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In a culture that glorifies the solo worker, the do-it-alone attitude, it is very easy to forget the importance of teamwork. More importantly, this habit when taken to its extreme would cause isolationism and an aversion to working with others. Yet, it cannot be overemphasized that most of our problems today could have been avoided if we could only practise acceptance, tolerance, patience or in other words accepting and working with others. Our famous president LBJ beautifully summarizes this solution in his quote…

“There are no problems we cannot solve together, and very few that we can solve by ourselves”
- Lyndon Johnson

We would do much better if we take the time to notice that over the entire course of our history, most any achievement of significance was achieved only as a result of leadership and excellent teamwork, not by working alone in isolation. The teamwork might have been direct or indirect, but the fact is that we cannot survive or succeed by ourselves. Despite this fact, we pretend as if we can manage it all on our own; even worse our culture teaches us also to glorify those that pretend this way.

Today is the day to start the change, to begin a new era of acceptance, tolerance and love. Try it in your daily life today, give a big smile to someone you are having a hard time working with, pass a sincere compliment to someone and see its magic in action.

Continuing our series on interviews in which we promised to feature the work of experts, practitioners, authors in the field, today we bring you an interview with the author of a very interesting and relevant book, its title is “Happy About Being a Baby Boomer: Facing Our Newfound Longevity”.  And the author of this book is our friendly Catherine Kitcho. Her book is not just informational, but very practical as well. She has taken special care in this book to provide practical advice, tips and techniques to make your lives easier. So without further delay, let’s get on with this exciting interview…

Boomer411: Catherine, can you please tell our readers about yourself? What motivated you to write this book on Baby Boomers’ newfound longevity?
Catherine: I’m the author of “Happy About Being a Baby Boomer: Facing Our Newfound Longevity“, which is my sixth book; my other books are mostly in the field of business and marketing. I am a high-tech marketing consultant known as The Launch Doctor, and you can learn more about me at my website, www.launchdoctor.com. 

As an early phase Baby Boomer myself, I’ve always been interested in the Baby Boomer phenomenon, and it all started with a book I read many years ago, “Great Expectations”, by Landon Jones. It addressed the impact that this huge generation would have on nearly every aspect of life in the U.S.: social, cultural, and economic.

More recently, I began thinking seriously about my upcoming retirement years, and I came to the realization that it was increasingly likely that I’d be living many more decades longer than I had planned (and so would the other 78 million Baby Boomers). This was quite unsettling to me, and it meant I had to rethink my whole plan, especially from the standpoint of paying for those extra years of life; will there be enough money? Can I maintain my lifestyle? What changes or adjustments will I need to make? As I explored these questions, I decided that the process of answering these questions and making decisions might be valuable to my fellow Boomers, so I decided to capture it all in a book.

Something that the readers also need to know about me is that I’m not a financial planner and I don’t work for an investment firm; I’m just a Baby Boomer concerned about her future. Therefore, the book is written from the standpoint of an average person trying to make some sound decisions by doing some research and sharing it with others.

Boomer411:  Being a Boomer yourself, what have you discovered for yourself in this journey of writing the book and understanding the implications of this newfound longevity?
Catherine: As I did the research, I learned a lot, but two things stand out in my mind. First, the U.S. Government has compiled an incredible amount of current, useful information and made it available on the web, especially on the topics of Medicare and Social Security. I found those resources exceedingly helpful. I learned some fascinating things, such as the fact that only the basic hospitalization part of Medicare is free and you have to pay for everything else by buying supplemental coverage. I also learned that Social Security benefits are taxable; what a rude surprise!

Second, one of the biggest impacts from increased longevity is in the area of health. The good news is that we will be living longer, and the bad news is that we will be living longer…and our bodies won’t always be able to keep up with our minds and vice versa. Because of advances in medicine during our lifetimes, our longevity has increased. However, we will likely live longer with more pain, limited mobility, or chronic long-term diseases, or worse, our bodies last longer but we experience dementia and other age-related brain disorders. We will live longer with lower quality of life. That has a huge financial impact in two areas: insurance and medical costs.

