Unretirement Project

Retirement Redefined

What We Are UP To – The Waiting Edition

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waiting Tom Petty Gainesville wall art

Occasionally we receive free products for review or include advertising links in posts, but no one impacts the honesty of our opinions.

One of the little factoids you might not know about Gainesville, Florida is that it’s the birthplace of Rock and Roll Hall of Famer Tom Petty. I can’t help but think of his song “The Waiting” as we are all “waiting” our turn for COVID-19 vaccines. See what I did there – ha.ha. Seriously, while we’ve been waiting, we’ve found a few things to keep us busy.

Watching | History of Swear Words

> I understand there are many studies that say people who use swear words are more intelligent and creative. My use of swear words is mostly limited to when I slam my fingers in drawers (as in “Oh, S***!) But we do like Nicolas Cage, so we were anxiously waiting for this Netflix series. It’s fun and there are great history lessons from etymologists about the origins and evolution of swear words.   

Reading | Books About Cosy/Cozy

> To help me enjoy my waiting time (and because it’s a little chilly outside), I’ve been reading books focused on the art of comfort. My list includes “Cosy: The British Art of Comfort” and “The Cozy Life: Rediscover the Joy of Simple Things Through the Danish Concept of Hygge”. My big takeaway from them is to define your own cosy/cozy. It might take some time to figure it out. And we also have to learn how to be respectful of other people’s cosy/cozy. 

Remembering | Our most popular post 

> We were wondering the other day about the most popular content on Unretirement Project. Interestingly, it’s a post from 2019 titled “3 Ways You May Contribute to Your Own Ageism”. There are some great reminders in it about not sitting around waiting to get old and making your own decisions on how you want to age.

Working On | Taking Pictures

> One of the things we miss about traveling is taking pictures. We love street art and it’s fun to walk around cities and capture their essence through street art. We’ve decided that we haven’t been fair enough to Gainesville and, instead of waiting to take pictures of other cities, we’re going to take more local images. Our city has installed a new social justice murals project that we want to check out. 

Feeling | Hopeful

> We’re very encouraged by the positive vaccine news. We know that we still have several weeks – possibly months – of waiting until we’re able to get the vaccine. It’s nice to know the process is moving in the right direction. We can’t let our guard down. In the meantime, we have started double masking. 

Planning | Of course, vaccines!

> While we’re waiting, I’m finding it very helpful to start bookmarking the websites of places that will be offering the vaccine in our area. Even though we’re not in the eligible category yet, this allows us to see how the website works and what information we might need to have handy at the point we are eligible. You might find it helpful to prepare in advance so you’re ready when it’s time. 

Loving | Ghee

> We’ve been watching some cooking shows lately and they’ve mentioned Indian clarified butter or ghee. We found some at the grocery and decided to give it a try. Our first attempt was using it to sauté some gnocchi. OMGosh…so good!  

Geeking | LEGO Bonsai Tree

> I love bonsai trees, but they do not love me. I’ve had more than my fair share perish. Keith absolutely refuses to buy anymore. However, he did buy me one that I can’t destroy. LEGO has created a botanical collection including a bonsai tree. It’s beautiful! They also have a bouquet kit that I’ve got my eye on.

What’s UP with you? We hope you’re safe and well. 

Older Workers Should Think About Their Short and Long Term Career Plans

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It’s no surprise that older members of the workforce are being negatively impacted by the COVID-19 pandemic. In this article from PBS News Hour, older workers are faced with two huge challenges when it comes to work and the pandemic. First, there’s the science that says older persons are a higher risk of exposure to the virus. Second, older workers are finding it hard to land new opportunities in today’s labor market. 

I wish I could say this is going to change once we all get vaccines, but I don’t know if that’s true. There are still many unknowns regarding our economic recovery and the longer-term impacts of the virus. But one thing is certain. Older workers should be thinking about both their short- and long-term career plans. 

Always having a “Plan B” where your career is concerned is a good idea. There’s no rule that says you have to use it. It just makes good sense to think about the career options you might be willing to explore if circumstances warrant. It allows you to stay in control of your professional career. 

