Look at These Baby Boomer Blogs

     A brief survey of some of this week's best Baby Boomer blogs reveals a mix of concerns. Take a look . . .

     On the Survive and Thrive Boomer Guide consumer journalist Rita R. Robison brings up the serious issue of alcohol abuse. She reports on a recent study from the Center for Disease Control and Prevention which shows that excessive alcohol use accounts for some 88,000 deaths per year in the U. S., or one in ten deaths among adults 20 - 64 years old. And it's not a problem restricted to males. Yes, about 70 percent of those killed by alcohol are men. But that means 30 percent are women.

     Overall, some 44 percent of deaths attributable to alcohol are due to chronic conditions, primarily liver disease. And 56 percent are caused by acute conditions involving homicide, suicide, child abuse. But the most common cause of acute alcohol death is, by far, motor-vehicle traffic crashes.

     Guess which state has suffered the highest rate of alcohol related deaths? And the lowest? Hint: both states start with the word "New."

     To reduce excessive drinking one task force cited by the CDC recommends increasing alcohol taxes, regulating alcohol outlet density, and avoiding further privatization of alcohol retail sales. I don't know . . . do you think any of that would work? It did (at least to some extent) for smoking.

     On a completely different note, Amy of Modern Senior has stumbled across a great short film project that may resonate with you, especially if you have ever been a caregiver to your own aging parents. The three-minute film clip (I watched it; it's very charming -- you really ought to go over and take a look) was featured on kickstarter, a website where people raise money for their individual and often-creative products and projects. To see the three-minute clip by the NYU film student, an immigrant from South Korea, punch your ticket over at Against Medical Advice.

     Meanwhile, one of our number recently moved from a busy metropolitan area to "Small Town USA" in southern Colorado. Check out her post to get some of her first impressions.  And if you're interested in more reflections on the differences between big city living and the rural life, check out a few of her other posts at the Midlife Crisis Queen.

     As for me, I've been engrossed in the Doris Kearns Goodwin tome on Teddy Roosevelt called The Bully Pulpit. It's quite interesting. But I've got to be careful not to drop the thing, for fear of fracturing my foot.

     Otherwise, I did see one thing I want to pass on -- a news clip about the singer Sting -- as it relates to my previous post on what rich people worry about, and how one of their concerns involves motivating their children not to just sit on their big fat fortune, but to do something useful with their lives. Remember Sting from Police? More recently the British pop singer has been touring with Paul Simon, and now he is producing a stage musical called The Last Ship which just last week opened in Chicago.

     The 62-year-old Sting made news recently when he announced that his children will not be getting their hands on any of his money when he dies. His fortune is estimated at about $300 million. Sting grew up poor, and worked for everything he has. He says he wants his children to have the same opportunities he had. He doesn't want to leave them trust funds that would be, in his words, an "albatross around their necks."

     He says that obviously, if his kids got into trouble, he would help them. But, he continues, "They have to work. All my kids know that, and they rarely ask me for anything. They have the work ethic that makes them want to succeed on their own merit."

What Do Rich People Worry About?

     Some of you may remember that I write a column for the U. S. News Retirement website on various issues regarding retirement, especially as they pertain to money.

     Or as my friend jokes about my blog, I write a little "about this 'n' that 'n' some of that."

     Below is a piece I wrote a couple of weeks ago. It got a lot of reader response, mostly from people who have no sympathy at all for the concerns of wealthy people . . . they just don't want to hear about them.

KGO AM 810 in San Francisco

     As I point out, it's hard for any of us to summon up much sympathy for the wealthy. But what got me interested was a 2010 study by Princeton University economists which concluded, as you'd expect, that people in lower economic groups are not as happy as people who make more money. But beyond a certain level, more income does not produce more emotional well-being. The level is about $75,000 a year. So increasing your income up to that point does correlate with increased happiness. But beyond that, making more money just doesn't help.