Boomer411: What are some of the benefits Boomers will enjoy compared to their parents during retirement?
Catherine: I think the main benefit we will have compared to our parents is more time on the planet due to increased longevity. But, depending on your perspective, I’m not sure increased longevity is a benefit! I certainly don’t see it that way; I was rather annoyed to learn I’d have to figure out how to pay for a lot more years of basic living, and I’d live longer with a lower quality of health and life. But to be fair, many people feel just the opposite and want to live forever, so they see the extra decades as a bonus: when they can travel, or pursue leisure activities, or continue to work if they please.

Boomer411:  What are some of the major issues, breakdowns Boomers should start thinking about now before it is too late? Why is it important that they address these issues now?

Catherine:
1. Know your realistic life expectancy, and use that as a first step in planning or rethinking your existing retirement plan. Your existing plan may not take this into account.
2. Calculate your Longevity Cost. Figure out your basic cost of living and calculate how much you will need. You need to do this now while you are earning income so you can figure out how much it will take to pay for those extra decades and how long you may need to continue working. You don’t want to outlive your projected retirement savings.
3. Make adjustments now. Think through the tradeoffs in multiple areas of your expenses (Housing, Insurance, Medical, Taxes, etc.) and discuss them with your family. Then put a plan into place, with a spreadsheet of expenses and a timeline as to when the changes will be made (such as moving, downsizing, applying for Medicare, etc.) You will then have a roadmap for your future: your Longevity Plan.

Boomer411:  How well prepared (based on your research) are the majority of Baby Boomers in affording those extra 3 decades of living? Please elaborate on the ‘Longevity Cost’.
Catherine: Boomers aren’t well prepared at all. It’s estimated by the FDIC that only 19% of Baby Boomers have done any retirement planning, so that tells me that we as a group have to do a better job of first coming to grips with the reality of our longevity and then taking the time to develop a detailed plan as soon as possible. Instead of dreaming about where we will travel or how we’ll spend leisure time, we first have to think about our basic living costs!

Longevity Cost is my term for the costs for living those extra decades. It’s calculated by adding up your actual current basic living costs per year and multiplying it by your remaining life expectancy. (In  Chapter 4, “Do the Math”, I also outline a method of using Intuit’s Quicken ® to calculate this.) It’s a real eye-opener to calculate this number (and can be scary). It’s a necessary step in planning, however, because this will give you a true picture of what your costs are likely to be during retirement; you still have to live somewhere, you still have to eat, you still have to pay for insurance and medical bills. Once you know the costs, then you can figure out where to find the money to cover these costs, which is also a chapter in the book (”Finding the Money”). This is a much more accurate approach than using a ‘retirement calculator’ that instructs you to multiply your current income by a certain percentage to calculate your future retirement costs. To me, that is backwards, because you don’t know what your income is going to be in a few years (or maybe not even next year), but you DO know what your basic living costs are now.

Boomer411: What is your advice to Boomers nearing retirement age? How should they go about making the most of their newfound longevity?
Catherine: My advice is to take the time to work through a plan NOW; you owe it to yourself and to your family to do this. You want to make sure that you don’t outlive your retirement savings, and perhaps you will have some money left for travel, recreation, or leaving a legacy. Developing a Longevity Plan is not only the responsible thing to do, but it will also help you get the most out of your retirement years.

Boomer411:  Why should Boomers read your book? OR Who should read this book?
Catherine: This book is aimed at Baby Boomers: those born in the U.S. between 1946 and 1964. I did the research for you and put it all in one compact little volume. This book contains lots of useful information and statistics, but more importantly, it is a checklist and workbook for creating your own plan. It’s easy to read and you don’t have to be a financial expert to follow this (I’m certainly not one!) It also contains inspiring examples from other Boomers who are dealing with these issues now.

Read more about the book from the publisher/order here

Read reviews of the book here/order from Amazon.com

This concludes our interview with Catherine Kitcho. Please do stay tuned as we bring you more such interviews.

When I introduce Boomer411 to other people, I am usually asked to explain how a discovery engine is different from a typical search engine. Most importantly, people want to know how it can benefit them. So I decided to post about it with the hope that it may benefit others.

