Saturday mash-up: March 31, 2012
Whenever there’s a pile of items that accumulate over the week and we can’t get around to individual pieces on each one, we throw them into a bin like this, which we previously called a stew and then a hash. This time we’re call it a mash-up, which seems like another food metaphor but less...
French equestrian village for old horse people is simultaneously encouraging and disturbing
The Villages Group, which develops and operates retirement communities in locations around the world, has announced that it will build France’s first equestrian village. It will be “aimed at buyers in the over 50 age range who want to live in a community with sporting and outdoor activities.” While horseback riding is...
Mahjong can wait (till I finish my intervals)
A retirement community in South Carolina is forming a triathlon team. And by triathlon, they don’t mean some hokum bocce-croquet-cribbage contest (which could be fun, OK, but it’s not a triathlon). This event comprises a respectable 350-yard swim, 13-mile bike and 3.1-mile run/walk. Retirement communities used to...
You need a cool million to retire or you don’t
Here’s another myth-busting article on retirement planning. Or, more accurately, the headline claims it is a myth-busting article, busting the myth that you need a million bucks to retire. (Is this a myth? Maybe. We see other stories that refer to it. But we find it unlikely that the million-dollar...
Being a retired pro surfer sounds almost as fun…and as risky…as being a pro surfer
The notion of retirement is changing. The Great Recession has scrambled a great many nest-eggs, so many older folks who have left their full-time, long-time occupation—people who are nominally retired—are still working. They are picking up part-time gigs where they can, or starting new businesses, or going back to their...
Our vote for the Nat Geo adventurer of the year
The Age of Exploration—at least geographic exploration—is pretty much over. The white spaces have been filled in, by footprints or by Google Earth. But there is still plenty of adventure out there, and every year National Geographic lets us vote on who has done the best job of firing up...
The secret to a reasonable retirement: flee the country
As America ages—and it’s really aging—America’s newspapers and websites are churning out lists of great places to retire. Sadly, these survey stories are meaningless for a large proportion of older folks because (as reported a few weeks ago) a staggeringly high percentage of Americans have only a pittance set aside for retirement....
More magical thinking about retirement
The seventh annual Retirement Survey from Wells Fargo, released last week from the company’s headquarters on top of its huge mountain of government money, is thought-provoking. But not in a good way. It is thought-provoking because it reveals so much recklessness, fecklessness, and denial. And those qualities make us stop...
Americans recalibrate retirement expectations, plan to spend more time hanging around doing nothing special
In this month’s least surprising research results, a new retirement readiness survey released by Ameriprise Financial finds that Americans are feeling less sanguine about what retirement is going to look like. The New Retirement Mindscape 2011 City Pulse index (which incidentally is also this month’s most excitingly titled study) looks...
Worst state for retirees?
The San Francisco Chronicle has published its list of the five worst states to retire in, based on “taxes, crime, cost of living, weather and quality healthcare”—an eminently reasonable set of criteria. The list of losers includes a couple of surprises, including Nevada (heat,...
Breaking: Old age not a cakewalk, according to NPR, Harvard and Robert Wood Johnson Foundation
This just in: a new study commissioned by National Public Radio, the Robert Wood Johnson Foundation and the Harvard School of Public Health has discovered that for “one in four retirees,” life after retirement is worse than the 5 years before retirement. There’s a lot more to...