Michael Finney

     I suppose there are a lot of reasons why not. But one seems to be that having more money does not necessarily cure you of your anxieties, or mean that you have fewer worries in your life.

     So why do I bring it up now? Because I got a call from KGO AM 810 radio in San Francisco. Michael Finney has a show called "Consumer Talk," and he invited me to be interviewed on his show. So, if any of you are within earshot of San Francisco, tune in this Saturday, June 28, at 3:15 p.m., and you can hear me stutter and stammer my way through an interview about . . .

What Rich People Worry About

     You might think that people with a lot of money would be immune from the everyday worries that gnaw at regular, middle-class people. And to some extent you'd be right. But they worry more than you think.

     Here are eight money worries of the top ten percent: 

     Having enough money for retirement. A recent survey by Lincoln Financial Group showed that 53 percent of people surveyed worry about having enough money for retirement. So what about retirees who have over $1 million saved up for their golden years? Almost as many millionaires, 48 percent, admit that they worry about having enough money to live out their years in comfort. Apparently, having more does not relieve you of the anxiety about having enough.

     Worries about health. You'd think that millionaires, with all their access to doctors, specialists and top hospitals, would worry less about their health. But they don't – or at least not by much. According to the same survey, 54 percent of millionaires worry about their health in retirement, compared to 57 percent of all those surveyed.

     Being sued. According to surveys by Prince & Associates, fewer than 20 percent of people worth less than $1 million worry about being sued. But over 80 percent of people worth $20 million or more worry about being the target of a lawsuit. Perhaps they know – lawyers go where the money is.

      Identity theft. Less than half of middle-class people are concerned about identity theft. But three quarters of wealthy people lose sleep over the issue. Probably for the same reason they worry about getting sued. Thieves want the identity of people with big bank balances, not those who have maxed out their credit cards. 

     Protecting assets. Wealthy people may not have to worry about their monthly electric bill, or even the cost of college tuition. But as a rule they have a sense of responsibility about their money, and so they spend time taking care of it. They worry about the Federal Reserve, foreign currencies, interest rates, stock prices, real estate. Even if they hire someone else to manage their affairs, they still worry about overseeing their portfolio and making sure the people they deal with have their best interests at heart.

     Business responsibilities. We all worry about getting laid off. These days, the CEO can get fired just as easily as we can. Business leaders also worry about the impact of their decisions. It's bad enough if you get laid off, but how would like to be responsible for hundreds of other people losing their jobs? Then there's reputation risk. If we mess up, it's usually a private matter. But top figures in business, politics and sports all fail in public, with their shortcomings analyzed by critics from coast to coast. 

     Worries about kids. Rich people know that a large inheritance can undermine the ambition, and the dreams, of their children. Why take on the nasty realities of schoolwork and a job when you have access to a trust fund? The wealthy -- especially those who have made their own fortune -- know the answer even if their kids do not: In work there is self-confidence, self-worth, and a sense of accomplishment that no amount of money can provide. 

     Keeping up with the Joneses. Finally, we live in a competitive society. The brand name of your college, the zip code where you live, the car in your driveway, the place where you vacation – they all say something about your status in life. The wealthy tend to be more competitive than the rest of us, and so these things mean even more to them than they do to us. Keeping up with the Joneses – or the Buffets and the Gates – takes on a meaning that produces even more anxiety for them than it does for the rest of us.

     Of course, it's hard to summon up too much sympathy for the rich -- most of us would love to have their problems. But still, just because you're wealthy doesn't always mean you live on Easy Street.

Our Different Fantasy Lives

     B likes to read. She reads a lot of books. Many of them would be classified as "chick lit." Stories about women who find romance. About women who renovate their house. About women who discover their new inner strength. Stories about women told in recipes. And memoirs, lots of memoirs.

     Currently she's reading a book called The God of Driving by Amy Fine Collins. The author is a spoiled, jetting-setting New York socialite, dressed in Geoffrey Beene t-shirts, black boots from Manolo Blahnik, and little white-gold and diamond Mish flowered earrings, who writes about fashion for Vanity Fair magazine.

