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Retirement Communities & Senior Housing |
Retirement Living News April 2004 HEADLINES
(Click
on headline to read story) Archive
of Past Issues
New Retirement Communities Differing Retirement Timetables May Cause Marital Discord When a husband retires and his wife continues to work, many couples find it to be a source of marital tension. Husbands may feel threatened because life is not as exciting as it used to be when he was working, but the wife, frequently younger, is enjoying her work life and may not want to retire in the near future. This situation was addressed in a recent article in The New York Times (March 23, 2004). Such tensions have altered the marital dynamic of retirement as millions of women continue working after their husband retires. The challenge represents "a stage of the marital relationship that's occurring for the first time in history, according Phyllis Moen, a sociologist at the University of Minnesota. She says that husbands are not satisfied when their wives are working. However, when wives retire first, they tend to be very unhappy because they feel they are being pushed back into all the domestic work. While most couples say they would like to retire at the same time, the 2000 census found more than two million couples in which the man, 55 or over, had not worked the previous year but the wife had. Since 1935, when passage of the Social Security Act created retirement as it is now known, the issue of when to retire has largely been a male one. However, as more women have pursued rewarding careers, retirement has grown more complicated. Many working women are younger than their husbands and deferred their careers to raise children or care for parents. As these women are moving up in their careers they are accruing seniority for pensions or a retirement package at a time when their husbands have completed their careers. As 41 million women of the baby boom generation head toward retirement age, a new era of retirement increasingly includes two careers, diverging ambitions and very different ideas about what to do in the decades to follow. A Cornell University study of 534 retirement-aged men and women found that working women whose husbands are retired or disabled were the least happy with their marriages. Working men whose wives stayed home were the most satisfied. It is important for couples to adequately discuss how they plan to live during the next stage of their lives. Some wives feel pressure to retire but don't know how to counter that pressure. And there are some who feel that too much togetherness is not so great. According to one observer, boomer women are a huge group of capable, healthy and self-assured women who are redefining what it means to be a woman at midlife and beyond. Retirement and marriage will never be the same again! To
read the full article, you can purchase a copy by going to: http:query.nytimes.com/gst/abstract.html?res=FB0E10F93D54C708 Local Communities Seek New Taxes to Cover State Shortfall While federal and state lawmakers refuse to raise taxes, local governments and school districts are being asked to figure out ways to increase local revenue to make up for their shortfall. In California, for example, voters were asked last month to increase levies, add fees and approve bonds to make up for lost revenues. In dozens of cities and counties, public safety departments, libraries and park districts are turning to voters just to maintain their services. Basically you have the legislature shifting the economic burden and political heat to lesser politicians, saying there is a short fall and you will have to deal with it. Ron Roach, spokesman for the California Taxpayers Association, says "People see what's happening in their city or county, but they don't realize it's happening all over the state. It's under the radar." In the past, local fund-seeking measures have typically focused on special projects like expanded recreation centers or revamping swimming pools. Now voters are being asked to fund the essentials -- police, fire departments and public works. While states say they don't want to raise taxes, they go ahead and take revenue away from local governments. In San Diego, a coalition of taxpayer organizations, tourism-dependent businesses and community advocates asked voters to raise the hotel room tax by 2.5 percent to 13 percent. That would raise about $34 million for emergency services, libraries, arts, parks and tourism promotion. For
seniors planning their retirement, it is not enough to just look at
whether a state has an income tax or the rate of the state sales
tax. Now local property taxes are on the increase and local
sales taxes are being increased, or added if one did not exist.
New fees are being implemented. It is important to check out all
of these increased expenses that might have to be paid whether you
relocate or stay where your are.
