Turning the Page

Fun Article on Working Retirement

2010-02-18T10:07:00.000-08:00

The NY Times reported this morning on working retirees who travel from campground to campground. It's a bit of an update on a familiar option. I like my home and I like being within visiting distance of my Mom, our kids, and our grandkids too much to get excited about this, but you might feel differently. Check out the link.

Loginus on the Sublime

2010-02-16T13:46:00.000-08:00

In the previous post I completed my series on the spirituality of "Twilight." The following is a lovely quotation from a Roman writer that speaks of spirituality in a different way.

"Nature has appointed us men to be no base or ignoble animals . . . she implants in our souls the unconquerable love of whatever is elevated and more divine than we. Wherefore not even the entire universe suffices for the thought and contemplation within the reach of the human mind, but our imaginations often pass beyond the bounds of space, and if we survey our life on every side and see how much more it everywhere abounds in what is striking, and great, and beautiful, we shall soon discern the purpose of our birth."

From the sublime to the ridic . . . decision to purchase long term care insurance. I'll be switching back to the blue print (ha!) for more on the mechanics of retirement.

Sacrificial Love: The Love of Parent and Child, the Love of God and His People

2010-02-16T13:39:00.000-08:00

Romantic love is not the only way that we participate in the flow of Divine love. The love of parent for child comes earlier and remains strong throughout the lifespan of most people. In Bella’s case, the issue of parental love is more complex than it is for many of her peers. Bella knows more of self-sacrifice than perhaps is even appropriate for a seventeen-year-old girl. Her mother, Renee, is a lovable, but irresponsible individual and it has been Bella who made sure that dinner was cooked, that bills got paid, that the car key was found, ever since she was a young child. She has been, in effect, the parent of her immature mother.

When Renee meets and marries a younger guy, her focus shifts to him and away from Bella. Phil is a minor league baseball player, and Bella offers to go live with her father in Forks so that Renee will be free to travel with the baseball team. Bella has many unmet needs, but has never been loved so unconditionally that she feels worthy enough to demand anything for herself.

Bella’s father, Charlie, is a much more mature person than her mother. Charlie has a bit of the caregiver in him, too. He takes care of his community as chief of police, he buys Bella a truck, he is companionable without draining Bella as Renee does. The reader has no doubt that Charlie loves Bella deeply, but he has been a bachelor for a long time. Bella quickly assumes something of the same role with him that she did with her mother: she shops, she cooks, she cleans the house, she does the laundry. Charlie leaves her alone a great deal. We hear that his work as a police officer has become his wife and family and, when he isn’t working seven days a week, he takes off fishing with his buddies. Bella says that she appreciates the peace and quiet, and she does, but she is alone.

Edward and his family change her life. She falls in love with him very quickly, and, motivated by that love, wants to become a part of his family. Carlisle, the consummate father, has raised his family in a nurturing, other-directed manner, and Bella blossoms in the light of Edward’s love, which he learned from his father.

In the climax of “Twilight,” Bella exchanges her own life for that of her mother. She is once again Renee’s caretaker. But, this time it’s different. Having experienced unconditional, nurturing love, she finds herself filled with gratitude as she approaches death. She has known love with Edward. Her sacrifice will preserve life for her cherished mother.

Lovers deny themselves for their beloved. Parents give their lives away in little pieces for their children, and children reciprocate when parents need their help.

The reason we know how to do this is because our Father taught us.

Passion and Glue, Revisited: Magic Moment of Courtship

2010-02-15T21:32:00.001-08:00

In one perfect scene in the film, Edward takes Bella up into the top of a huge tree on a mountainous ridge, overlooking a spectacular view of the water. As he ascends the tree with her on his back, a camera on a zip line hurtles through the forest to the accompaniment of piano and orchestra playing Carter Burwell's “Bella’s Lullaby.” There are close-ups of the two of them in that incredible setting, a camera circling around the tree, then the director shifts to a macro view of the setting once again, with a helicopter shot shooting past the two, now small, figures, high in the forest. The next image is that of Edward playing a grand piano in a pool of light, with Bella nearby. The melody moves toward its conclusion, with the final note playing during one last view of the mountain, forest, and water vista.

For me, this scene exemplifies what Ron Rolheiser said, that passion and glue must be balanced spiritually. For this one, brief, perfect moment, Edward and Bella have achieved the integration we all dream of.