     The book is a memoir about learning how to drive as an adult, and developing a relationship with her Turkish driving instructor. He arrives at her door with a dual-brake Acura. They graduate to a Cadillac CTS, then a Mercedes CL 55 AMG (a two-door, 335-horsepower four-seater, prices start at $100,000).

     She tools around Manhattan meeting celebrities and other chic, trendy people at various parties and functions. She jets to California for the Vanity Fair Oscar party, and she attends New York Fashion Week -- when she feels like it, that is. They dine at the Four Seasons where she places her Prada bag on a cherry wood Directoire armchair.

     Why do women like these books? Is it the fantasy? The glamor? The escape?

     Truth be told, those are the reasons I read mysteries. I am Jack Reacher. I am Elvis Cole. I am Harry Bosch. And, for the record, I am a tried-and-true feminist when it comes to mysteries. I identify just as easily with Kinsey Millhone, Stephanie Plum, Joanna Brady, Alexandra Cooper.

     Actually, I can recommend a mystery writer if you're interested. The other day I drove over to Barnes & Noble in my 2005 Ford Freestyle van, with 113,000 miles on it. I was dressed in my Dockers pants, purchased from Macy's during their back-to-school sale last year for $24.99, marked down from $49.99, and the golf shirt my sister gave me after she got it for free at some boring business meeting she went to about five years ago  -- and I picked up the book from the new fiction table at a 25 percent discount.

     The author is Joseph Finder. I've read a couple of his books, and I like them. The new one is Suspicion, and it was recommended to me by my friend who lives in a ranch house down by the highway, who says he's retired but he's really just unemployed and he drives a ten-year-old Toyota with a big scratch on the passenger side door that he's never gotten fixed because ... "They wanted 700 bucks which is ridiculous, and besides I get in on the driver's side so I never see the scratch anyway."

     I thought about ducking over to the Barnes & Noble cafe for a $4.50 cup of cappuccino. But then I decided instead to stop off at Dunkin' Donuts on the way home. DD offers a senior special: you buy a medium size coffee and get a free donut. And, dammit, I like good ole middle-class Dunkin' Donuts more than the overpriced, overcaffeinated, too bitter brew you get at Barnes & Noble or Starbucks, or whatever the latest, even more trendy coffee emporium the hipster set is frequenting these days.

     And you never know. Just maybe I'll run into a celebrity scoring a Senior Citizen special at Dunkin' Donuts out on Route 202, located between Burger King and the Shell station that offers 5 cents off a gallon of gasoline on Tuesdays for anyone over age 55.

  

Should She Take Him Back?

     I have another ethical question, or ethical issue, along the lines of What If You Don't Like Your Son's Fiancee? or What If You Don't Like Your Daughter's Boyfriend?

     This involves Chris, the son of a friend of ours, who just turned 32, and another young woman we also know. Chris grew up in our town. We've known him since he was in middle school -- so perhaps we're biased in his favor a bit. He met Janice in college, and they soon started going out together. We got to know her then. We met her family a couple of times -- they live about an hour from us, in New Jersey.

     So Chris and Janice became a "couple" when Chris was a junior, and Janice a sophomore in college. They seemed to go everywhere together, do everything together. They were just one of those couples, when you saw one, you always saw the other. For three years. Until Janice graduated.

     I don't know exactly why they broke it off. But I do know that Janice had dreams of becoming an actress, or a model, or something like that. She moved to San Francisco, then to Los Angeles, and then she came back to New York a little over a year ago.

     Janice did get a few minor acting jobs, but for whatever reason, she decided to move back East and is now working for an ad agency in Manhattan. She does some kind of creative work -- I'm not sure what -- and she seems happy and perfectly at ease with her decision to give up her old dreams of the glamorous life. We thought, perhaps she was ready to settle down and, you know, get a real job, a real relationship, a real life.

