LifePower

Tax Free Health Savings Acount (TFHSA)

With the economy the way it is today, it’s natural for our attention to be drawn to the words “tax-free”. In February 2008 the Canadian Federal Government introduced the new tax-free savings account (TFSA). These became available the following year and are being used by more than 87% of taxpaying Canadians.

With my background as a financial advisor I’d like to remind you about the “tax-free health savings account (TFHSA)”. It’s been around a long time but is not being used by as many Canadians as it should. And unlike the TFSA, my TFHSA has the potential for paying healthy sized dividends. Many savvy investors will understand the inherent benefit of receiving dividends.

I opened my first TFHSA in 1980 after meeting Ken Cooper a doctor of medicine and former Air Force Colonel from Oklahoma, who introduced the previously unheard-of concept of aerobics to the American Air Force – and, to the world.

This was truly revolutionary at the time. Imagine a world today without aerobics.

I was his guide when he visited Vancouver in 1980 to speak at a conference. During those three short days he convinced me, an over-weight non-exerciser aged thirty- something, to join the local YMCA marathon clinic and/or to get active. I did as he recommended and eventually ran my first marathon (and finished) five months later and ran another four marathons before quitting the sport when it became more popularized. My health savings account had started to grow!

The next significant deposit into this special account was made when I visited the Cooper Center for Aerobics in Texas. What an experience that was. I’d never been examined so closely by so many health professionals. I walked away with a written plan and renewed confidence I was indeed on the right track.

Then marriage and kids came along. My deposits became a little smaller for quite a few years but I still managed to make the minimum contribution to keep the fund growing and not to lose sight of the bigger, longer term picture.

In 2008 I came across Dan Buettner, National Geographic researcher and author of the book Blue Zones. His book documents pods of people who have lived the longest, happiest lives and the common lifestyle characteristics they have enabling them to have done so. His book refocused me and I decided to increase my health saving targets.

The 10^th anniversary of 9/11 started for me like most other North Americans. Having watched some of the Ground Zero TV reporting I hopped on my bike with the intention of doing some interval training on nearby Knox Mountain.

I had completed my ride and was on my way home when I felt some discomfort around my neck. Riding a little slower I managed the five kilometre ride home and even thought about calling into the hospital for a check, but decided against it.

Less than an hour later I had taken myself into emergency and was diagnosed as having a heart attack. Wow, with so little discomfort I could hardly believe my ears. Was this some kind of drill?

Within minutes I was being prepped for an angioplasty which was completed in less than 90-minutes of my arrival. With my discharge taking place 68 hours later I’ve had difficulty reconciling my situation and what I had been through. Today, ten days later, I am counting myself as a very fortunate person.

By now you are likely getting the story and the writer's licence I have used in the terminology “tax-free health savings account”. I hope it got your attention as much as the heart attack got mine!

My philosophy for the last thirty years has been to actively avoid all potential contact with public health care, except for annual physicals. In 1980 I had a choice to open a health savings account. Ten days ago that account was called upon and paid great dividends. Even my complete recovery time will be reduced and any future risk significantly mitigated.

I have just returned from a post-angioplasty fitness assessment. All of the numbers that count were well within the normal recovery guidelines. Heck, I was even told I can do some moderate biking next week. Health science is remarkable and the attention I got was five-star plus. But like the boy scouts say you have to “be prepared”. Sadly there are still too many folks who have yet to make that first investment or in fact need to increase their rate of savings. If this applies to you, don’t delay!

 

 

 

Boomer Triathletes

The 2011 Subaru Ironman Triathlon took place in Penticton, BC this last weekend. With temperatures in the low 30C's - 2,841 participated. Boomers included:

M50-54   245   F50-54   96

M55-59   134   F55-59   39

M60-64   64    F60-64    6

M65-69    25

F80+         1 (DNF)   

 

 

Municipal Bill

Two summers ago I was fortunate to meet a man I have given the code name Municipal Bill. You might recall the story... Bill took a huge leap of faith one day and along with his beloved decided to quit the rat race of being an owner of a franchise business in eastern Canada. Living in a smaller community they just could not get away from the identity their business had imposed upon them... an identity that in many respects did not match their core-selves. Their real identities had been "swallowed" by their business success. So it was time for a change.