Love, Romantic and Divine

2010-02-15T21:22:00.000-08:00

Edward begins by hating Bella. “Why did she have to come here? Why did she have to exist? Why did she have to ruin the little peace I had in this non-life of mine?” he says in “Midnight Sun.” He hates Bella, whose scent tempts him to, well, devour her, because he hates what he is. He doesn’t want to be the monster he sees “reflected in the mirror of Bella’s eyes.” He doesn’t want to hurt his family by betraying what they are and forcing them to flee, which they’ve had to do many times before. He speaks of his “dreams of being something better than I was.”

What ultimately stays his hand, though, is the face of Carlisle in his mind. Carlisle, in “Midnight Sun,” is a Christ figure, wise, loving, transcendent. Edward believes that Carlisle would forgive him if he went astray, because his father loves him so tenderly, because his father thinks he is better than Edward knows himself to be. Edward goes to his father and confesses his powerful attraction to this new prey object. They agree that he should leave the area and Edward drops out of school for a week.

When he returns, having convinced himself that he was imagining his attraction to Bella, he is surprised to learn that she hasn’t told anybody how he terrified her on her first day at Forks High School. Edward actually feels a bit protective toward Bella now when he listens to Jessica’s catty thoughts as she pretends to befriend the new girl. He finds himself worried about Bella’s health when she tells Jessica that she isn’t hungry at lunch and feels sick. He decides that it must be an instinct of the strong to protect the weak, curious as that is in his case, when he is still powerfully tempted to destroy her.

One generally doesn’t see commitment to a spiritual or religious path coming from pure intellectual choice. You don’t see people going down to the public library and researching various belief systems, then picking the one they like best. No, generally the reach to faith doesn’t occur in isolation. It is connected to other people. Edward is finding it unsatisfying “to be good” in a vacuum. He will soon link “being good” to doing what is best for Bella.

At one point Carlisle remarks to Edward, “She’s very good for you, isn’t she? So much compassion, so much control.” His father develops the thought further in his mind: “I didn’t foresee that she would be so good for him . . . Perhaps this was somehow meant to be. Perhaps it serves a higher purpose.”

After Edward saves Bella from death in the van accident, Alice tells the family that she sees one of two possible futures. Edward is not strong enough to stay away from Bella. He will either kill her himself or she will eventually become one of them. Neither possibility is bearable for Edward.

In a lovely passage in Chapter 5 of “Midnight Sun,” Edward realizes that his love for Bella is hopeless. The biggest favor he could do for her would be to disappear from her life. Then, he discovers that she secretly loves him. “I struggled to find words,” he says, “to name the feelings that flooded through me . . . For a long moment, I drowned in them. When I surfaced, I was not the same man I had been.” Edward realizes that he will “always love this fragile human girl, for the rest of my limitless existence.”

This passage is written in the language of romantic love. Within it is embedded the notion of the One Eternal Love, the Real Thing. High school stuff. Beneath that, though is a spiritual principle, THE spiritual principle. Life is about love. When we love, we change, we are forever different from what we were before. And love, that divine force which also flows through us, does indeed endure forever.

Edward Cullen: The Thing He Knew That He Didn’t Know He Knew.

2010-02-15T08:17:00.000-08:00

A while back I went into the emergency room and they worked me up for a heart attack. Fortunately, it was a false alarm, but several hours elapsed before we knew that.

One of my friends asked me if I was scared as I was riding in an ambulance to the regional heart center at 80 mph. I replied that I wasn’t scared, but I felt intense regret that I was causing my family so much worry. If you have been through something like this, you probably know what I mean. What you think you would be feeling at a time like that is not what you actually feel. And, at some point, lying there on the gurney, I thought that maybe I should pray. Then, without my doing anything, I literally felt the arms of God wrapped around me. I felt at peace.

My friend said that sometimes these trial runs show us where we really are.

Something like that happened to Edward when he saw the van careening toward Bella. All he could think was “Not her!” and he broke all the rules by using his gifts to save her life.

Later that day, his family met to confer about what should be done about his abysmal behavior, which had put them all in jeopardy. It was Alice who said that, of course, it happened because he was falling in love with the human girl. Edward had no conscious understanding of this, until she said that, and then he knew that she was right.

