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By Rita R. Robison, Consumer Specialist
Guest Blogger

If you’ll be traveling to Miami this fall, be sure to take time to visit the Miami Art Museum.

Exhibits with dazzling lights, including a huge, brilliant orange sun of florescent lights, fascinating modern art, and optical illusions are a delightfully entertaining and thought provoking.

One of the most moving installations is about Alzheimer’s disease. Elizabeth Cerejido, former Frost Art Museum curator, documents her mother’s descent into Alzheimer’s in Absence Series with 13 color photographs and a video assembled in a small white room. Some of the photos are simply white lettering on a black background listing items her mother frequently misplaces: a pillbox, umbrella, and address book. Others show notes on the stove, air conditioner, and other places telling her mother not to touch them.

Most riveting is the video of Cerejidoi’s mother rocking, rocking, and rocking in a rocking chair, a habit she developed as her health declined.

The installation called to mind all of the blogs I’ve read lately on Baby Boomer concerns about Alzheimer’s disease.

Other exhibits at the Miami Art Museum are:

Shadows, Disappearances, and Illusions. Using light, perspective, and erasure, the artworks in this exhibit short-circuit the connection between the eye and the brain. They make people question what they’re seeing and make them aware of their role as viewers. Artists include Joseph Cornell, Magdalena Fernandez, Felix Gonzalez-Torres, Mark Handforth, Oscar Muñoz, Maria Martinez-Cañas, Regina Silveira, and Lorna Simpson. Specially commissioned installations from Miami artists Tom Scicluna, Matt Schreiber, and Wendy Wischer are part of the exihibit. Until September 21, 2008.

Sean Duffy. Los Angeles-based artist Sean Duffy has created an installation inspired by California pop culture of the 1960s – complete with a zebra-striped Toyota Land Cruiser sporting logos reminiscent of the era’s “custom car” culture and a soundtrack coming from fire-engine red gas cans. Until October 12, 2008.

Selections from the Permanent Collection. The installation combines old favorites from the collection, such as Frank Stella’s Chodorów II and Morris Louis’ Beth Shin with more recent acquisitions, such as Kehinde Wiley’s Regard the Class Struggle as a Main Link in the Chain and Emilio Perez’ In the Middle of Something. Until November 2, 2008.

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.

Do not undermine your worth by comparing yourself with others.
It is because we are different that each of us is special.

Do not set your goals by what other people deem important.
Only you know what is best for you.
Do not take for granted the things closest to your heart.

Cling to them as you would your life, for without them, life is meaningless.
Do not let your life slip through your fingers by living in the past nor for the future.
By living your life one day at a time, you live all of the days of your life.
Do not give up when you still have something to give.
Nothing is really over until the moment you stop trying.
It is a fragile thread that binds us to each other.

Do not be afraid to encounter risks.
It is by taking chances that we learn how to be brave.
Do not shut love out of your life by saying it is impossible to find.
The quickest way to receive love is to give love.
The fastest way to lose love is to hold it too tightly.
In addition, the best way to keep love is to give it wings

Do not dismiss your dreams.
To be without dreams is to be without hope.
To be without hope is to be without purpose.
Do not run through life so fast that you forget not only where you have been,
but also where you are going.

Life is not a race, but a journey to be savored each step of the way.

Thanks to StoryBin for this wonderful thought. You know, only you can decide how you should live and grow. So slowdown, take  a deep breath and enjoy every moment of your life. Live your life by your own standards.

By Rita R. Robison, Consumer Specialist
Guest Blogger

In their recent post on Boomer Consumer: The Blog, Matt Thornhill and John Martin excitedly reported on reasearch being conducted on a synthetic chemical that improves the physical stamina of laboratory mice on a treadmill by 44 percent over mice not taking the medication. The discovery is leading to speculation that  an “exercise pill” might be created for humans so that they won’t need to exercise to be physically fit.

Thornhill and Martin gushed:

The revelation is particularly pertinent to boomers who have reached an age in which their physical fitness is experiencing a steady, seemingly inexorable slide. Although many boomers have incorporated exercise into their lifestyles more passionately than previous generations have, that commitment requires a tremendous effort. Who wouldn’t like to spend less time on the treadmill and more time playing Sudoku or snoozing in the hammock?