Now they live very happily in a mountain town just west of Calgary, Alberta. A few days ago I met up with Bill for the third time to catch-up on his life. Long gone are the trappings of running a franchise business 24/7/365. Hello to new pastimes in nature and new second life opportunities. Soon he turns fifty-something.

I'll post an update on Bill's journey shortly... watch for this! By the way... one thing has not changed... Bill's glass is always seventy per cent full... at least!

Never Let Them Go

According to a new report released by Statistics Canada August 17, 2011, the Canadian labour force is undergoing a drastic change. Attracting and retaining workers is about to become more difficult and a more competitive process.

While businesses can invest in machinery and automation to improve efficiencies they also need to invest more in retaining their best talent.

Baby boomers feel that retirement no longer means an end to working but a new chapter of life. Pre-retirees say they now intend to delay retirement triggered in part by a longer and healthier mid-life stage and a financial need.

These are reasons for organizations to pay more attention to their grey power. Mature talent is one of the most important assets an organization has.

These are five ways to create an older-worker-friendly organization.

Start Early to build a culture that shouts out “we’d like you to stay”. Employees look for a match in values between themselves and the organization. Create a value proposition for them to stay and communicate it consistently in different ways. Create a purpose-driven environment that supports long-term involvement.

Promote Inter-Generational Collaboration. One client, Urban Systems, encourages all “generations” of employees to participate and collaborate:

• First generation – novice employees - get to contribute what may be called “fresh” ideas. This is a starting point for them to fully understand and “feel” the culture. It gets them off to a good start. But be prepared, it might also weed out employees who are not long term fits for the organization. That’s a good thing. 
• Second generation – mid-career employees – experience greater competence and responsibility in their work and pass this along. It promotes clarity around emerging roles. 
• Third generation – late-career employees – have the opportunity to exhibit more leadership and share more knowledge as mentors.
• Fourth generation – elder employees now retired – can provide the glue to future transitions. Encourage them to become sounding boards to younger generations. Encourage successful transition story-telling in workshops. They may even help attract and influence future hires and finally elders become the institutional memory of a multi-generational organizations.

Flex-Exit Plans: Organizations that offer more than one exit plan for retiring employees have a greater chance of retaining them longer. These exit plans may incorporate part-time, distance-working, contract and even gap-year strategies with varying compensation and benefit programs.

Build the Commitment by encouraging conversation and contribution. Organizations that offer facilitated career-development opportunities have the most to gain. Individual employee succession plans can be established and dove-tailed with others’ plans given sufficient notice.

Involve Life Partners: Retirement is not done alone when a couple is involved. Benefit plans are seldom the subject of conversation in the home. Spouses want to learn more about pension and investment plans offered by their partner’s organization and how they might be integrated with personal financial planning. A couple’s workshop is often the starting point of a more focused look at a soon to be transition.

Leading organizations who invest today in their mature workers will reap handsomely in tomorrow’s labour market while promoting organizational values and productivity today.

Ask about our eight-presenter comprehensive Changing the Way we Retire workshop. It brings 18 hours of insightful, practical, engaging and inspiring information to help employees aged 50-plus, together with their life partner, plan for the next stage of their life.

 

 

 

 

Do You Need a Retirement Coach

The missing link for many boomers is that they have failed to plan early enough for retirement… as early as 10 years out I suggest and if married, with both partners participating.

My theory is that as we grow in our professional lives we consistently compromise ourselves in order to fit in and to be successful. When this happens over several decades we actually lose track of our core-selves. When we leave our careers we leave behind our professional identity, along with all the other familiarities and privileges associated with work. Because work has likely been so all-consuming new and happy-ever-after “R” lives become more of a chore and anxiety as we attempt to find our way.

But much of this angst can be readily exchanged for much happier and meaningful lives with proven assessments, challenged thinking and the desire to go beyond the “R” malaise. The older you get the clues come further from in the past. In many respects we become who we are as a result of life-triggering events. Connecting with these events is crucial in understanding who we really are and where we belong.

Checking in with our forgotten values and unique abilities provide strong clues as to what will fulfill us during the newly extended mid-life stage of our lives. These assessments will also help us experience a new depth of relationship with our life partners, a critical component given the high divorce rates in this age and stage of life.

Retirement coaching will take you beyond your previous best efforts to build clarity, momentum and results.

To receive your free Are You Ready for Retirement assessment contact nigel@lifeplanningmatters.com

Got five minutes for micro-exercise?

