BOOMER UPDATE

News and Resources for Boomers

Yoga Shows Potential to Ward Off Certain Diseases

Aug 26

Posted by Boomer in Health | No Comments


By Rachael Rettner, LiveScience Staff Writer

Practicing yoga may do more than calm the mind – it may help protect against certain diseases, a new study suggests.

In the study, women who had practiced yoga regularly for at least two years were found to have lower levels of inflammation in their bodies than did women who only recently took up the activity.

Inflammation is an immune response and can be beneficial when your body is fighting off infection, but chronically high levels of inflammation are known to play a role in certain conditions, including asthma, cardiovascular disease and depression.

Inflammation is known to be boosted by stressful situations. But when yoga experts were exposed to stress (such as dipping their feet in ice water), they experienced less of an increase in their inflammatory response than yoga novices did.

“The study is the first one, I think, to really suggest how yoga could have some distinctive physical benefits in terms of the immune system,” said researcher Janice Kiecolt-Glaser of Ohio State University. “It suggests that regular yoga practice is really good for you.” she told LiveScience.
livescience.com

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Call off the intergenerational wars

Aug 25

Posted by Boomer in Economy | No Comments

Blaming baby boomers for our economic woes diverts attention from the gross inequalities that have plagued us for decades

These days, intergenerational war seems to be all the rage. “It’s all the fault of the baby boomers” is the new conservative rallying cry. David Willetts, in his book The Pinch, argues that the baby boomers took the money and ran, leaving the younger generation with nothing. Other new books try a similar pitch, such as Ed Howker and Shiv Malik’s Jilted Generation and Francis Beckett’s What Did The Baby Boomers Ever Do For Us? Will Hutton seems to agree.

Not that the cry is new. In France, Nicolas Sarkozy won the presidency by blaming our troubled times on the lax moral standards and antipatriotic slogans of “les soixante huitards”. Before the German elections in 2008, the finance minister, Peer Steinbrück, railed against raising Keynesian-style public borrowing on the grounds that it would saddle future generations with a mountain of debt for which they would never forgive us, a cry parroted only last June by Nick Clegg.
guardian.co.uk

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Baby Boomer Bankruptcies on the Rise

Aug 24

Posted by Boomer in Economy | No Comments


A growing number of baby boomers are going bust.

A newly released study found that 42% of all individuals filing for bankruptcy were between the ages of 45 and 64 in 2007 and that older Americas are filing for protection from creditors at a much faster rate than younger adults.

“The baby boomers are disproportionately represented in bankruptcy proceedings,” wrote John Golmant and James Woods, who compiled the study that appears in the September issue of the American Bankruptcy Institute’s ABI Journal. Golmant is a statistician and Woods is a social science analyst, both with the Administrative Office of the U.S. Courts in Washington.

Bankruptcy filings are increasing fastest among individuals between the ages of 55 and 64, the study found. From 2002 to 2007, the percentage of filers in that category grew 65%.
wsj.com

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Canadians fear for health system

Aug 23

Posted by Boomer in Health | No Comments


CTV.ca News Staff

Most Canadians are concerned about the future of health care in this country, finds a new report card from the Canadian Medical Association.

The survey found 80 per cent of Canadians worry that the quality of health care will decline in the next two to three years. They also fear the strain of aging baby boomers will be too much for the system to handle.

Another three-quarters of people are worried they won’t be offered the same level of health coverage that they once did as baby boomers start to retire.

Dr. Anne Doig, the outgoing president of the CMA, calls the survey results “a refreshing acknowledgement of reality.”

“Canadians are aware that there are issues and concerns that they must address,” Doig told CTV’s Canada AM from Niagara Falls, Ont., where the CMA is holding its annual meeting.

She says Canadians are right to be concerned about the future of their health care, because if the status quo remains, the imminent “silver tsunami” of aging baby boomers could badly strain the health system.
ctv.ca

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401k Loans and Withdrawals Rise

Aug 23

Posted by Boomer in Economy | No Comments


There’s a troubling new sign of just how far Americans are going to simply make ends meet. A record number of people are making what are called “hardship” withdrawals from their 401ks. It’s risky because we’re talking about tapping into funds that pay for our retirement years.