Sometimes it takes a trial run, a crisis, to know what’s in our hearts.

Selfishness and Empathy in “Twilight”

2010-02-15T08:02:00.000-08:00

No matter what one’s beliefs may be, the great battle of spirituality is that of re-directing one’s natural self-centeredness toward others, ultimately toward The Other. Even a moment of great spiritual intensity can all too easily veer into self-congratulation, for example. And then there are all the everyday moments of life, the little things, where the spiritual choice is heavily besieged by the choice we want to make. At a very primal level, we are talking about selfishness vs. empathy, the ability to grasp the lived experience of others and allow it to direct our behavior.

The characters of “Twilight” initially suffer from a real shortage of the quality of empathy. Bella, the protagonist, certainly relates to her mother, her father, and Edward, but she recalls no particular friends left behind in Phoenix. She is very quick to sarcastically categorize and dismiss the students at her new high school. Eric is the chess club type. Mike is like a golden retriever. Only Angela, really, survives Bella’s scrutiny unscathed. Bella employs her adolescent disdain as a shield, a form of protection, a preemptive strike against the viciousness of high school life. Like most teenagers who feel this way and are unaware that others do, too, she thinks that she doesn’t belong anywhere and doesn’t fit in.

In the opening chapter of “Midnight Sun,” Edward displays a similarly unsympathetic view of those around him. He goes on at some length about the stupidity of the sheep-like humans with whom he must share his day. The fact that he can read minds doesn’t make him kinder, but more intolerant. For all of his many years of existence, he speaks of others with the ready scorn of a teenager, and frankly, with much of the self-loathing of adolescence also.

Perhaps a developmentally appropriate failure of empathy is actually an important feature of the time period when young people should be distancing themselves from the family home. Unpopular peers, controlling parents, and demanding teachers don’t receive a measure of the empathy that the more mature individual will someday grant them. After coming into their own, most adults do attain an understanding that people are generally doing the best that they know how to do. As we get older, we get more humble about our own shortcomings . . . and more appreciative of the ways that people try, even when they aren’t successful.

At the age of fifty-nine, I can see some of this with more perspective than I could when I was a teenager. Having worked with people thirty years older than I am right now, I know that they sometimes look at people my own age in something of the same way, with patient humor as we lumber through our lives. In our eighties we may understand what we can’t yet see.

Alice, Edward’s sister, expresses empathy more effectively than most when she is speaking to Jasper, who is sorely tempted to attack a young student. She murmurs to him, “it helps a little if you think of them as people . . . Her name is Whitney. She has a baby sister she adores. Her mother invited Esme to that garden party, do you remember?” Through empathy she converts an easy target into somebody who matters for Jasper.

When Edward first encounters Bella, he is all but overwhelmed by her scent and his thirst. Alice then utters the most conspicuously religious statement in the entire book: “You will do the right thing . . . She’s Charlie Swan’s only family. It would kill him, too."

When it comes to discussing the spiritual trait of empathy, I can’t say it any better than that.

Fragments of the Whole: Plotinus at Rialto Beach

2010-02-10T18:09:00.001-08:00

"Consciousness is reflected in a word as the sun in a drop of water.

A word relates to consciousness as

a living cell relates to a whole organism,

as an atom relates to the universe.

A word is a microcosm of human consciousness."

Lev Vygotsky, Thought and Language

The crescent moon glows

through a gauze of ocean fog

down upon its cousin,

a crescent-shaped fragment of clam shell

resting on a rocky beach.

The air is full of tangy salt,

filmy mist,

foamy breakers

. . . and noise.

Thunder of ocean waves

racing across the ocean

to make their landfall here.

The shell fragment glistens damply

in the moonlight.

Within it once was life

and now the echo of life

. . . and the sea.

A winter storm will carry the waves to it again

and pound it into smaller fragments,

some of them crescent-shaped.

Its calcium and salt will return to the sea

and come to life again someday.

But for now,

it lies quietly,

surrounded by the roar of breakers,

softly glowing in the light of the crescent moon,

waiting for the tide.

