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By Rita R. Robison, Consumer Specialist, Blogging at The Survive and Thrive Boomer Guide
Guest Blogger
One way baby boomers can make progress in getting what they want in life is to hire a life coach.
Life coaches, who often work with clients over the phone, help people set goals and move toward achieving them. They can help boomers who are dealing with:

• Helping aging parents.

• Increasing stress at home and on the job.

• Raising children.

• Figuring out what they want to do in retirement.

I worked with a life coach several years ago and had positive results. I wanted to do more consumer writing. Now here I am today with two boomer consumer blogs and the opportunity to blog once a week for Boomer411.
If you decide to work with a life coach, be sure you undertake a thorough selection process. Life coaches aren’t regulated in most states so anyone can say they’re a life coach.
Here’s a check list for choosing a life coach:

• Interview at least three life coaches.

• Find out how much a session costs, how long the sessions will be, and how many times a month they’re offered.

• Ask if you’ll be required to make a commitment for a certain number of appointments.

• Ask about the life coach’s credentials, for example whether he or she is certified by the International Coach Federation. (You can go to the federation’s Web site and search for the names of life coaches in your area.)

• Ask about the coach’s educational background, professional background, and years of experience.

• Find out if the coach will offer a complimentary session so you can ask questions and see if you would like working with the coach.

• Choose a life coach you feel comfortable with.

Life coaches charge from $25 to $300 per session, with the average being around $125.

For more information on life coaching, see the article “Life Coaches Are Helping Baby Boomers Create Better Lives” on my Seattle Post-Intelligencer reader blog the Boomer Consumer.

This proverbial “roller coaster” ride in the financial markets this last week could even make an ardent roller coaster lover sick to their stomach. These are unusual times with history-breaking/history-making events. Hopefully the government’s intervention plan gets the seal of approval from the legislature bodies and bring stability and order to the chaos that reigned in the markets last week.  And hopefully this stability will be for both the short-term as well as the long-term.

In case you missed the events of last week, the following articles give a heart-breaking rendering of the events that transpired and about the people that are at the forefront of reshaping the financial landscape of the country. Read this article titled, Shock Forced Paulson’s Hand (from The Wall Street Journal) as it narrates the major events last week and how Lehman’s bankruptcy disrupted the markets and caused some Money Market Mutual Funds to break the buck. If you are still interested to learn more, read this article titled, The Players Remaking Financial World. This article provides an inside scoop of what happened behind the scenes and the events leading up to the collapse of some of the storied firms in the financial world. Here is a listing of 12 failed U S banks and thrifts this year.

On the positive side, the government now has a grand proposal to rescue the economy at a whopping cost of $700 billion. Also, the last two remaining investment banks have been allowed to change their status as bank holding companies. This will enable them to create or acquire commercial banks and give them the safety of deposits and thus avoid the liquidity crisis that brought the other investment banks down.

Considering all this, things may finally be starting to calm down. But all this turmoil would naturally raise the question in consumers about the safety and availability of their prized savings and retirement funds. Also, it is natural to ask what does all this mean to me and my family?

It is probably a good idea to review the following articles and take steps to ensure the safety of your investments.

This article, Is Your Money Really Safe? Know What You Own talks about the money market fund debacle. It also provides links to the FDIC Deposit Insurance Estimator Calculator, FAQs on Deposit Insurance, a listing of recently failed banks among other things.

And here is an article outlining what FDIC insurance protects and what it does not, FDIC Insurance Protects, Except When… 

10 Ways to Protect Your Finances From The Crisis details a checklist of 10 steps you can take to safeguard the value of your savings. 

This article, Is My Money Really Safe? shares some down-to-earth, frank answers to your tough questions about banks, brokerages and mortgage companies and what you can do.

By Rita R. Robison, Consumer Specialist
Guest Blogger

Many baby boomers aren’t interested in pursuing a traditional retirement of leisure. The majority of boomers say they plan to keep working and earning in retirement. However, they’ll do so by cycling between periods of work and leisure.

But as you approach the retirement age you’ve selected, how can you determine just what it is that will keep you engaged and fulfilled in retirement?

“Smart Women Don’t Retire – They Break Free,” a book by Gail Rentsch, offers suggestions for women who know they want something different when they leave their jobs, but can’t figure out what it is or how to get it.

“This kind of transition is new to us as well as to the experts,” Rentsch says in her book, which is quoted on the blog Boomer Café.

Some of the suggestions Rentsch offers women are to observe what other women are doing, seek advice from emerging experts, and give weight to their own thoughtful insights.

