Sixty isn’t the “New” Anything

Sixty isn’t the “New” Anything

BLOGGER: RENEE FISHER

I’m venting. I’m seriously so tired of hearing people say things like “Sixty is the new fifty.” Or forty. Or even thirty. This morning, on one of the talk shows, I caught about 30 seconds of the guest going on and on about how sixty-year olds should go mountain climbing and have pajama parties and join Facebook and meet people on Match.com, whatever they want. OK, I thought, I like the general concept. But then the host asked, “So sixty is the new forty?” I froze. The guest chirpily answered, “No, sixty is the new twenty!!!”

OK, folks, here’s the deal. Sixty isn’t anything other than sixty. Got it? If you are twenty, and you like to jump up and down on a bed and have pillow fights, does that make twenty the new five?” If you are twenty, you are twenty. If you are sixty, you are sixty. Sorry, but the iPad doesn’t, to my knowledge, include a time machine.

I know what people are trying to say, but I’d like it said in a different way, a meaningful way: Sixty-year olds are redefining what it means to be sixty. We aren’t any age other than what we are. We are simply giving a new definition of what that is. My sixty three isn’t twenty (A quick check of my body parts will confirm that). But, my sixty three is vastly different than my parents’ sixty three.

Sixty year olds now have access to all the wonders medical science can provide, including replacing or repairing a lot of internal and external body parts. Medications and nutrition keep us alive longer. Gyms are on every street corner. And the internet allows up to connect with each other in a way that our parents’ generation couldn’t have conceived of (I met my Now Husband Dan on Match.com).

So, please, give us the respect we deserve. I’ve worked hard to get to where I am today. I wouldn’t change that for anything. That doesn’t mean I wouldn’t like to magically change some things (two, for example). It just means I like me and I like me at sixty three. I’m not the “new twenty.” I’m the “new sixty three.”

I’m finished now.

Renee Fisher is a Realtor and writer who lives in the Washington, DC area.  She is the co-author of two award-winning books about life after 50 www.invisiblenomore.com and is the DC Boomer Humor columnist for examiner.com DC-Boomer-Humor-Examiner.

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Midlife “Body Flow”

Midlife Body Flow

BLOGGER:  RENEE FISHER

Twice a week, I take a Pilates Reformer class at my gym. The “Reformer” is a big, lightly padded board on wheels, with levers, pulleys, weights, and other components, all employed without the benefit of a user’s manual. It was either invented by Mr Pilates, the same person who invented people like Madonna, who is one of his disciples. Or, it might have been invented by some unnamed person who wanted to “reform” what Mr Pilates invented, since regular Pilates consists of human beings working out on the floor, whereas this gives a person thousands of dollars worth of apparatus to insert between the floor and one’s body. In addition, we are sometimes given a large, hollow, padded box to place either “long ways” or “short ways” on the board. Since, as well all know now, I am still not clear which way is “long ways” or “short ways.” I watch what other people are doing, and copy them. Other equipment includes the “magic ring,” the “jump board” and “the pole.” I choose to take Reformer classes instead of regular Pilates, because when I tell people I do “Reformer Pilates” they have no idea what I am talking about and so are completely impressed. They assume it is some advanced form of Pilates, known only to Victoria Beckham and other anointed individuals. The exact opposite is true. Reformer means no working on the floor, which is much easier. And, because space is limited due to the size of the machines, it also means much smaller classes, affording either individual attention or, on really good days, some kibitzing among participants that can waste some time. The downside to Reformer is that it costs money in addition to my monthly gym membership. Regular Pilates is included in the membership fee. But I have never given even a thought to regular Pilates, so I keep paying. There is a lovely, older woman in my Reformer class. She is in her eighties and brings her portable oxygen equipment with her. I am not making this up. I like having her in class, because she needs extra time to arrange her oxygen whenever we switch position, and this corresponds exactly with the extra time I need to figure out what the instructor is talking about, since I am usually initially facing the exact opposite way that everyone else is. One day last week, the sweet older woman suggested to me that I take a class called “Body Flow,” which is, like regular Pilates, included in gym membership. She takes Body Flow once a week and Reformer once a week. It works perfectly for her. She said Body Flow allows people to work at their own level. This sold me. First off, I like the phrase “Body Flow.” And it has the added advantage of being something else that others are unfamiliar with when I tell them what I do at the gym. I took the Body Flow class a couple days later. There were about twenty women in the room, whose combined weight equaled one large meal. Our equipment consisted of a mat the thickness of a good quality paper towel. I should add that the sweet older woman wasn’t there. As I came into the gym, I had noticed her in the Reformer room, a bad sign. Aside from two grey-haired women who each looked like when they are not at the gym they are hiking the Appalachian Trail, I was old enough to be everyone else’s mother. The instructor started with the following words: “We have a really, really tough workout planned today! Get ready! We will twist our bodies around in all kinds of ways that human bodies are not meant to twist! This will be brutal!” I scanned the room, Apparently, these words were greeted as positive, since everyone around me looked like hyenas just presented with a fresh zebra kill. The instructor proceeded by throwing out names of positions in rapid-fire manner. Most of them involved animals. To me, everything sounded like “The Down Dirty Dog,” except for the one called either “Ape” or “Gorilla,” which involved bending over from a standing position and placing the entire palms of one’s hands under one’s feet. After awhile, I really wasn’t paying much attention. I sort of slumped down on my mat and wondered why an eighty-something year old woman with portable oxygen equipment would do this to me. Isn’t there some kind of rule that when people get to be a certain age they can’t screw around with your life?