"Twilight" Reflections: Salmon in a Time of Grief

2010-02-10T18:06:00.001-08:00

One August a Spokane minister took his three grandsons to La Push for a fishing trip, something their family had done many times before. They set out in an open boat and never returned. When, a month later, we visited Mora and La Push, the incident was still quite fresh. It had been used successfully as an argument for keeping the local Coast Guard station open. But more than that, La Push is the tribal headquarters for the Quileute Indians, who have been setting out to sea in open boats for a very long time. One of their community, a man known for reaching out to others in need, had organized the catching and smoking of a large quantity of salmon and other fish. When the fish was prepared, he and his wife drove it to Spokane to offer to the minister’s family on the day of the memorial service. He was quoted in the Port Angeles newspaper as saying that “we know how they feel. We’ve been through this ourselves.”

"Twilight" Darkness/Eucharist in the Rain Forest

2010-02-10T11:16:00.001-08:00

Pacific storms return again and again to the western Olympic slopes, building ancient forests into emerald eternity. New trees sprout on fallen nurse logs, the earth itself too densely carpeted to shelter more new life. Wherever I look, I see a thousand shades of green and the scent of a million living things walks with me.

I reach out my hand

and the priest gently sets

a host upon my palm.

I place it in my mouth

to melt slowly

as I walk back to my pew.

Kneeling down,

closing my eyes,

I see the rain forest,

lichen, moss, branch upon branch,

layer upon layer of living lace,

drawing me further and further

into the great green heart of the world.

An infinity of living greenness,

layer upon layer of amazing grace.

Pacific storm. Hoh Rain Forest. Eucharist.

"Twilight" Geography: Touch of the Creator

2010-02-09T11:22:00.001-08:00

Much has been written about the little town of Forks, Washington, a real community where the fictional characters of “Twilight” make their homes. Forks is on the Olympic Peninsula, a breathtakingly scenic land of high mountain peaks, temperate rain forests, and wilderness beaches adjoining the stormy North Pacific

I was first drawn to the story of “Twilight” by its geographic setting. Unlike Bella, for me it has always been a refuge, a spiritual place, where the presence of the Creator feels very near. I remember one particular visit after a long, hot summer during which we had experienced death in the family and crushing pressure at work. Here is a passage from my journal of that time:

We were driving west, west on a September afternoon to where we had to be, where the Pacific Ocean met Olympic National Park at Rialto Beach, west of Forks, Washington, just north of the Quileute village of La Push. Rialto is where I first saw the ocean, great waves bigger than a little girl’s imagination, huge logs tossed by winter storms high on a pebbly beach, millions and millions of colorful rounded pebbles that the ocean tumbled in its own rock polisher until satisfied with them. This is the place my husband and I visited in a nine-foot camping trailer with two preschoolers, marooned in pouring rain over a holiday weekend. Here our family picked pocketfuls of “pretty rocks” on our fifteenth wedding anniversary, for eventual deposition in the rock bucket on our front deck, the same rock bucket that hid the key to our house for so many years when the teenagers were coming and going. It was on Rialto Beach that my husband found the first heart rock, a gray stone the waves had indeed formed into the shape of a heart, which he presented to me as a token of love. It was the first of many heart rocks, which grew to fill a basket beside my bed and serve as paperweights and back-of-drawer touchstones in my desk at work.

We pulled into the parking lot at Rialto Beach that September afternoon and hurried over the enormous wave-bermed pile of driftwood logs, clambering frantically to get there. And drew the first great unobstructed breaths in many weeks. Drew in great gulps of cool sea air, tangy with the taste and scent of salty seaweed. Shielded our eyes from bright sun arching west over thousands of miles of ocean, coming up at us clear from Asia. Saw it all and couldn’t take it in. The James Island group, evergreen forests atop sea-chewed bluffs, wisps of fog trailing in and out of tree trunks and rocky crevices. The cries of sea birds as a flight of albatross serpentined above the waves. And the waves. A calmer sea today than usual. Two or three foot waves, dancing with the shore.

We walked a bit up and down the shore, but the tide was coming in, cutting away at our access to the north end of the beach, and it was difficult to walk through several inches of shifting pebbles. Our legs felt thick and weighty. Soon we were sitting with our backs against a smooth driftwood log, legs splayed out in front of us. The sunlight fluttered so brilliantly upon the waters that our eyelids grew heavy and we sank down and turned on our sides, settling into rounded pebbles forming a beanbag couch, configured just for us. I pulled my jacket up over my face and let the breeze flow on past me, north along the beach. Sun-warmed, with comforting waves pounding in my ears, I settled like a happy animal into sleep. It was the best moment of the year.