If you’re looking for a place to start thinking about your future career options, here are a handful of articles that might help. 

Encore Careers: What They Are and Why You Might Want One

As we’re thinking about our retirement (and unretirement), one option that’s available to us is an encore career. It’s defined as a job or career that happens later in life to provide both purpose and money. According to Encore.org, some of the most promising fields for encore careers are in the non-profit sector, management services, and services for aging persons. Currently, the older generation is also the largest freelancing group. 

How to Apply Your Transferable Skills Toward an Encore Career

An Unretirement Project reader asked about how to “take the skills we’ve honed to a razor’s edge during our regular career and apply them to something completely new.” It’s a very valid point. As we start considering our future career options, we need to be able to identify and sell the transferable job skills we’ve acquired throughout our professional lives. 

Portfolio Career: An Alternative to Encore Career

A portfolio career is where someone works many part-time jobs instead of one full-time job. For example, an accountant might sell insurance and do tax preparation. It’s the idea of having several smaller jobs that a person can work on at the same time. This might not be optimal for everyone. But for some, this could be exactly the flexible work arrangement you’re looking for. 

Even if you’re not planning a transition to an encore or portfolio career, it’s important to keep your skills relevant. That means finding ways to keep your business acumen current and possibly exposing yourself to new experiences via volunteerism.

Business Acumen: 6 Ways to Improve Yours

It should come as no surprise that one of the biggest competencies that organizations expect from employees is business acumen. It’s important to know the business, be able to talk about it, and make decisions to help the business grow. But honestly, it’s hard to develop business acumen. Oh sure, a lot of people throw business buzzwords around like “growth mindset” and “blue ocean strategy” but do they really know everything those terms mean? In today’s business world, new concepts are being developed all the time. It’s a challenge to stay current, especially when your plate is already full of work. 

Now May Be the Best Time to Volunteer – Or Not

We know that, for many, workplace unrest, furloughs and layoffs have upended retirement planning. Volunteering may not be an option when your focus is on an interim job or your next opportunity. However, a volunteer role may provide experience, new skills, or connections that could lead to a new job. Something to keep in mind. For others, volunteering can be a rewarding way to support others and the causes that really matter. Use your spare time to find something that matches your interests and skills. And if volunteering is still a few months or years away, no problem. You can do the groundwork now to find what’s best for you.

Remember that old saying, “The best time to look for a job is when you have one.”? Well, it’s possible that won’t always apply. We weren’t able to predict a pandemic and its recovery. But that doesn’t mean that we shouldn’t always have a career plan. 

A career plan allows us to see the possibilities. We can act on them if we want to or need to. A career plan can allow us to be in control of our career, which is so incredibly important. As we think about retirement, be able to control how and when your career ends on your own terms.

Aging Doesn’t Have to Lead to Ageism

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wall sign with phrase oh the places you will go speaking out against ageism

Age discrimination, or ageism, remains an issue for employees. According to a study from Hiscox, the number of age-related discrimination charges filed by workers over age 65 doubled in the past decade. I wish I could say that there was some magic solution but unfortunately, I don’t have the answer. 

What I can say is that when you look at employer defenses in age discrimination claims, many of them mention that the employee’s skills were out of date and they lacked creativity and curiosity. Don’t misunderstand my comment. I’m not saying these employers have a valid argument. I don’t know the specifics. But as someone who reads about discrimination cases, I do find this an interesting trend. 

On the flip side, when I talk to older workers who have been fired or laid off, they always respond that it’s because of their age. It couldn’t possibly be for any other reason like violating a rule or the person’s position becoming redundant or the business not doing well financially. Again, I don’t know the specifics of the employee’s departure, but the trend is interesting. 

One of the things that both employees and employers should realize is that aging is inevitable, and aging doesn’t have to lead to ageism. 

Forget the Term “Boomers” and Get Ready for the Young Old

“Young Old” (aka YOLD) individuals are working longer, staying healthier, and represent a significant consumer market. This should not be a surprise to anyone. Regardless of the unemployment rate, organizations need the best talent and YOLD individuals are willing to work a few more years because they want to, and they can save up a few extra dollars. The time to think about how you want to spend your YOLD years is now. Because you want to spend them your way.