At a fundamental level, a search engine helps you find information on the internet and a discovery engine also helps you find/discover information on the internet. So in that sense they are similar. But the similarity stops right there. Before we go into the differences, let’s first take a few minutes to understand what discovery engines are. To make this description more meaningful, we will use the implementation adopted by the RawSugar family of channels as the example in our descriptions here. (Note: Boomer411 is a channel of RawSugar)

Let’s say you wanted to learn more about insurance/ medicare options, may be for yourself or may be for someone you know.  

First, let’s visit any generic search engine of your choice and search for the keyword ‘insurance’. You will get a lot of results very quickly. Let’s say you got around 9 million search results. Now the onus is on you to find the results that match your needs. Even if you search for the word ‘medicare’ you will still get about a million results. In the interest of time, we usually look at the results in the first page or two and then give up. But a result on page 30 or something might very well be matching what I am looking for, but I would never get there. 

Now let’s visit http://www.boomer411.com/ using the browser. Notice that below the search box, you have a bunch of entries in the mid-section of the screen titled latest entries. These are the various links. Also notice that on the left side of the screen, there are a set of keywords organized under some headings. These are the broad categories/topics or tags that help you narrow your search further.

Now let’s see how this works…
1.       In the search box, type ‘Insurance’ and click on the search button.
2.       Now you see the results of your search in the mid-section of the screen (i.e., various links related to insurance). Also, notice that tags or keywords on the left changed dynamically and now list options for you to narrow your search within the current set of results.
3.       Scanning down the tags on the left, you find ’organizations’ as a sub-heading.  Under the sub-heading organizations, you see more keywords such as ‘aarp’, ’ship’, etc.
4.       Not knowing what ’ship’ is, you become curious and click on the word ’ship’ on the left.
5.       Now you see the screen refresh and show the results for ship under medicare. Your search results for the word ‘insurance’ are now further narrowed down to include the word ’ship’. The first link/result listed is ‘SHIPtalk’. Upon clicking you learn that SHIP stands for State Health Insurance  Program, that is actually a government funded program that people can use to get advice and counseling regarding their medicare, Medicaid and long-term care insurance needs. May be it would be useful to someone you know.  Thus you discovered a new option or resource for  insurance advice.

The Benefits:
Instead of the insurance related articles running through 100s of pages of search results, through successive narrowing down, you make those articles or links to bubble up to the top of your search results.  Thus bringing the results you are looking for on to the first page, rather than you scanning through 50 or 100 pages.

What does it do?

It could save you the time and frustration involved in clicking through many uninteresting links before you find the ones that interest you.

What is the discovery part here?

You may not have known that there is a free counseling service that is reliable. Of course this is just an example and so is simplified. But hope you get the point. You may not have known and discover information related to ‘Stand-alone Rx plans’ or ‘medicare advantage plans’. Thus in the process of finding answer to your questions, you end up discovering a new option or possibility that better meets your present needs, but you weren’t aware of it. All of this with less effort than scanning through 50-100 pages of results.

So going back to the original question regarding the difference between a traditional search engine and a discovery engine, while the purpose of visit to either one is the same, the process, the experience and the quality of the outcome would be drastically better with a discovery engine. Having gone through this example, I will let you answer the specifics of these differences and how they are better for yourself. May be we can cover them in another post…

Also, coming soon in a future posting, why Boomer411 links are more reliable or better?

We asked you to solve a riddle yesterday about how a mother could brown 3 toasts within 1 and a half minutes.

Well if you have been waiting for the answer, read below…

“She puts two slices in the pan; after 30 seconds she has toasted one side of each. She turns over the first slice, takes the second from the pan, and in its place puts the third slice. After the second half minute the first slice is done and the other two are half done. In the last 30 seconds she finishes the second and third slices. ”

Keeping our mind engaged, alert and active goes a long way towards enjoying our later years and extending active living. To this end, we will occassionally post riddles to exercise our minds. Post your answer to the riddle in the comments.

Today’s riddle is…
“A Mother makes tasty toast in a small pan. After toasting one side of a slice, she turns it over. Each side takes 30 seconds. The pan can only hold two slices. How can she toast both sides of three slices in 1 & 1/2 instead of 2 minutes?”

(Post your answer in the comments section OR stay tuned for the answer in a future post)