Unspoken Yearning in "Twilight"

2010-02-09T11:18:00.001-08:00

One of the many things that draws Bella toward Edward and the rest of the Cullens is her own unspoken yearning for the nurturing life of a family. Sure, her parents have loved her and done what they knew how to do for her, but she has no sense of belonging to something larger than herself.

Joan Chittister, in a description of Benedictine life, talks about the traditions practiced in her monastery, traditions that seem trivial, but which play a critical role in the family life of her community.

She says that traditions help define each family and characterize every relationship. They are the things done together that demonstrate what the family is, together. They explain what a family stands for, and where the energies of its members come from, and why they go on from day to day.

Benedictines take a long view of things. They follow a Rule that has endured for fifteen hundred years, a lifespan even longer than that of Carlisle Cullen’s family. Both the Benedictines and the Cullens know that, though everything in the larger world has changed over the centuries, nothing has really changed at all, not their shared values, nor their commitment to each other, nor their expectation of eternal life together.

No wonder Bella is filled with an unspoken yearning to be one with them.

Passion and Glue: The Spirituality of "Twilight"

2010-02-07T20:04:00.001-08:00

Well, I never thought that my first series of spirituality posts would be about the tween vampire novel, "Twilight," but, here we are. The more I think about the book, the film and Stephenie Meyer's unfinished draft of Edward's story, "Midnight Sun," the more spiritual aspects I seem to find. This is the first in a series of, well, meditations upon the popular story of two, perhaps ill-starred, teenagers who fall in love.

The most common misperception about spirituality is that it is some sort of experience or trait or thin, gauzy mist floating out there, apart from everyday life. In reality, as Dr. Johnny Cox once said, everybody has a spirituality, no matter whether they consider themselves to be formally religious or not. Our spirituality is the reason we get up in the morning, our explanation to ourselves for the life we have chosen to lead.

Father Ron Rolheiser in “The Holy Longing” tells us that spirituality is the passion we experience in life and the glue that holds us together. Without passion, we live a listless, empty life. Without glue, we fall apart. We lose our souls. The young adult novel “Twilight” may not seem at first glance to offer any spiritual lessons, but upon closer examination, it is a deeply felt, deeply spiritual work, depicting much of both passion and glue, as evidenced in the lives of two seventeen year old high school students.

I once had a client who told me that her life had been one of “spon-si-ti-li-ty” since she had been old enough to fix a sandwich or bring a drink to the older people in her family. Bella is a thirty-five year old in a teenager’s body, parenting her sweet, flighty mother, and missing out on her own childhood. No wonder Bella can’t relate to her peers. Her life is all about being the glue for others without feeling the joy that life can bring.

Edward, on the other hand, a very old seventeen year old indeed, feels driven by overwhelming passion that he must struggle to control. Yeah, yeah, yeah, he’s a vampire. Get over it. The lesson works quite well whether or not he is a fictional being. He’s all passion, but missing much of the glue. Sure, he loves his family and tries to be good, both for himself and for them, but it isn’t enough. As one of the taglines from a “Twilight” movie advertisement says, even if you can live forever, what are you actually living for? How many books can you read, how many different languages can you learn to speak, how much can you develop your music, before, at some point, you wonder, “What’s the point?” What glue holds Edward’s life together?

Oh, hi, it's me

2009-12-31T07:46:00.000-08:00

I'm basically on break until mid-January, but can't keep myself from making a few comments now and then. The link below is to a Nick Kristof article in the NY Times about microsavings, which he thinks might be more powerful than microloans . . . I'm not an expert on these things, but I do know that low-income people in the US have less access to basic financial services, one of the reasons for the popularity of payday loan outfits. Kristof advocates trustworthy venues for folks in developing countries to save small amounts of money, which they can build up for the well-being of their families or to start small businesses.

In the mid-1980's I assisted some developmentally disabled people with their monthly finances. (Don't roll your eyes at the 1980's reference--if you are reading this, you probably remember the 80's yourself.) At that time these folks received $364 per month in Supplemental Security Income (SSI) and were considered among the poorest of the poor in America. I faithfully put $5 per month into a savings account for each individual. Doesn't sound like much, but after several months, one client had enough saved up for a decent pair of heavy-duty leather shoes and another one bought a winter coat.