3 Ways You May Contribute to Your Own Ageism

Regardless of your physical age, if you act like the stereotype then people will assume you are one. As we age, we have some decisions to make and one of the biggest is deciding how we will accept aging. If we want others to see us as contributors, then we need to act like it. Please notice I didn’t say we need to act “young”. People need to accept our age for what it is. But that doesn’t mean we’re not able to bring value. We need to send the message and demonstrate that we can. 

While I can’t control what others do or say, these two articles remind me that I have some control over my aging journey. I can still enjoy nostalgia and also explore new things. 

In addition, we recently published an article about “Healthy Aging is Trendy Thanks to Global Shift”. Demographics are changing the way marketers look at older persons. This could have a huge impact on the way aging is viewed. 

Hopefully, the shift in demographics and our own views about aging will create a much needed shift in perceptions about ageism. 

Retirement Planning: It’s About More Than Just Not Working Anymore

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wall art everything is figuroutable like retirement planning

The COVID-19 pandemic is forcing older workers to examine their job options. In an article on CNN.com, an economist mentions that young workers’ participation in the labor force has almost fully recovered, while older workers and women are recovering more slowly. I’m sure this has prompted individuals to say to themselves, “Am I ready for retirement?”.

Making the decision to retire involves more than simply deciding not to work anymore. It includes financial planning (Do I have enough money?), healthcare planning (Can I take care of my medical needs?), and emotional planning (Am I emotionally ready?). Over the past year, we’ve written about some of these topics and we thought it might be helpful to have them as a reference in one place.

Retirement Planning: 5 Reasons to Have a Stop Working Date

It’s very easy to simply pick the government’s age for collecting Social Security as your retirement date. But if I had a dollar for every person who turned 62 or 65 and said, “I’m not ready yet.” I would be retired right now. LOL! No one is holding you to that date. It’s simply a placeholder for planning. And retirement planning is important.

Retirement Success: We Need to Learn About Happiness

Happiness means knowing what will make us happy. In our retirement life, we will often have to deal with trade-offs. For example, we can travel often but our accommodations might be economy. Versus traveling less but more luxuriously. Or we can retire earlier but it means downsizing and paying off a mortgage. Or we can work longer, but it means becoming a freelancer or contractor without corporate healthcare insurance. For us to make good decisions, we need to truly understand what makes us happy. 

5 Ways We Can Bridge Our Retirement Gap

Statistically, we know that people are living longer. The challenge is that we’re not financially preparing to live longer. The financial shortfall between how much we need for retirement and how much we have has been labeled “the retirement gap”. The retirement gap is a global retirement planning issue and it’s growing, especially in the United States. The bottom-line is that individuals need to prepare for retirement because Social Security wasn’t designed to cover 100% of our retirement expenses. 

Is It Possible to Flunk Retirement

In today’s business world, we appear to be much more accepting of failure than ever. Billionaires like Sir Richard Branson and Spanx founder Sara Blakely remind us that it’s okay to make mistakes. But I can see how people could feel different about flunking at 20 than flunking at 60. We have to view our unretirement and retirement as a journey. A journey that starts early in life. Will there be stumbling blocks and changes along the way? Absolutely. But that doesn’t mean we’ve flunked life or our retirement. It does mean that we need to find ways to adjust.

The Pros and Cons of Being a One Car Household

One of the things to consider in retirement planning is transportation as in, “How much do you want to drive?” The answer might prompt you to take some action like moving from the suburbs to a more walkable community. Or maybe downsize vehicles to something smaller and/or more fuel efficient. Or you might do what we did and simply become a one-car household.


Should You Keep “To-Do” Lists After You Retire

As a person who likes to plan, I make lists. Granted, all of my lists aren’t created equal. For example, I plan our meals using lists. It helps us save money on groceries and we don’t waste food. I also have a list of small tasks that I need to complete during the day like “buy tickets to see Bohemian Rhapsody on Friday”. I can’t imagine when I retire that I would stop making those types of lists.