Boomers Will Be Slow to Retire Retirement patterns of the baby boom generation will differ radically from the past. For both involuntary as well as voluntary reasons, mandatory retirement at age 65 will be a thing of the past. This is the conclusion of Richard Hokenson, longtime chief economist and demographer at Donaldson, Lufkin & Jenrette and now head of the consulting firm Hokenson & Company. His bottom line: Unlike previous generations, boomers will ease into retirement rather than stopping work abruptly at age 65. He expects the stock market to benefit from boomers' longer-than-anticipated-ownership of equities. In his report titled "Retiring the Current Model of Retirement," Hokenson explains that the notion of mandatory retirement at age 65 dates to 1874, when the first private industrial pension plan was established by a railroad company. At that time, 65 was believed to be the maximum age at which one could safely operate a train. The retirement age of 65 was formally institutionalized for all U.S. railroad workers by the Railroad Retirement Act of 1934, legislation that played a key role in determining a retirement age in the Social Security Act of 1935. As a result, for nearly three-quarters of a century the retirement age of 65 has been a fundamental assumption in most economic models and financial forecasts. Hokenson, however, sees otherwise. Whether driven by lifestyle choices or by the need to accumulate enough assets to retire, boomers, he believes, will transition into retirement, cutting back on hours per day, days per week, then weeks per year. This tendency to continue working, albeit it on less than a full-time basis may be spurred, in part, by the results of preliminary research on Alzheimer's disease. "The likelihood of developing Alzheimer's disease has recently been shown to be inversely correlated to the level of one's physical and mental activity. Although the evidence for 'use it or lose it' is limited and preliminary, it may be enough to influence a culture that, as a whole, is very gerontophobic," Mr. Hokenson notes. "The ramifications of this change
in retirement behavior will be global and profound. The
increased life expectancy of the world's single largest generation and
its propensity to remain employed will affect almost every
industry," he adds Many Retirees Plan to Live Near the Coast In his report titled "Retiring the Current Model of Retirement," consultant Richard Hokenson (see above story) predicts a global collision between the wave of upcoming retirees who want to live near the water and the fixed supply of coastal property. Hokenson writes that he expects to see an increase in mini-vacations as Americans begin to cut back work schedules and take longer weekends. As for retirement properties, he describes the universal appeal of living near the water. "Today, nearly two-thirds of the U.S. population lives within 100 miles of a coastline. Worldwide, half the population lives within 200 kilometers of a coastline, and that percentage is rising." Hokenson predicts that this preference will translate into increased demand for retirement homes located near a body of water. "If you have the assets, now would be a very good time to buy that retirement property. There is a collision between a fixed supply of coastal land and the tsunami of upcoming retirees who want to live there." He expects this migration to the
coastline to be even more popular in Europe. "In the past,
the vast majority of Northern Europeans aged in place. Now,
there is a large influx of Northern Europeans into Spain, Italy and
even Cape Town. The desire to be where it is warmer is
increasingly universal in nature. It is a global tsunami, not
just an American one." Companies Facing Loss of Talent as Mature Workers Retire Many companies today have focused so much on downsizing to contain costs that they've largely neglected a looming threat to their competitiveness: a severe shortage of talented workers. The general population is aging and with it, the labor pool. If long-standing human resource practices invest heavily in youth and push out older workers, companies will find themselves running off a demographic cliff as baby boomers age. The conclusion is based on a year-long research project by Ken Dychtwald, Tamara Erickson, and Bob Morison. Dychtwald is the founding president and CEO of Age Wave, while Ericson and Morison are with the Concours Group. A summary of their research appears in the March 2004 issue of Harvard Business Review. People are living longer, healthier lives, and the birthrate is at a historical low, according to the authors. During the next 15 years, 80 percent of the native-born workforce growth in North America - and even much of western Europe - is going to be in the over 50 cohort. When these mature workers begin to retire, there won't be nearly enough young people entering the workforce to compensate. Skills, knowledge, experience, and relationships walk out the door every time somebody retires. This problem is going to get much more acute in the next decade or so, when baby boomers start hitting their mid-60s. The
authors conclude their article by offering recommendations for gaining
the loyalty of older workers and creating a more flexible approach to
retirement that allows people to continue contributing well into their
60s and 70s. They call for creating a culture that honors
experience, offers flexible work schedules where staying on the job is
more attractive than leaving, and introduces flexible retirement where
work may continue indefinitely. Many people don't want a life of
pure leisure; half of today's retirees say they're bored and restless,
the authors note. On the Lighter Side: Food Fight Sends Three Residents to Hospital A February 29 food fight at a Winter Haven (Fla.) retirement community ended with three people in the hospital. There were no serious injuries in what started as a salad bar spat -- something you'd normally only see in elementary school lunchrooms. Police say several Spring Haven Retirement Community residents, old enough to know better, got into an old fashioned food fight. Witnesses reported that a 62-year old man was picking through the salad with his hands because he likes a certain kind of lettuce - a practice that didn't sit too well with the others in the buffet line. Then the fists started flying. Authorities say the 62-year old punched an 86-year-old in the mouth for complaining and bit a 78-year-old on the arm for trying to break up the fight. Then the 62-year-old's 80-something mother tried to break up the fray and got cut on the arm in the process. When the salad settled, no one wanted to press charges. "We
would press charges normally, but when every one that's involved signs
a waiver, it's fruitless to go ahead and proceed further," said
Winter Haven PD spokesman J. J. Stanton. Another 82-year-old man
who had nothing to do with the salad bar struggle fell down in the
fray and cut his head, but he too is okay. Police say they
consider the case closed. However, Spring Haven has asked the
62-year-old resident to leave. |
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