One has to be very careful not to draw a false analogy, but Kristof, who actually knows something about the developing world, seems to think that savings accounts could be part of the solution to global poverty.

Read his article yourself and let me know what you think.

http://www.nytimes.com/2009/12/31/opinion/31kristof.html?th&emc=th

Happy Holidays!

2009-12-26T09:34:00.001-08:00

A link to a photo:

http://www.nytimes.com/packages/html/photo/2009-year-in-pictures/?th&emc=th#/86

Star Trek

2009-12-20T13:35:00.000-08:00

Last night on video we watched the 2009 "Star Trek" prequel movie, starring Chris Pine and Zachary Quinto as younger versions of Kirk and Spock, with a heavily disguised (sigh) Eric Bana portraying the villainous Romulan, Nero. It was fine, though I only gave it three stars on our Netflix profile.

I felt a shiver go through me, though, when the young actor portraying Chekhov began to speak, using a Russian accent that seemed far more impenetrable than that of the original Chekhov in the television series. It was suddenly 1966, and I was a junior in high school, watching "Star Trek" on the television set in our living room. I had forgotten, until just that moment, how shocking it had been that a Russian would be among the crew of the Enterprise. In 1966 the Russians were our bitter enemies, bent on destroying us. Many people seriously believed that we would all die in a terrible nuclear war before we even became adults. I can remember people my own age saying that there was no point in going to college or having children, because not just our own lives, but the whole world, would soon be vaporized.

With a few graceful narrative gestures, Gene Roddenberry kicked the can forward conceptually a few centuries and, without explaining how, showed us that humans had a potential history beyond the nuclear arms race. This vision gave me hope for a better future.

Sometimes simple little things, silly little stories, make a tremendous difference. Before we can work to change the world, we need a picture in our minds of how we want it to look. "Star Trek" gave me that image. First, you set your goal and then you see how to accomplish it.

Health Insurance Tip

2009-12-16T19:20:00.000-08:00

Access to health care is one of the most critical components of a retirement plan. It becomes even more essential for those who wish to retire before they qualify for Medicare coverage, usually at age 65. You already know this. Also, as you know, sometimes people in their middle years lose their jobs, and their health insurance, too. The current recession isn't helping.

Health insurance is a complex topic, far beyond the range of this discussion, but I do have one tip. Several years ago I was a SHIBA volunteer here in the state of Washington and became a real fan. SHIBA stands for "State Health Insurance Benefits Advisers" and the program is located in the state insurance commissioner's office. Comparable programs, sometimes called SHIP programs, are to be found in every state in the country. The concept is that state insurance commissioner staff train volunteers in each state. The volunteers do public presentations and meet individually with people who need help accessing health insurance. When the volunteers encounter questions they can't answer, they can contact the professionals for further information. SHIBA and the other SHIP programs around the country provide an important service and charge nothing for their assistance. I've placed a link to Washington State's SHIBA program in the Important Links section of this blog. If, on the other hand, you're looking for an interesting volunteer opportunity, contact your state's SHIP program. They'd be glad to have your help.

Caregiver Alert Re Medicare Part D

2009-12-15T19:47:00.000-08:00

For those of you who are Medicare beneficiaries and/or help people who are on Medicare, time is running out on a great way to save real money on prescription drugs through Medicare Part D.

The Washington Post reports that the average premium for a Medicare Part D policy is going up 11% and that only 7% of the seventeen million beneficiaries on Part D policies switch plans every year.

Why should you care? It is only by re-evaluating Part D plans every single year and switching policies if necessary that people can receive the greatest benefit from the plans at the lowest possible cost.

Because I used to do this for a living, every year between Nov. 15th and Dec. 31st I gather together my Mom's pill bottles and her Medicare card, and head to the computer. At the Medicare web site there is an online calculator that anyone can use to determine which of the myriad plans best meets their needs. Some years the plan that Mom is currently using is still the best, but more frequently a new plan is better, and she changes policies. The switch is easily made on the government web site.

This year Mom is mostly using generics and will be paying $8.80 a month for her Part D premium. The Post article states that the average Medicare beneficiary will pay $38.85 per month for their premium next year.