Regardless of where you are in your retirement planning process, making sure to think about all of the aspects involved in retirement is important. I’d like to think that anyone considering retirement wants to know they’re as ready as they can possibly be for the future. 

Healthy Aging is Trendy Thanks to Global Shift

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wall art with the sentence the time of your life while healthy aging

We know that healthy aging is important. Harvard Health reports that more seniors are opting to age in place rather than pursue other options. They recommend a checklist of potential health-related issues that should be considered for successful healthy aging. These include strength, flexibility, sharp thinking skills, and endurance among others.

Right now, only 15 countries have more than 20% of their population at an age of 65 or above. That number of countries is expected to grow to 44 by 2030 and to 61 by 2050. For the first time globally in 2018, the number of people over 65 has surpassed those under 5 and that number has only grown since.

The growing numbers of aging adults has prompted AARP to partner with the University of Michigan to create the National Poll on Healthy Aging (NPHA). The goal of the survey is to tap into perspectives of older adults and their caregivers to help inform the public, health care providers, and policymakers on issues related to healthy aging.

With the onset of COVID-19, NPHA has focused many of their surveys around the risks for older adults. Shifts to telehealth visits and patient portals showed lack of medical information access at a time when it is needed most. 

The healthy aging trend has not been lost on Madison Avenue and other leading marketers throughout the globe. As a result, many brands are viewing seniors as a prized demographic. They are expanding their product offerings along with their marketing budgets to reach the over-65 consumer. And even a few brands that target a much younger audience are developing new product lines with healthy aging in mind.

For instance, a company which makes infant formula has now launched a product in China that it says contains ingredients to boost the immune system in aging consumers. Another company introduced a powdered milk drink targeting older adults which it says enhances mobility during aging.

Swedish furnishing retailer IKEA has expanded its product line to include upright armchairs with higher seating to make it a little easier for aging adults to rise out of their chairs. Proctor & Gamble Co. has started selling razors  that they envision for caregivers in Canada, where company data shows one in four people helps someone with aging-related needs.

Not surprisingly, this product expansion has extended to skin and beauty products and the trend is expected to continue longer-term. It’s too early to tell the outcome of marketer focus on mature consumers. For now, we can probably just be thankful that executives want us to stay healthy later in life.

What We Are UP To: Winter Rituals Edition

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winter snowflake painted on a winter window

This is always the time of year when we’re thinking about goals and resolutions. But I’m wondering if instead of making resolutions this winter, would it make more sense to develop rituals. You know, like a morning ritual or evening ritual. Maybe even rituals by season? I saw this article on The Everygirl blog titled “10 Rituals I’ll Be Using to Stay Healthy During the Holidays” and it made me think that rituals could give us something to look forward to. Here’s what else we’re looking forward to this month. 

Watching | Netflix

> After ditching traditional cable, we’ve decided to check out what Netflix has to offer. I’ve heard nothing but good things about “The Queen’s Gambit” and “Bridgerton”. If you have a Netflix favorite, be sure to drop it in the comments. 

Reading | Annual Credit Reports

> The Fair Credit Reporting Act (FCRA) requires each of the nationwide credit reporting companies – Equifax, Experian, and TransUnion – to provide you with a free copy of your credit report, at your request, once every 12 months. I’ve set up a reminder to do this every winter. I guess you could call it a winter ritual. 

Remembering | Seinfeld Strategy

> I recently wrote a post about the Seinfeld Strategy and how to use it as a way to develop a new habit. On some level, I view rituals as habits. Like remembering to floss every day. Whether you’re setting a goal, making a resolution, developing a habit, or creating a winter ritual, the Seinfeld Strategy can help you stick to it.  

Working On | Our backyard

> We’ve been living in our new home for a little over a year. When we first moved in, it was really tempting to look at new furniture. Especially for the backyard. But we said that we wanted to live in the house for a while to get some sense of what we would use. It was a good decision. We bought a couple of things over the holidays and they’re not at all what we were originally looking at. 