“Smart Women Don’t Retire – They Break Free” is the first book from The Transition Network. The network focuses on the needs of women as they explore new possibilities and redesign the old model of retirement.

For more information for boomer consumers, see my blog The Survive and Thrive Boomer Guide.

The past year has been brutal on majority of investment accounts. The sub-prime mortgage meltdown, the credit crunch have all strained liquidity out of the market and put enormous stress on businesses. The resulting macro-economic issues have worsened the pain on the average consumer. Amidst all this mess, most retirement accounts have taken a beating in stride with the market or even worse in some cases. It’s only natural to ask “How do I stop the bleeding?”. A recent article attempts to address and answer this very question.

One great call out in that article is about asset allocation or diversification strategy. We have heard it enough times already, but yet we don’t take the time and effort to implement diversification in our own accounts.

I am not an expert in the field of investing (either by professional education or licensing) but I have keen interest in investing for my own personal investing and I read a lot on the subject and talk to other experts in the field. So I couldn’t help but want to share this with our readers. You can take it for what it’s worth.

In my opinion, following is a strategy that would take us a long way

• Decide a Diversification strategy that is suitable for your risk tolerance: One needs to have exposure to stocks (domestic and international), bonds, commodity and real estate to name just a few and the percentage of your portfolio you are willing to invest in each category (To learn more about Asset Allocation from the SEC click here; or to use an interactive asset allocation calculator click here)
• Choose your picks for investing into each of the above categories. It can be individual stocks and bonds OR Mutual Funds OR Index Funds OR Exchange Traded Funds (ETFs) and so on. Each has its pros and cons. Based on my research, I prefer or recommend Index funds and Exchange Traded Funds because of their low overhead costs. There is a wide variety of these funds available. Click on the links above to find out your options and use the tools there to choose your index funds and ETFs
• Invest in the selected funds in the selected percentage amounts and
• Finally, discipline yourself to rebalance your portfolio at a pre-determined frequency you are comfortable with (For more insight on this topic, read this article on Motley Fool)

My rationale for the above approach is:

• Picking right stocks at the right time is called market timing and even the pros find it difficult to do it well consistently
• If someone’s portfolio went down a lot and they are asking how to stop the bleeding, then thinking they’ll be able (either in terms of knowledge, time or knack) to pick the winners this time around is a very big and risky assumption in my opinion 
• Funds with high overhead costs eat away a portion of your returns and reduce the amount available at retirement and can be substantial over an extended period of time
• Over long periods of time that one’s career lasts, market indices and funds based on those indices (or index funds) have returned more value to a patient investor and
• this approach limits the amount of time and energy one needs to spend doing their investing rather than enjoying other activities

This is my 2 cents on the topic. Please post your comments, thoughts and ideas on this subject.

A recent article talks about when should a Boomer retire? It provides views from experts in the field. The background to this discussion is that many Baby Boomers do not have enough saved to substitute for their main source of income. This means they either keep working longer OR reduce their standard of living. If you have enough saved to support you for the next 3-4 decades in retirement, then you can retire when you want to. For those that do not have enough saved, Alicia Munnell, Director of the Center for Retirement Research at the Boston College recommends people to work until they are 66 years. Others think this is very conservative. For example, Marc Freedman, founder and CEO of think tank, Civic Ventures suggests that people work until they are 70 years of age to make sure they can finance their lifestyles for the rest of their lives.

When the talk about retirement age comes up, invariably I think about the definition of retirement. You know, in the traditional sense, retirement is where you give up working, just stick around the house, may be volunteer a bit or travel and just spend the remaining years in solitude. There is debate whether this was ever the case, but never the less, this is the common perception of debate.

 Considering the health and active lifestyles people in their 60’s and even 70’s in many cases lead, there is a new saying these days that 60 is the new 40. For example read this article about an Australian Rider, Laurie Lever, who at age 60 is taking part in the Beijing Olympics. Although Laurie Lever began riding when he was 10 and has been a showjumper by profession, he says it took him this long to find a real ‘winner’ horse. Though he hasn’t won yet, Laurie you are a real champion. 

Coming back to our discussion, a retirement now means more like I might still work, but it will be on my terms, when I want to and how I want to. As opposed to working for someone or working long hours day in and day out. I can afford to take this approach only when I have the financial wherewithal to support myself and my family to live, enjoy and give. The more disciplined we are in our financial matters, the sooner this time will be.

So take that next step to your own financial freedom and build on and grow your discipline.