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In their midlife stage, if someone had a life altering event and are forced to start-over, it can be heart-wrenching, not to mention the emotional baggage it comes with. In this MSN Money column, titled ‘Uncommon Sense’, Dunleavey and her friends narrate the travails of a woman in her midlife going through her divorce and left with the responsibility of being a single parent with no job. Dunleavey elaborates on this 5 step process that is helping this woman keep her focus on important aspects and straighten out the mess she is in. Some of the steps are easy to understand and makes sense, but very rarely do people follow them. Some of it is facing the problem head on and addressing it courageously. Though this story is about a woman trying to recover from her divorce and short on income, this process can be equally helpful to other people that want to get their finances in order. All the best.

Forbes.com recently published their annual Best Places for Retirees list. This time the list contains some surprise additions. For example, Fort Worth, Texas came in second place behind Tampa, Florida. Washington D.C. beat Miami, Portland, Oregon drew more retirees than Orlando, Florida and Houston, Texas came in the fifth place, etc.

Want to know why?

As the mindset of the retirees is changing to the new reality of working in retirement, active retirement, Forbes editors aptly thought it fit to modify their criteria to include factors concerning retiree-friendly job markets to their list in addition to a few other new criteria. Plus they also looked at migration patters of people in the age group of 55 - 65 years. This gave an indication of where people are moving to. The result, is the all new list of Best Cities for Retirees.

Sure, the forecast by many was dire. That in 2008 the U S economy and the markets would face a big slowdown and possibly a recession and businesses would have to write-off a rather large sum. To ward off this potential mess especially in an election year the nation’s leaders have joined together and have taken joint measures such as drastic reductions in the interest rates, tax refunds and other similar measures.

The question I want to ask is are we fixing the root cause of the problems by these measures OR are we merely treating the symptoms? We only have to look at the anology of giving heavy pain killers to a patient with cancerous tumors and hoping that the pain will go away for good. All we accomplished is delayed the negative effects from surfacing for sure, but we would also have ensured an even worse or possibly deadly results from such a course of action.

Now I do not know all the facts regarding our economy to strongly suggest this is the case. But sure would like to avoid such a situation from developing in our economy, especially when this economy has to help many a Boomers retire in the next 15-20 years. And the last thing I’d want to see is a repeat of the Japan’s mistakes in the 90’s. However, this article compares and analyzes the two situations to some shocking similarities. I only hope that our national leaders move cautiously in choosing their course of actions. Every american citizen must demand our candidates as well as our current government to only do what is viable in the long-run.

You probably heard people use the term ‘Reverse Mortgage’ more than a few times recently. Do you understand what it is OR did you ever wonder what it means and how it would work? If you always wanted to learn more about reverse mortgages, but were afraid to ask or didn’t know whom to ask; well, fear no more.

This handy link will take you to some very informative articles that will help you learn everything you need to know about reverse mortgages. Also, don’t miss to review this article in the results, to get a basic understanding of the term.