There is now sufficient research that tells us that almost any form of exercise is generally good for us. Studying clusters of people from around the world who live longer, better - you find many of them do not use convenience-tools in or outside of the home. They do things in what might be described as "in the old-fashioned way". Brooming out the garage instead of using one of those ridicuoulsy loud blowers. Hand clipping a hedge instead of an electrical clipper while climbing up and down a ladder and even beating eggs by hand.

Now a Queen's University of Toronto study confirms that bursts of moderate activity as short as one-minute can add up to significant health gains. It's defined as an activity requiring you to burn three to six times as many calories as you burn at rest.

Brooming the garage out by hand has a metabolic equivalent (ME) of 3.3 when compared to ironing's ME of 1.8 and ballroom dancing's ME of 5.5. Every little bit of moderate activity counts and this is good news for many aging-boomers.

For Vivian Poy, the first Canadian Senator of Asian descent, she includes gardening gloves and a shovel in her workout tools. She includes stretching exercises before and after gardening and sit-ups as she watches the television news. Citing her arthritis, she says she can no longer lift heavy things but accepts her limitations and has substituted a range of micro-exercises.

Read more about the Queen's University study: http://tinyurl.com/3c8bvnd

Boomer Employees Rewrite the Concept of Aging in the Workplace

Just yesterday I was at my local java café listening to two men chatting about their experiences in swimming and tennis… experiences at the masters’ level of both provincial and national competitions.

Because of their sporting activities it was impossible to peg their ages… they both looked to be in their late 60’s. I was in for a surprise… they were 73 and 76 and apparently fit as fiddles; mentally and physically – and still working.

I was experiencing the living proof that mid-life is getting longer for many employed boomers… a lot longer, and many are healthier than previous generations at a similar age.

Employers are recognising these mid-life trends of robust health and engagement by committing more “air time” to their employees to explore a variety of retirement issues and options. They realize their older employees want to contribute longer, are willing to change or evolve their roles – and, that it makes excellent business sense to commit to a viable employee succession plan that includes transitions to part-time, consulting, distance working, and a philosophy of mentoring younger employees.

One employer client of mine has designed a “Chain of Progression” covering the four generations of an employee’s tenure – Novices and Up & Comers – Mid-Career – Late-Career and Elders. For each of these four employee generations the company has mapped out a communications and education strategy to promote inter-generational collaboration and conversation.

This process creates greater employee clarity about emerging roles, options and opportunities. New work forms can be explored and rather than holding back a knowledge-exchange, a company-wide spirit of transfer becomes more evident.

The overall result encourages both the employer and employee to be more proactive and to communicate at a high level. It recognizes that no two employees are the same and provides an opportunity to resolve most workplace and retirement transition issues.

For best results employers are advised to start this process early enough so that it becomes part of an on-going corporate communications plan. Starting at age 50 the process becomes more focused and tailored as the employee gets closer to retirement or a scaled back work schedule. Both parties are then best prepared for change.

Readers can contact me to learn more about these multifaceted plans.

 

 

 

 

 

20 Tips to Maintain Extra-Ordinary Energy

1.  When you wake up in the morning recite your own inspirational mantra... mine is: "Everything and more is coming my way, it's all good and I deserve it." Nigel Brown

2.  Take a 10-30 minute walk every day... while you walk, smile.  Take in and notice the nature around you.  It's the ultimate anti-depressant. “Sometimes the truth depends upon a walk around the lake.”  Wallace Stevens

3. Sit in silence for at least 10 minutes each day. Buy a lock if you have to

4. Forget the television. Visit my friend's url instead... www.feelingsoulgood.com

5. Know and practice your purpose in life... I coach folks in finding their calling and purpose. "Purpose is the anchor in life that will get you through life when nothing else will." Richard Leider

6. If you don’t have a dog volunteer at the SPCA and walk one of their dogs.  Be the person your dog thinks you are

7. Make time to practice meditation and prayer - yoga, tai chi or qigong. They provide us with fuel for the soul

8. Spend more time with elders in conversation... inter-generational living is a real tonic

9. Remain as curious as a three-year old, to the world around you

10. Speak your truth, to everyone always... without apology

11. "Drink plenty of cold water.  Eat nothing that is fried or frozen" My wonderful Mother Katherine 

12. Make at least 3 people smile each day :) :) :)

13. Clear away clutter and open the gunnels to new flows of energy

14. Monitor your energy level... refuel your energy tank often... stay away from energy guzzlers... “anything or anyone that does not bring you alive is too small for you” David Whyte – Sweet Darkness

15. "Recognize we are all just bozos on the bus... only some of us know we are bozos" Wavy Gravy

16. Bring your own music to the world often - what you do best

17. Smile and laugh more

18. Keep a journal and before you go to bed… complete the following statements:

I am grateful for __________. Today I accomplished____________.