Feeling | Stressed

> I’d like to think that regardless of your politics, we can agree the past few months have been more than a little stressful. And I’m not sure that is going away anytime soon. That being said, a certain amount of stress can be good for us. There are also ways to manage stress this winter. I came across this article in Lifehacker titled “Exercise is Stress Relief So You Should Probably Go Exercise Right Now”. Besides the title making me laugh, it reminded me that taking time for ourselves should always be a part of our rituals. 

Planning | Eating Better

> Honestly, eating better is always on my to-do list. Somedays I’m really great at it. Other days, I’m not. Part of the challenge right now is the pandemic. We love picking up fresh fruits and vegetables. But that means visiting groceries and markets more often. We’re trying to conserve our trips. So, I’m trying to figure out what to do with frozen fruits and veggies. 

Loving | Peakay Silver

> Speaking of the pandemic, one of the things that’s a PITA is trying to get your mask on/off with hoop or dangling earrings. And unfortunately, I don’t own a lot of small earrings. So, I picked up a pair of little heart earrings from Peakay Silver. Gorgeous! Excellent quality.

Geeking | Hot Cocoa Bombs

> Have you seen these? They are chocolate orbs filled with hot cocoa mix and marshmallows (sometimes other treats are added). You put them in a mug and pour warm milk over them. Viola! The orb opens up and you have hot cocoa. The “bombs” are beautiful to look at. The presentation is fun. And they taste good. If you’re looking for a little something to break up your winter routine…this might be it.

We hope you’re staying safe and warm this winter. What’s UP with you? Tell us your winter routines!

My First Virtual or Telehealth Doctor Visit

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robotic man looking into a mirror simulating a virtual or Telehealth doctor visit

Estimated reading time: 3 minutes

We all read the same headlines. COVID-19 infections are reaching record highs throughout the country. And, while the vaccine is starting to roll out earlier than expected, most Americans will experience the impact of COVID-19 at least for several more months. Winter is a particularly difficult time since it’s historically our cold and flu season.

That’s why I decided to change my last doctor visit, just before Thanksgiving, to a virtual one.

Telehealth is not new (believe it or not, medical professionals wrote about using the telephone in 1879 – just 3 years after Bell invented it), but it is gaining significantly in popularity. A July 2019 survey reported that only 9.6% of U.S. adults have used telehealth options. By May 2020, that number had grown to 42%. 

The biggest obstacle to telehealth appears to be lack of knowledge about virtual medical visits. I was fortunate that my family doctor advertised on his website that he offers virtual visits. I just called to convert my in-person office visit to telehealth. Here are a few things you should probably know:

  1. Telehealth is more than just a telephone conversation. The doctor will probably want to see you as well as talk with you. Think of it more like a Zoom meeting. Because of video, there may be limitations on the type of technology your doctor can accommodate so ask about your specific phone or computer when you make the appointment.
  1. Just like at an office visit, your doctor will want to know a few things about your current health up front. I was asked to provide my temperature, blood pressure, weight, and blood oxygen level. Fortunately, I own a blood pressure monitor and a finger pulse oximeter. And different offices may request different things so find out up front what information you need to provide.
  1. Not every insurance company accepts telehealth visits, so make sure your insurance will cover it. The major insurance companies all offer some form of coverage, but options can vary depending on specific plans. State laws also cover telehealth differently. 

My doctor’s assistant called me fifteen minutes before my appointment to make sure I was able to log-in. You will need a high-speed internet connection and video access via a smart phone, tablet, or computer. Don’t worry, if you can stream movies you have enough technology to get through a telehealth visit.

The actual doctor part was pretty much the same as an in-office visit, except that it was through video. We talked about my bloodwork, discussed my general health since my last appointment, and he answered a few of my questions. I didn’t really have anything that I needed him to look at or listen to, so my experience may differ from yours.

A recent survey shows that 48% of adults say that they or someone in their household either postponed or passed up medical appointments since COVID-19. Telehealth visits may offer an effective solution. We all just have to get comfortable with it. Once we do that, it could be a great solution that extends far beyond the pandemic.

Estimated reading time: 3 minutes