Governments the world over are struggling to cope as the number of people who are retiring grows. Not only are more people retiring, but we are living longer, and we are just coming out of a Pandemic which will slow economic growth. According to one study, indexing benefits and retirement ages to longevity did not ensure the financial viability of the social security system. Another study suggested that individuals bear a larger share of the responsibility for determining their retirement security.

Retirement System Risk Management Implications of the New Regulatory Order published in 2016 by Oxford Press examined issues concerning retirement and looked at the idea of individuals saving for their own retirement and found that scenically, 37.9 percent of individuals with university education save for retirement, compared to 27 percent of individuals with secondary education and 22.2 percent of individuals with primary education or less. The old-age saving gap seems to be much wider between the tertiary and secondary education groups, compared to the gap between secondary and primary education or less.

However, the idea that we should allow people a choice of investment options is one that still holds today because governments believe that allowing choice may increase retirement savings.

A survey of households by the Board of Governors of the Federal Reserve System (2014) found that almost half of respondents had given little or no thought to retirement savings. Among those who had, many either did not plan to retire, expected to keep working into retirement to pay for expenses or did not know how they would pay for their retirement. Nearly a third had no retirement savings or pension. These retirement planning challenges had been exacerbated by the Pandemic, which resulted in many respondents delaying their planned retirement.

Firms have also shifted from defined benefit (DB) pensions to defined contribution (DC) pensions, where employees have to decide how much money to put into their retirement funds and how to allocate their pension wealth. But DC plans have their critics, who draw on the behavioural economics and finance literature. For instance, one study found that the elderly suffer from greater cognitive, gender, and education gaps than other groups. As a result, they are less likely to have savings accounts, own shares in a company, or have private pensions. Another study reported that financial literacy is a significant determinant of retirement planning for all age groups, with elderly people suffering from the highest levels of financial illiteracy.

One study reported that peer effects drive retirement plan participation decisions. Another found evidence that an individual’s decision about how much to save for retirement was affected by small changes in his environment and that network effects influence participation decisions. Instead of education, proposed a method of influencing decisions about retirement saving plans based on the principles of ‘automatic enrollment.’ This involved implementing acute autoenrollment, sensible default options, and opportunities to increase savings rates and rebalance portfolios automatically. Such design features help less sophisticated investors while maintaining the flexibility for more knowledgeable participants.

Financial security for the elderly and economic growth is best served when governments adopt three pillars of old age security:

(1)           A publicly managed pension system with mandatory participation and the limited goal of reducing poverty among the elderly.

(2)           A privately managed mandatory savings system.

(3)           A voluntary savings incentive.

The first pillar caters to redistribution, the second and third cover savings, and all three co-insure against the many risks of old age. Spreading the insurance function across all three pillars creates greater income security for the old and provides greater insurance than any single pillar system.

Among the benefits of voluntary saving is the relative ease of accessing and mobilizing funds, and the prevention of potential labour market distortions. Yet voluntary savings programs may produce social costs, particularly when they involve fiscal incentives.

To develop measures to improve the financial well-being of the elderly and incorporate an element of self-control in retirement planning, policymakers must first understand retirement savings patterns.