Renee Fisher is a Realtor and writer who lives in the Washington, DC area.  She is the co-author of two award-winning books about life after 50 www.invisiblenomore.com and is the DC Boomer Humor columnist for examiner.com DC-Boomer-Humor-Examiner.

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Sex and the Sixty: The Date

Sex and the Sixty: The Date

Blogger: Renee Fisher

Before reading, if you haven’t read the first three blogs in the series, you can click the links below:

Sex and the Sixty: Online Dating

Sex and the Sixty: Susan Gets Online

Sex and the Sixty: Not a Good Match

Sex and the Sixty: The Coffee Shop

When my friend Susan goes on actual dates, she does exactly the same things that most people do.  She goes out to dinner.  She goes to the movies.  She goes to female impersonator shows.  But somehow, the end result always seems to veer off course.

Sometimes, she and the guy never even make it to the actual date.  On one occasion, she and her date planned a picnic.  They would meet in the parking lot near the picnic area.  They had decided that they would each bring food.  Susan was to bring the wine; her date was to bring an assortment of cheeses and crackers.  A romantic first date was anticipated by Susan.  Subsequent events would make her less optimistic.  Her date was late, and then, when he finally arrived, she watched him circle the parking lot for about five minutes before he finally parked the car.

When he did finally did pull into a parking space and Susan came over to his car, she asked him if there was a problem.  He said there was no problem, but he immediately complained about the day being so warm and his wanting a soda during the drive and stopping at a 7-11 to get one, but not being willing to spend $1.50.  Susan then told him that she had wanted to call him to see why he was late, but she didn’t have his cell number.  He told her he didn’t own a cell phone because they were too expensive.

They then walked to what Susan described as “the edge a cliff” (Susan doesn’t get into parks very often).   Susan carried a bottle of wine and two glasses.  She noticed that her date didn’t seem to be carrying anything.

By now, she was adding up all the negatives of the situation and deciding that she really just wanted to go home.  She told him she wasn’t feeling well, and decided to pass on the “picnic.”  Her date expressed concern and asked her if she wanted to just go back to his car, sit and eat the crackers and two slices of Velveeta that were in his pocket.  Susan told him she was allergic to Velveeta and left.  She took the bottle of wine home with her and consumed a fair amount of it that evening.

Another favorite of mine (I’m not sure why Susan doesn’t find quite the humor in it that I do), is one that I referred to briefly in a previous column.  I will now divulge all the details.  Susan and a man planned a movie date at a theater that was located in a shopping mall.  By the time they arrived, the theater was packed, and they couldn’t find seats together.  Her date rearranged the entire audience by telling them he was going to propose to her and they had to sit together. One of the people who was forced out of her seat was an elderly woman with a walker.  She ended up being moved to the first row, and being separated from her companion, all in the name of “love.”

Susan was mortified, but she said nothing.  The movie began and after about 30 minutes, Susan’s date announced that he was going to get popcorn.  He then disappeared for an hour.  Susan considered the possibilities and decided that one of two things had occurred.   Either he had a heart attack and the EMT had taken him away, not knowing that he had a date still sitting in the movie.  The other possibility was that the elderly woman in the front row had beaten him senseless with her walker.

It turned out that neither of these had occurred.  Her date finally returned, loaded with packages.  He said he had gone shopping because he didn’t like the movie.  He especially needed a new pair of shoes, and luckily, he found a store that had the perfect ones.  He then proceeded to dig into his shopping bag to show her.  Susan was so stunned, she didn’t say a word.  When the movie ended, she walked to the front of the theater to try to find the elderly woman and ask her if she could borrow her walker for a moment.  But the woman had already left.