     We know all this because after she returned to New York -- after seven or eight years -- she and Chris started going out together again. Chris works for a marketing firm in New York (he's in finance, not on the creative side of things). And pretty soon after they got back together, they started getting serious. They moved into an apartment together last fall, and over Christmas they announced they were getting engaged.

     Everybody was happy for them. I guess from our point of view, the two kids just seemed to go together.

     But as often happens in life, there was trouble in paradise. Earlier this spring they suddenly broke it off again. We don't know exactly why -- but apparently it was nothing serious, in the sense that it's not like Chris had an affair or got arrested; it's not like Janice met another guy or decided to move back to California. Apparently they just had a few heated arguments, and decided perhaps they were moving too fast, jumping into things, that perhaps they should hit the pause button and make sure this is what they really wanted to do. But it was Janice who made that decision, who said they should take the break.

     Janice kept the apartment they had in the city. Chris moved back in with his parents. And now here comes the ethical part.

     Chris met a local teacher. They had a fling. It was a brief affair and was soon over. But it definitely happened. And everyone knew about it.

     But Chris is really still in love with Janice. He wants to go back to her. We actually think Janice is still in love with him. But she wants nothing to do with him, because in her mind he cheated on her.

     Now I know this sounds a bit soap-opera-ish. But that's where the situation now stands. We had dinner with our friends, Chris's parents, last weekend, and so we got the full report. They think -- they admit -- that their son made a mistake. But they also think that Janice is being unfair. After all, she's the one who broke off their engagement -- even though, in some sense, the breakup was mutual. And even though they were just taking a break in their relationship, just slowing down to see if it was right for the both of them, not necessarily ending things permanently, they were in effect both single at the time, free to do what they wanted. How could Chris really be breaking their trust when they weren't actually together at the time?

     Anyway, when all this is happening to someone else, it kind of makes you roll your eyes. How could he be so stupid? How could she be such a drama queen?

     But when it's happening to you, it becomes much more serious. We haven't even talked directly to Chris about this -- much less Janice -- but we can see the concern expressed his parents. Anyway, B and I were talking about this the other night. I was definitely on Chris's side. I thought B would be on Janice's side -- but she surprised me. B isn't quite ready to give Chris a pass; but she does have sympathy for Chris and thinks that Janice is being a little too holier-than-thou.

     Well, some of you have daughters. Do you have more sympathy for Janice? (I have a daughter too -- if this kind of thing happened to her, I know I would be on her side, but that's because she's my daughter, not necessarily because I'd think she was right). Not that we're going to offer anyone's opinions to Chris or his parents -- we're not that stupid! -- but we are curious.

 

Let's Keep 'Em Honest

     Reading newspaper articles or watching TV news -- especially TV opinion shows on MSNBC or FOX, or listening to talk radio -- you can sometimes fry your brain trying to follow the twisted logic. The co-called "professional partisans" are experts at breaking the rules of logic in order to make their point of view seem more believable.

Really?

     I guess we know when one side calls the other a bunch of Dumbocrats; or the other refers to the crazy right-wing nutjobs, that they are breaking Rule # 1 on The List of 10 Commandments of Logic.

     What about when a commentator says that unions are the reason manufacturing jobs have left the United States? Or that people crossing the border from Mexico are invading our country? Or that people on food stamps are working the system instead of working a job? Or if we raise the minimum wage, it will kill small business?

     How about when a pundit posits that regular people have no influence on the government these days because the greedy 1 percenters have bought and paid for the U.S. Congress? Or if people have qualms about abortion they are part of the War on Women? Or, if only we paid teachers more money that would solve our education problems?

     I'm sure you've seen and heard plenty of examples of how pundits torture logic in order to try to bolster their opinions -- and how sometimes they take such big leaps of faith that they actually weaken their position rather than strengthen it. Anyway, I saw this guide shared on facebook by a friend of mine. So next time you're listening to a talking head pontificate about some issue, you can see for yourself if he or she is speaking logically, or just spouting off, playing havoc with the rules of logic.