Resources for Retirees

     For a while at the bottom of my blog, under the heading "Web Resources" I've been listing various links to other sites that address the needs and interests of the older population. Probably nobody ever scrolls to the bottom of a blog, so let me just prompt you here.

     Of course everyone knows about AARP which offers a pretty good website. But my links under "Web Resources" also include the New York Times site The New Old Age, and the travel site Road Scholar, and a site that indexes a number of helpful government pages, called Senior Citizens' Resources. If you poke around on that government page you'll find advice on a number of subjects, as well as some retirement planning calculators, references to state and local agencies, locators for various services, and other practical information.

     Recently, I've run across a few websites sponsored by academic institutions that offer information for those of us interested in aging, longevity and retirement. (Other universities, such as Duke, the University of Maryland and the University of South Florida do research on aging and offer degrees in gerontology, but they don't publish much practical information for the public on their websites).

     I've found the following five sites are both interesting and helpful, offering sometimes academic but usually fairly accessible articles, surveys and reports on issues facing the over-50 crowd.

     The Center for Retirement Research comes out of Boston College. The website highlights research that focuses on money and retirement, including Social Security, taxes, 401K plans, working in retirement. The site organizes its material under headings such as "Briefs," "Working Papers" "Special Projects," depending on how a topic is treated. The approach leans toward the academic, but will seem familiar to anyone who's been to college.

     The Sloan Center on Aging & Work is another project sponsored by Boston College. Its mission is to develop work and career opportunities for older Americans, and it covers such issues as age bias in employment, flexible work options, volunteerism. There's also a blog that fleshes out some of the issues, such as how older workers deal with younger bosses and ... how do we define older workers, anyway?

     The Legacy Project is run by Karl Pillemer, professor of gerontology at Cornell. He has collected practical advice, as well as plenty of words of wisdom, from more than 1500 Americans over the age of 70. The stories and reminiscenses cover love and marriage, work and career, living with loss, and a host of other topics. Some of this advice was published in his book 30 Lessons for Living, featured in a previous post of mine called How to Grow Old.

     Stanford Center on Longevity studies "the nature and development of the human life span, looking for innovative ways to use science and technology to solve the problems of people over 50." The center benefits from research by some 140 Stanford faculty, as well as "visiting scholars" such as Barbara Strauch, science editor at the New York Times. Some of the topics involve global aging and public policy. There's also a link to a youtube channel that features various Stanford lectures, and you can sign up to receive longevity news email updates.

     The Center on Aging at the University of Utah offers to the public "open access materials" on the study of aging through its college of nursing. Several online learning modules are available. They each run about ten minutes, and offer a broad overview of issues in retirement, health, geriatric medicine and other topics that appeal to the mature audience.

     When you have a few minutes, search around on these sites. They are not purely practical; there aren't many catchy titles, but they all offer in-deph analysis on some of the issues that are important to us.