On Our Minds

     A roundup of baby boomer blogs this week finds that we have an abiding interest in both our mental and physical health.

     Take a drive over to Six Decades and Counting where Meryl Baer examines the rules regarding car seat regulations, and how they may or may not affect senior citizens. She wrote about the problem a few years ago, and has updated the article for her latest post Car Seats for Seniors.

     As for Laura Lee Carter, she's concerned about the stress and the environmental problems of city living. After residing in the city for most of her life, she finally moved to a rural community this summer.

     Since B and I have been talking about when and where we should move in retirement, this is a subject near and dear to my heart. One of our ideas is to move into the city, from the suburbs where we've both been hanging our hats for the past few decades. We're thinking city life would be exciting, at least for a period of time, say a year or two.

     But after reading Carter's post, I'm not so sure. In City Living … Not So Much Laura Lee offers up a few thoughts, along with some informative research, on urbanization and mental health.

     Meanwhile, on The Survive and Thrive Boomer Guide, Rita R. Robison, consumer journalist, warns us about two potential threats to our health. In FDA Issues Warning Letters to Five Companies that Sell Pure Powdered Caffeine, she points out the dangers of the supplement to children and adults alike. Pure caffeine should never be sold to consumers, she says, pointing out that one mere teaspoon can be a fatal dose for a child, and two teaspoons are fatal to many adults.

     In Tiny Concentrations of Teflon Harmful to Public Health, Robison refers to a study by the Environmental Working Group that says federal guidance on safe levels of Teflon in our drinking water is way too weak. One study she cites detected Teflon chemicals in 94 public water systems in 27 states. And exposure to these types of chemicals have been associated with cancer, high cholesterol, obesity and other problems. For more on the issue check out Robison's report and her links to the studies. 

     Meanwhile, if you’re interested in self-awareness, self-improvement and self-actualization, you might want to check out the recent post on SmartLiving365 called Is Finding Your Balance Point a Smart Way to Live? Blogger Kathy Gottberg takes a look at some work by Brian Tracy and his daughter Christina Stein who talk about how each of us has a balance point where "we feel in perfect harmony, grounded, happy, connected to others, and where our mind, body and spirit are in alignment." 

     Gottberg also notes in Wayne Dyer: The Passing of a Self-Help Master that the popular author and motivational speaker Wayne Dyer died last Sunday, Aug. 29. Dyer was suffering from leukemia, diagnosed in 2012, but that never dimmed his optimism and love of life. As noted on the Dyer website: "Wayne has left his body, passing away through the night. He always said he couldn't wait for this next adventure to begin and had no fear of dying.”

     One of Dyer’s famous quotes was: “Don’t die with the music inside you.” So Gottberg has isolated five ways that the music of Wayne Dyer will forever be a part of her life . . . and maybe yours.

Summer Days Are Over

     There are a lot of people living on Cape Cod who (as B and I say when we notice a lot of heads with gray hair) are "in our demographic." In other words, there are a lot of retirees who live out here, not just in the summer, but all year long.

     B and I drove home from vacation yesterday, and on the way we wondered: would we ever consider retiring to Cape Cod? There's an allure. It's a beautiful place out on the seacoast -- peaceful and removed from the world. The summers are on the cool side, and the winters not as cold as the rest of New England.

     A few years ago B and I spent a weekend here in November. It was fun to walk the windy beach and watch the waves scuttle to shore. The air was bracing, and the fire at the local restaurant very inviting. But it was also gray and raw and blustery, and seemed lonely with the vacationers long gone.

     And yet, thousands of retirees call Cape Cod home. Most of them come from New York or New England, but some from farther afield. A lot of them go away for at least part of the winter, usually to Florida. But there's another reason besides the weather:  If you stay in Florida at least six months, you're considered a Florida resident, rather than a Massachusetts resident. There's no state income or estate tax in Florida as there is in Massachusetts.

     But there are always exceptions. We met one couple that spends the winter in Aruba rather than Florida. Another fellow chuckled when he told me with undisguised happiness that he and his wife had just retired last year. They moved here from Connecticut. He said people think they're crazy because they don't go south in the winter. They have a house on the Cape, then go Vermont for the winter. Why? They are skiers.

     Personally, I wouldn't want to winter over in Vermont. I used to do some skiing. But I gave it up six years ago after I fell and broke my arm -- and realized that skiing is not a good thing to do for people "in our demographic." At our age, when you fall, you're more likely to get hurt, and it takes longer to heal.

     No. I don't think we'll retire to Cape Cod. We'll be back. But for now, the summer days are over on the Cape.

September sunset over Bass River on Cape Cod

Do We Make Our Own Luck?

     The following short passage comes from Live by Night by Dennis Lehane, a book I'm reading on vacation. Lehane is author of a dozen novels, including Mystic River, all set around the Boston area.

     The time here is the 1920s. The son, Joe, is a small-time crook who has been beaten to within an inch of his life by a couple of gangsters. He's now being transferred to jail from the hospital, and his father comes for a visit . . .