I will explore more of Susan’s antics in subsequent postings.  Luckily for you and me, if not for Susan, there seems to be a never-ending supply.

Renee Fisher is a Realtor and writer who lives in the Washington, DC area.  She is the co-author of two award-winning books about life after 50  www.invisiblenomore.com and is the DC Boomer Humor columnist for  examiner.com DC-Boomer-Humor-Examiner.

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The Best is Yet to Be: The 40s

The Best is Yet to Be: The 40s

BLOGGER: DEBORAH HEISER, PHD

Midlife begins at 40. But what does MIDLIFE really mean? Does it mean an end to youth, a beginning of a new chapter in life? Is life half over by 40, or is 40 really the new 30? The answer? It’s all true. But…that isn’t all bad. We have a lot to look forward to! For example, did you know that in their 40s, most people become more intimate? Hmmm…I’ll talk more about that in a minute…And in your 50s you are likely to become more generative? This doesn’t mean that you become more productive; it means that you become more giving of yourself, which turns out to be a good thing not just for you, but also for all of those around you. Your 60s are likely to get even better, because by this time, you are likely to experience deeper intimacy and generativity. Wow. Chances are you’ll feel more fulfilled; have stronger relationships and just feel better about life. In other words, you are moving toward the feeling of a life well lived. And isn’t that what most of us aspire to?

So, come along and find out what is in store for midlife, beginning with the 40s.

Know Thyself

· We know ourselves better than we ever have once we reach our 40s.

· We are more likely to have reached a level of “intimacy” rather than “isolation”

· We have fewer but better friends than in our 20s and 30s

Twenty years ago, most people in their 40s were in an established career, relationship or marriage, and parents of children in their teens or beyond. When someone pictured a 40 year old, it was pretty different from the nearly impossible snapshot of what life looks like for people in their 40s today. The lifestyle has changed so that today, there are lots of people in their 40s getting married for the first time, having their first child and/or starting new careers. In this way, the 40s are like the new 30s. We’ve essentially, extended our youth (and that isn’t such a bad thing). There are some in their 40s who are sending their kids off to college, enjoying more free time and maybe even pondering retirement. But there are some defining features for our 40s. For one, most people know themselves better, and thus, are more comfortable with who they are. That inner voice becomes louder and demands we pay attention! Decisions tend to be made based on who you know yourself to be rather than who we think we should be (pleasing mom, friends, significant others).

This gives the 40-somethings the ability to:

· Speak frankly and openly

· Not take things so personally

· Be less superficial

· Expect to be listened to

· Savor life

· Be more resourceful

· Appreciate what makes people different (become less judgmental)

In essence, as the great psychologist Erik Erikson wrote over a half century ago, this boils down to a stronger self-identity, making the 40-somethings more secure, independent, and able to form closer relationships with others. Being less guarded and more self-assured opens us up for better, more meaningful interactions with others. —-This is intimacy. —- So, intimacy isn’t just found between the bed sheets. It isn’t just referring to relationships with a spouse or significant other. It is the relationship we have with our children, family and friends too. In our 40s, we hope to achieve a healthy level of intimacy. The alternative to intimacy, what we are fighting to overcome, is isolation. What this really means is:

Intimacy Isolation

Retain a sense of self Not achieving a sense of reciprocity from others

Isolation likely is due to a lack of sense of self or insecurity, making it difficult to form secure relationships with others. We can see, when people go through “blips” in life, where external forces affect our lives, that our sense of self can be “rocked” which can make a strong relationship go through an unstable or less stable period. We can also see that some people who don’t know themselves, or are insecure about themselves start to find themselves, or become more in tune with their identity, and that can create difficulties in achieving or maintaining intimacy.

So to sum up the 40s, something changes as we age. Over time, we begin to become choosier about who we want to spend our spare time with. We have confidence in ourselves and don’t need friends around to simply tell us, “wow, cute hair…great handbag…cool boyfriend” like when we were in our 20s. It isn’t about the external stuff so much anymore. For the most part, we know what looks good on us, we know what we want to buy, and how we want to present ourselves. We aren’t buying new Prada shoes because a girlfriend has a pair or a new Iphone to be important (well, maybe that is stretching it).

So, tell us, have you reached the level of Intimacy in your 40s? – Simply leave a message in the comment box and it will be posted!