It's not just the monthly premium that varies enormously. Different insurance companies pay different amounts for the same medications, require different co-pays, deal differently with the donut hole . . . You get the picture.

No wonder Medicare has set up the online software so that each beneficiary can figure out what they should do for the following year. For those who hate computers, you can phone Medicare and get help that way.

If you or somebody you care about is a Medicare beneficiary, take the time to re-compute Part D coverage for 2010 and potentially save hundreds of dollars. You've only got until Dec. 31st.

Read the full Washington Post article at:

(at http://www.washingtonpost.com/wp-dyn/content/article/2009/11/30/AR2009113003009.html)

Check out the Medicare Part D calculator at:

http://www.medicare.gov/MPDPF/Public/Include/DataSection/Questions/MPDPFIntro.asp

Does your house have to be paid off before you can retire?

2009-12-14T20:04:00.000-08:00

The one word answer is: Yes.

Well, of course, the world is a lot more complicated than that. People retire from the military, or the clergy, or whatever and buy a home later in life. They go through a divorce and need a new place. Disability occurs, and they find the current home too difficult to remodel. They retire to a tropical destination and buy a condo there . . .

But, in the excitement of moving into a great new home, it’s easy to forget that when you retire, when you get older, your potential income is quite likely to be fixed. No shocker there, but the implications have a sneaky way of catching up with you.

Inflation has been running at about three per cent in recent years, not counting 2009, but nobody knows what it will be like in thirty years. Baby boomers remember the seventies, when inflation was absolutely terrifying. But, impoverished though we were, we could always go out and work, and we weren’t living on fixed incomes.

Ideally, in retirement, your fixed expenses should be as minimal as possible. I’m talking utilities, taxes, insurance, groceries, car upkeep and so on. You want to live comfortably, and economically. That’s your baseline.

With baseline expenses under control, you can add in the fun retirement stuff that you’ve been dreaming about for a long time . . .

But the home mortgage or home equity loan thing can become quite insidious. I remember meeting with a new widow years ago. Her adult children had badgered her into seeing me. She did not even like the idea of talking to a stranger about her financial difficulties, especially not somebody who probably mostly dealt with poor people. She was NOT that person. But her kids wanted her to check out what it would take for her to qualify for energy assistance or help with medical expenses.

It was a most painful session for her, and for me. I got out a pencil, a calculator and several sheets of paper. We began itemizing her monthly expenses. She lived comfortably, but not extravagantly. Neither her monthly income nor her savings qualified her for any state assistance at all, and I listened to a few sharp comments about how unfair that was.

What was killing her was her house.

She and her late husband had raised their family in a modest little house. In later years he had run across a much larger home for sale at a great price. It was in beautiful shape and a terrific investment. He fashioned one spacious room into a home office where he had written his memoirs. She had developed another room for her own hobbies. It was wonderful to be able to spread out all of a project so that you could work on it, and then just leave it out and shut the door until you were ready to come back to it. They had a giant kitchen, and an actual suite of dedicated bedrooms and a bathroom for the kids and grandkids, when they came to visit. The home was surrounded by a lovely yard with lush landscaping. It was a dream come true.

The kicker was this: they had forgotten to add into their calculations what would happen to their monthly income if one of them passed away. At the time when they bought the house, they were in their fifties and felt wonderful. The husband got sick in his early seventies, with more than ten years left on the mortgage. When he died, his Social Security and pension benefits were drastically reduced, and his widow’s monthly income had suddenly plummeted.

I looked up from my calculations at this proud woman, whose demeanor could not conceal the pain of the moment. “I think you’re going to need to sell your house,” I said to her, and she sat back and blinked. Then the mask descended back across her face, and she said, “That is not possible. I need to leave. I have another engagement,” and she left my office, never to return. A short time later, I saw her home listed for sale in the newspaper, for a decent price, which I’m sure she probably got. This was before the recent unpleasantness in the real estate market.

I do acknowledge that each person’s situation is different, but you simply must keep your basic living costs at a comfortable minimum level. You can add in all the fun stuff you want after that, but the basic monthly expenses, the things you can’t live without, must be as manageable as possible. That’s a great way to live, not just when you get older.

I said at the beginning of this post that one shouldn’t enter retirement before they had paid off their home, and, in fairness, this may or may not be the correct answer for you.