They go on to describe the success of Viagra, and report that scientists are researching chemical compounds that can halt the effects of aging on memory and mental processing speeds.

“Although it’s a long journey from a chemical that works on mice in a lab to a drug safe for humans, it may be only a matter of time before ‘exercise pills’ become a reality,” Thornhill and Martin said in their post.

Then they end their post with this pie-in-the-sky comment about prescription drugs: “How long before there’s a pill to effortlessly perfect every human frailty?”

Thornhill and Martin head up the Boomer Project, which educates marketers on how to communicate with boomers. They are authors of “Boomer Consumer: Ten New Rules for Marketing to America’s Largest, Wealthiest, and Most Influential Group.”

Prescription drugs have side effects

About two million serious adverse reactions to prescription drugs occur a year including 100,000 deaths, according to Public Citizen, a consumer watchdog group. These tragedies are one of the five leading causes of death in the United States.

Public Citizen recommends that consumers not take a prescription drug unless it has been on the market for seven years; an exception is breakthrough drugs. The consumer group makes this recommendation because many new drugs are “cousins” of drugs already on the market, and often their side effects aren’t well known.

In their enthusiastic envisioning of anti-aging drugs, Thornhill and Martin left out information about recent failures of the pharmaceutical industry. Some include:

• Vioxx, used to treat the symptoms of osteoarthritis, rheumatoid arthritis, acute pain, and painful menstrual cycles was pulled from the market in 2004. An estimated 84 million people worldwide used Vioxx, and it was one of the most frequently prescribed drugs in the United States, according to the Web site Lawyerseek.com. Vioxx was the largest drug recall in history at the time.

• America has the highest rate of mental illness in the world, according to Stephen Bezruchka, M.D., author of “Is America Driving You Crazy?” The number of Americans suffering from mental illness has nearly doubled since 1987, when Prozac was introduced. Bezruchka believes our drug-based system of care is fueling this epidemic; the drugs used to treat depression and mental illness cause problems when used long term.

• Other prescription drugs recalled or withdrawm from the market include: Rezulin, used to treat type 2 diabetes; Fen-Phen, a diet drug; and PPA, an ingredient used in some appetite suppressants and cough medicine.

What can boomer consumers do

Boomer consumers need to be informed about the prescription drugs they take. Ask your health care providers and pharmacist about side effects and drug interactions. Do research on the Internet about any prescription drugs you are taking or plan to take.

In addition to Public Citizen mentioned above, The People’s Pharmacy is a good source of information on prescription drugs.

Read books about the pharmaceutical industry. A recent book by Melody Petersen offers new, chilling information about the increased dependence of Americans on prescription drugs. It’s called “Our Daily Meds: How the Pharmaceutical Companies Transformed Themselves Into Slick Marketing Machines and Hooked the Nation on Prescription Drugs.”

A recent series of articles I wrote for my blog The Survive and Thrive Boomer Guide, called What Boomers Need to Know About Prescription Drugs, also provides useful information. The articles are:

What Boomers Need to Know About Prescription Drugs: The Problem

What Boomers Need to Know About Prescription Drugs: What You Take and What You Spend

What Boomers Need to Know About Prescription Drugs: How to Buy Prescription Drugs

What Boomers Need to Know About Prescription Drugs: How to Avoid Ineffective and Dangerous Drugs

What Boomers Need to Know About Prescription Drugs: Direct-to-Consumer Advertising

What Boomers Need to Know About Prescription Drugs: Prescription Drug Reform

What Boomers Need to Know About Prescription Drugs: How to File Reports About Adverse Drug Reactions

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

Recently, Jacky Hood, Author of a book on expanded careers for Baby Boomers posted this recommendation for Boomer411 in her blog. She highly recommends people to try Boomer411 saying that it has a wealth of useful and fascinating information for Baby Boomers. Thank you Jacky.

We had recently posted an interview with Jacky and her work in this blog. You can find it here. You can also read more about her book from her publisher by clicking here. For anyone thinking about career options in the second half of their lives, this book contains a wealth of information.