Do you have any financial regrets as you approach retirement? If we’re honest, every one of us would have to answer “yes.” We look back over debts we incurred, foolish purchases we made, investments that went sideways or money we misspent and we can’t help experiencing a little second-guessing. The good news is that we’re…
All through our adult lives we’re continually reminded of the importance of paying our bills on time. One of the chief benefits: a high credit score, the Holy Grail of good money management. With a high credit score, we’re told, credit card companies, mortgage companies and car loan companies will be tying themselves in proverbial…
Memorial Day is our annual reminder that we in the U.S. owe a debt of gratitude to our armed forces veterans that we can never adequately repay. One of the ways we seek to show that gratitude to the millions of men and women who have served in our nation’s military branches is to provide…
For several years families looking for nursing home care for a loved one have relied on Medicare’s Nursing Home Compare website. This site provides quality ratings for more than 15,000 facilities nationwide, awarding grades of one to five stars in three evaluation categories – health inspections, staffing levels, and clinical data – plus an “Overall”…
We know the feeling well. You’re still working full time, yet retirement is drawing closer every day. The idea of no longer working full time used to seem so strange and so distant – yet now, as more and more of your friends retire, you find yourself counting down the days with a mix of…
Averages can be misleading things. If you buy a vacation home based on the “average” temperature, you might be surprised by blazing summers and frigid winters. Baseball fans who put too much stock in batting averages are disappointed when the best players strike out twice as often as they get a hit. When it comes…
What are you afraid of? Are there things that keep you awake nights or cause your knees to tremble just thinking about them? If you search online for most people’s Top Ten Fears, you’ll find a predictable list: public speaking, flying, snakes, heights, spiders, going to the dentist, and so on. But based on a…
In what Kaiser Health News calls “a crackdown” on short-staffed nursing homes, the Centers for Medicare and Medicaid Services (CMS) has just downgraded the ratings of one-tenth of the nation’s nursing homes. That’s according to this article recently published on the Kaiser Health News website. The biggest problem area: a chronic lack of nursing staff.…
Picture this: two senior adults are sitting side by side. They’re the same gender, about the same age, and in similar health. One appears sad, downcast, even gloomy – the other is cranky, angry and chronically irritated. Which one would you guess is at greater risk of developing serious health problems? Anger Management: Anger Causes…
An unnerving article we discovered last year in the New York Times asked a penetrating question: could the rise in rates of depression and suicide be somehow linked to increasing use of common prescription drugs, some of which are also available over the counter? This inquiry was prompted by a 2018 report showing that m0re…