But, if you choose to enter retirement with many years of mortgage payments ahead of you, be sure that your monthly expenses remain very manageable, that neither inflation nor medical expenses nor the sudden death of your spouse has the potential to catastrophically deplete your monthly income and throw you into crisis.

Here’s an image to help you remember. Picture the face of that woman when she was told, in the midst of her grief over losing her husband, that her only realistic option was to sell her house. I saw her own obituary in the newspaper too soon afterward.

Start Now

2009-12-12T11:06:00.000-08:00

Two thoughts following up on yesterday's post.

1) If keeping track of your expenses over several years sounds absolutely, positively overwhelming, do this: run all of your money through one checking account. Then, after several years, you'll know precisely how much cash you plowed through each year. You won't have all the fine-grained detail that I revel in, but, then, you aren't me, you're normal.

2) Read "The Millionaire Next Door," a book that changed my life. We have always been tightwads, but this book explained that there were others out there like us and that it was okay. In fact, it was better than okay; it was a great way to live. Get into the spirit of economizing by checking the book out of the library or buying it, used, online.

Right now, when we are struggling through the worst economic times of our lives, it's newly fashionable to be careful with money.

Consider yourself a trend setter.

Money, money, money

2009-12-11T07:54:00.000-08:00

Do you know how much money it takes to live the way you like to live?

If you want to retire, you need to know what it will cost you to trade money for time. You are literally buying your freedom.

I recommend that you keep track of all of your finances on Quicken, Excel or some other electronic program. I did have a cousin who kept her family's books in a beautiful old-fashioned hand ledger, and she demonstrated to me that she could produce totals for various expenditures about as quickly as I can on my computer, so do it that way, if you want.

You need to know how much it costs you each month for housing, utilities, groceries, gas and so on. Those are the expenditures in Group 1.

In addition, you need to know what your expenditures are for things that come around only a few times a year: car insurance, property taxes, Christmas presents, taking a big trip . . . I call those Group 2 expenses.

Then come the Group 3 expenses, which many potential retirees forget about. Replacing your old car, getting a new roof . . . Group 3 expenses don't happen every year, but you don't really have many alternatives if you suddenly need to replace your furnace some dark January night . . . and you are 78 years old.

Now, I'm not a financial advisor, but I think you should be able to come up with a number that covers your net, out-of-pocket expenses for several years in a row prior to retiring. I began keeping my checking account on Quicken in 1990. Since 2000 I have kept track of every penny of household income and outgo. If you absolutely can't stand this sort of thing, in other words, you are a normal person and not a number nerd, maybe you've got a mate who would do it. We tend to partner with complementary people, after all. Barter car repair for bookkeeping, if you want to.

Why should you, or your mate, imitate me? I can now add up all of the expenses for the past ten years, which included those invisible Group 3 expenses, divide the total by ten, and tell you exactly what it has cost to pay for the lifestyle we live.

You need to know this if you want to retire.

More tomorrow.

Yearning for Retirement

2009-12-10T08:04:00.000-08:00

I've been yearning for retirement for a long time. Decades. Mostly because I conceive of it as the state of being independently wealthy. You know, you've got all the things you've got already, but you no longer have to worry about earning more money to pay the light bill. Kinda like winning the lottery.

Idealistic, I know, but heavenly, I've always thought.

Everybody always organizes their retirement plans around "How Much Money Do I Need to Retire?" which is actually the last question you should ask, not the first, which is "Why Do I Want to Retire?" and the most basic of all, "What Do I Want to Do with My Life?"

In the summer of 1969 my roommate had a copy of the "Hair" soundtrack. I got fixated on a couple of lyrical phrases from James Rado's song, "Where Do I Go?"

"Where do I go? Follow the river"

"And will I ever . . . discover why I live and why I die?"

I even asked a friend who'd studied calligraphy to pen the lyrics of the entire song onto a scroll that I thought I would hang on the wall of my dorm room.

Yeah, I've always been a dork.

All along the way, I've been trying to answer the question, "What is the best way for me to live?" Certain choices, like the education I chose, the man I married, and the children we bore locked in vast swaths of time and money for their care and feeding.

I wouldn't trade the husband, children and education I've been lucky enough to have in my life.

It's just that now I have turned to a new page and enjoy the privilege of asking once again, "What should I do with my life?"