I grouse about how my husband loses things, but he’s also a great finder. He uncovers his keys, his glasses, and his wallet nearly every week. Recently, though, he found a 25-year-old retirement account. It wouldn’t have changed our retirement, but...

My book club has been reading and nattering together for over 30 years, since most of us had kids in the same neighborhood grade school. A generation later, almost all of us still live in the same general area, but many of have downsized. Our needs h...

Annuities are popular among insurance salespeople but earn mixed reviews from consumers. They have a long-standing reputation for being costly and complex. In the past few years, financial watchdogs have proposed tighter fiduciary standards for...

I recall a joke from the last millennium where pranksters would call a senior on the phone, pretending to be from the phone company. “We’re working in your neighborhood and have some extra phone line. If you’ll yank hard on your phone cord you can h...

The uncertainty of the pandemic has brought to mind a name from my young adult years: Howard Ruff. Do you remember reading his 1978 sensation, “How to Prosper During the Coming Bad Years”? It was a survival guide for personal and financial dec...

You’ve planted a victory garden, cleaned the garage, and caught up with old (and older) friends. If you’re lucky, you’ve stayed healthy and are still employed (or retired). COVID-19 has affected each of us differently, but there’s no doubt it’s be...

Part two of two Last month we discussed retirement planning for the decade before retirement. This month, we continue with planning for retirement and post-retirement. Retirement Many boomers experiment with a trial retirement before we pull the...

Part one of two. Seniors are “investdemics” – it is a characteristic of our age group that we have tried to compile investment portfolios that (fingers crossed) will last us. Some want to leave a legacy to favored charities and descendants, and o...

I almost trained as a scientist, but feared I wouldn’t be able to locate the sweet spot in how to spend my workday. I love the outdoors too much to spend days in a windowless lab, and I’m too wimpy to spend weeks on end camping in a rainy jun...

Editor's note: This story appears in the Senior Voice Health and Fitness section, Jan. 2020, however the text is incomplete, due to a layout error. We apologize for the error and here it is in its entirety. Tylenol with codeine makes my occasional...

I am so bummed. I’ve prided myself in how little we toss into the trash compared to our recycling bin, following the rules on the lid. We pack cloth grocery bags, reuse and recycle plastic bags, and often remember to bring our own reusable plastic c...

Psychology has found its way into finance, and it’s a good fit. Behavioral economists design systems that nudge people into making the right decisions. For instance, workers save significantly more when the default is paycheck deductions into t...

What’s not black and white, but green all over? Environmental, social, and governance investing, or ESG. ESG investors evaluate and invest based on corporate behavior as a predicator of future financial performance. After wading into ESG investing a...

What’s the point of progress? It’s to improve our quality of life. This is a push-me, pull-you process, balancing the frustration of the inevitable glitches of new technology as compared with the comfort of the familiar. Sometimes the time is rip...