19. When the white water of life appears read your journal for inspiration and hope

20. Life is not a packaged tour... expect adventure. "One can live magnificently in this world if one knows how to work and how to love". Leo Tolstoy

 

Changing Attitudes

We read about it, we may intuitively agree with it and yet many of us find it difficult to do… but then our brains are not wired to make change easily.

The “what” is: Engaging in an active lifestyle. Evidence is piling up that Canadians’ physical-activity levels are dropping while indicators of chronic disease are getting worse. Integrate the fact that our population is aging and these facts threaten to balloon health-care costs even higher. (Oh not to be a policy maker in the years to come!)

McGill University will shortly launch the Bloomberg-Manulife Prize for the Promotion of Active Health. The prize’s broad focus on all areas of physical exercise and lifestyle is unique to Canada, and maybe in all of North America. It’s timely as alarming numbers of Canadians are ignoring even the basic recommendations (recently reduced by Health Canada) for maintaining an active lifestyle.

Like in so many other areas involving consistent change, researchers believe they have to address and increase peoples’ motivation. A lack of time is the most frequent excuse for not being active and yet we all have the same number of hours in a day… don’t we?

Another factor is that Canadians still think physical activity and diet are only important for people who are overweight. No!

So it comes down to a change in behaviour. One of my heroes in this effort is Dan Buettner author of Blue Zones… his name has become synonymous with a healthy lifestyle in our family. His research has found the common denominators in a variety of international communities that have contributed to healthy aging… and they are so simple to adopt and to foster.

When we eat a DanB style meal we all say "This would make Dan proud!" When we use the broom the cleanup outside versus one those insanely noisy blowers we again congratulate ourselves. Heck, we saw an elder manually trimming a 12-foot high hedge the other day and congratulated him saying he would likely live to be 100. His response, "I am already 86." Wow!

However, even our family sometimes needs extra motivation. Mine is simply this… take a look at our burgeoning health care system now… read the reports… read the challenges… check out the projected costs…and then create a mantra… perhaps like this…

"My continuing good health is dependent on me. I create time each day to stay physically active. By so doing I am avoiding the public health care system which is not for me".

 

 

 

The Heart Prevents Your Body From Rusting

A special friend of mine recently returned from England. Jill is a great lover of books and cannot resist going into "every" bookshop, particulary those in England that have so many older and antique books to muse through.

So it came as no surprise that my gift from Jill was a book and secondly it was about ageing. When I saw the subtitle The Heart Prevents Your Body From Rusting I could not resist opening it immediately. But not before she told me the compelling story of purchasing the book.

She was catching up with three longtime girl friends. Mary went off by herself to do some shopping while Jill and Sharon went to the bookstore. Jill saw the book and knew I would like a copy. When the three reconvened later for a glass of wine, Mary produced her gifts for Jill and Sharon. Guess what? They were the same book... Ageing Without Growing Old by French author Marie de Hennezel.

Right away I will say this is a book to have on your shelf if you are over the age of 60 and are interested in living longer better.

In this eloquent meditation on ageing, Marie de Hennezel guides us through a true 'art of growing old'. She recalls her encounters as a clinical psychologist with extraordinary people who 'grow old gracefully' - and through her experience shows us how to make the most of this time in our lives, to avoid depression and to stay happy. She believes that wherever we grow old and whatever our circumstances, if we can maintain energy in our hearts and believe in the power of joy and human warmth, this can transform us and the way we look at the world. This is a wonderful book with a powerful message that applies to everyone no matter how old they are. A bestseller in the author's native France, critics said: Marie de Hennezel explores the secret of eternal youth and provides us with the keys for a happy, free and spirited old age. A must read.

Two sections that I enjoyed and believe in most... the benefits of inter-generational living and what matters most as we age.