New data from the nation’s largest retirement savings company shows nearly one in four workers has taken out a loan against their 401k plan… a ten year high. Beth McHugh, Fidelity Investments VP, says, “Individuals are finding in these tough economic times that they need to access their savings and for many individuals their primary savings vehicle is their retirement savings plan.”
ktul.com

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Tai Chi Reported to Ease Fibromyalgia

Aug 21

Posted by Boomer in Exercise, Health | No Comments


By PAM BELLUCK

The ancient Chinese practice of tai chi may be effective as a therapy for fibromyalgia, according to a study published on Thursday in The New England Journal of Medicine.

A clinical trial at Tufts Medical Center found that after 12 weeks of tai chi, patients with fibromyalgia, a chronic pain condition, did significantly better in measurements of pain, fatigue, physical functioning, sleeplessness and depression than a comparable group given stretching exercises and wellness education. Tai chi patients were also more likely to sustain improvement three months later.

“It’s an impressive finding,” said Dr. Daniel Solomon, chief of clinical research in rheumatology at Brigham and Women’s Hospital in Boston, who was not involved in the research. “This was a well-done study. It was kind of amazing that the effects seem to carry over.”
nytimes.com

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Boomer retirement will Be spread out

Aug 20

Posted by Boomer in Retirement | No Comments

They won’t all stop working on their 65th birthday

BY JONATHAN CHEVREAU, FINANCIAL POST

Based on current investment returns, three in five baby boomers won’t have enough money to retire, U.S. media reported this week. But headlines warning this is a “threat” to a still-fragile economy are, in my view, misplaced.

The “three in five” headlines were based on an estimate that 59% of boomers aged 56 to 62 may not have enough money to cover basic living and health-care costs. That assumed current average bond yields around 2.4% and stock returns of 6%. Even if bond yields reach 6.3% and stocks 8.9%, 47% would remain at risk.

This coverage resembles that old chestnut about boomers crashing the stock market when they all retire en masse. I’ve never bought into that. First, since they were born between 1946 and 1964, viewed purely demographically their retirements would be staggered over 18 years, assuming they all stopped working on their 65th birthdays.
vancouversun.com

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Many businesses for sale as baby boomers begin to retire

Aug 20

Posted by Boomer in Economy | No Comments

MONCTON – When it comes to buying and selling small- and medium-sized companies, David Barnett is the guy brokering deals.

And the business intermediary says his marketplace is on the verge of a boom.

“The next decade is going to be huge for this industry,” Barnett says in an interview.

Baby boomers who own laundromats, pubs, daycares and the like have begun looking to retire and sell.

Barnett works to connect sellers of companies with buyers hunting for an easy investment through a Moncton franchise that was set up in 2007. It’s part of Sunbelt Network, a business brokerage firm with about 250 offices worldwide and the Hub City operation being the only in New Brunswick.

To date, Barnett and his colleagues have helped 15 local business owners ink deals with buyers.

Right now, he has a roster of more than 300 people interested in taking over a company and his list of business owners trying to get out is at 22.

Pretty soon, Barnett expects sellers to outnumber buyers.
canadaeast.com

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Retirement at 62 boosts well-being

Aug 17

Posted by Boomer in Health, Retirement | No Comments

Physical and emotional benefits to retiring on the early side

By Bruce Bower

ATLANTA — People who retire at or near age 62 receive a welcome but somewhat surprising benefit — a greater relative increase in physical and emotional well-being than those who retire at earlier or later ages, Esteban Calvo of Boston College reported August 15 at the annual meeting of the American Sociological Association.

Intriguingly, that’s the age at which U.S. citizens become eligible to receive partial Social Security benefits, Calvo noted. Retirements that occur at culturally and institutionally expected ages yield large dividends in well-being, he suggested.

“This isn’t good news for the Social Security Administration,” Calvo said. Officials there would prefer aging baby boomers to pay into Social Security until at least age 67, when full benefits kick in, he noted.
sciencenews.org

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