     "People don't fix each other, Joseph. And they never become anything but what they've always been."

     Joe said, "I don't believe that."

     "Don't? Or won't?" His father closed his eyes. "Every breath, son, is luck." He opened his eyes and they were pink in the corners "Achievement? Depends on luck -- to be born in the right place at the right time and be of the right color. To live long enough to be in the right place at the right time to make one's fortune. Yes, yes, hard work and talent make up the difference. They are crucial, and you know I'd never ague different. But the foundation of all lives is luck. Good or bad. Luck is life and life is luck. Don't waste yours. It's leaking from the moment it lands in your hands."

     Joe's jaw clenched, but all he said was, "You make your luck, Dad."

     "Sometimes," his father said. "But other times it makes you."

What's Going On Here?

     You can go on vacation, but you can't get away from your IRA account.

     I've been away for less than two weeks, and Wall Street has gone crazy. What's a poor retiree to do?

     Well, if you're a poor retiree living on Social Security alone, then you probably don't care. Or if you have a good pension supporting you in retirement, then it probably doesn't matter much to you either. But for those us who have no pension, and who have spent a good portion of our lives saving up for retirement . . . that's all we've got!

     So what happens next? Nobody knows -- not your broker at Merrill Lynch, not the expert holding forth on CNBC, nor the reassuring missive that arrives by email from Fidelity or Vanguard.

     I guess we all have faith that over the long term the American economy will continue to prosper and corporate profits will grow along with it. And therefore the stock market will reward those of us who invest in it, either directly in stocks or mutual funds, or indirectly through some retirement plan. If you don't have that faith, perhaps you should be investing in Asia, or gold, or hiding your money under the mattress.

     Regardless, in the meantime we should all keep plenty of cash on the sidelines. Here's the best advice I've seen on that score.

     All the financial experts say you should set aside some kind of emergency fund so you're not forced to sell your assets in the middle of a crisis. Many recommend keeping enough cash outside your retirement account to cover six months of expenses.

     But here's the alternative I like better: Figure out how much you typically withdraw from your savings to cover the gap between your ongoing expenses and your recurring income from pensions, Social Security and anything else. Then set aside enough cash -- it can be inside or outside your IRA, it doesn't really matter -- to cover the gap for five years.

     Yes, five years. That's so you don't have to sell investments when they are down. (You didn't want to be forced to sell your stocks cheap in 2008 or 2009. But you didn't want to sell them in 2010 or 2011 either, not when they were going to be worth a lot more in 2012 and 2013.)

     But the amount you should keep in cash may not be as much as you think. For example, if you spend $3,000 a month, and take in $2,500 a month in pensions and Social Security, you have a $500 per month shortfall. So $500 a month for five years equals a cash balance of $30,000.

     Of course this is just an example, and there's always room for adding or subtracting a little bit here and there (subtract some if you really don't have the savings; add some if you're worried about a sudden emergency expense, or a return of inflation). But you get the idea.

     And besides, maybe the market will go up again next week, and all our worries will be over. I doubt it; but it could happen.

Some Info. for You Landlubbers

     We were sitting on the beach, staring out across the water of Nantucket Sound, when suddenly someone piped up, "What is a sound, anyway? What's the difference between a sound and a bay?"

Cape Cod Bay & Nantucket Sound

     Nobody knew the answer, exactly, although there were many opinions. Until someone pulled out his smart phone and googled the answer for us.

     So if you landlubbers will indulge my sudden interest in the maritime lexicon . . .

     A sound is a large ocean inlet (such as Nantucket Sound) or a narrow ocean channel between two bodies of land (such as Vineyard Sound). But there must be some flexibility in the definition, because . . . what is Puget Sound? By the way, the word sound also refers to measuring the depth of the water, and is also said of a whale when it dives to the bottom.

     A bay is a body of water connected to the ocean or lake that is surrounded by land on three sides, and is formed by an indentation in the shoreline. We have Cape Cod Bay and Buzzard's Bay here in Massachusetts, and a lot of other bays along the East Coast from Delaware Bay and Chesapeake Bay on south. The West Coast doesn't have so many bays.

Classic cove

     A gulf is a large bay, such as the Gulf of Mexico, the Gulf of California or the Gulf of Alaska.

     So what's a cove? It is a small bay that's usually round or oval in shape with a narrow opening to a larger body of water.

     And how is that different from an inlet? An inlet is typically long and narrow, an indentation of the shoreline of an enclosed body of water.

More of an inlet

     And a fjord is a long, narrow inlet with steep sides created by glacial erosion. You don't have to be in Scandinavia to find a fjord. The Hudson River is actually a fjord.

     Then what's a harbor? A harbor is a bay or cove or inlet where boats are at anchor -- and is often artificially created or enhanced by breakwaters, sea walls or jettys.

     So there you have it . . . why, you can almost believe that you've been out at the seashore for a couple of weeks yourself!