To read the bio for Deborah Heiser, click here.

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Sex and the Sixty: Online Dating

Sex and the Sixty: Online Dating

BLOGGER:  RENEE FISHER

My friend Susan has had such a long, varied and rocky career as a dating single, that I, as one of her closest and dearest friends, listen to her tragic stories, and, as the caring, compassionate person I am, laugh myself sick.

It’s tough not to.  Susan seems to attract a lot of really interesting and unique men.  Some of them have “handles” that conjure up visions that make me a bit queasy:

pistolhead

riding cowboy

katlicker

dixiekraut

pistolpete

swabjock

Now for the actual words:

“I’m 62 but still active…”

Is he saying he is still sexually active or that he still has the ability to get out of bed in the morning?

“I haven’t been with a woman in eight years.”

If someone wrote that to me, I would immediately consult an attorney to find out which criminal offenses would result in an eight year prison term.

“Do ya judge the book by the appearance of the cover, or do ya open the cover to find out if the table of contents captures and peaks your interest enough to read more?”

Actually, I like to scan the index first, then check out the footnotes.  Sometimes, I read the jacket, but other times I flip right to the author’s biography at the end…

This one is from “Looking For Busty”: “I am an older, independent, very safe, straight man in good shape and I like very much the younger woman who is busty, local and in very good shape for extra-curricular activities.”

Hey LFB, there are about 10,000 other guys waiting in line for her also.  Good luck.

“I am looking for one woman, not two or more…”

I’m wondering about a person who has to clarify this.  Has he had negative experiences with trying to find a soul mate and instead being tricked into having group sex?

“I am a very outgoing person and I always see the glass as half full.  I’ve been told that I have a very humorist personality.”

This is also called the “Will Rogers Syndrome.”

“I’d like to volunteer this; I look and act a lot younger than I actually am.”

I’d like to volunteer this: 95% of people over the age of 45 would probably write exactly the same thing about themselves.  The other 5% would use capital letters when they write the words “a lot.”

A recent poem Susan received had these lines hidden among all the others that professed undying love:

“When someone is willing to do without,

So your life is complete”

This would stop me in my tracks.  This guy is either Bernie Madoff writing from his North Carolina jail cell or a man looking for someone to donate a kidney.

Susan was really excited when I told her I would write columns about her attempts at internet dating.

“You can be my blind author!” she exclaimed.

“I think you meant ‘ghost writer’,” I said.

Oh boy, are we going to have fun with this one.

Renee Fisher is a Realtor and writer who lives in the Washington, DC area.  She is the co-author of two award-winning books about life after 50www.invisiblenomore.com and is the DC Boomer Humor columnist forexaminer.com DC-Boomer-Humor-Examiner.

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Resisting An Age Phobic Culture

Resisting An Age Phobic Culture

BLOGGER:   JESSE MENDES

There are some people in this world that approach every birthday in their later years with a sense of dread; an unwelcome, God-forsaken, doomsday event.

One of those people is my mother. Every year I try to remind her of the level of self possession and appreciation for life that she has now, that continues to grow as she gets older, and that she never had when she was young. Every year I point to her the strength, the beauty and the wisdom with which she perceives life now, that defines her day to day experience, and that only came with age. Every year, she admits I am right. My mother is an extraordinary woman with extraordinary depth, and a capacity for love and sheer delight that most people can only dream about. And yet despite her treasures; despite her sanctuary of a home and her beloved cat creatures and her rich social life and her back yard of magical forest fauna, every year, she fights me. Every year, as I implore her to remember who she is and how she inspires me, she clings to her disgust about age, insisting that I won’t understand until I reach her age.

Perhaps she is right. Except that I believe we all have, to some extent, a hand in how we experience, or respond to, the inevitabilities of life – and our emotional responses are shaped, in part, by our attitudes. And I don’t want to dread growing older. Maybe I can’t control that. Maybe there is some genetically-pre-disposed, universal experience to getting older that I’m oblivious to. Or maybe we’ve all been sold a bill of goods; an ideology so utterly devoid of virtue or any morsel of humanity – that to age is to become undesirable, impotent, irrelevant and disposable.

There it is. The elephant in the room. Well, hardly. Common attitudes about aging in North America are nothing short of pathological, and yet somehow, they make up most of the propaganda we all willingly participate in every day. My mother is one of many victims of a mass media marketing machine, peddling warped ideals of an age phobic culture. How will I fare? Will I succumb to mainstream dictum?

Not if I can help it.

Jesse Mendes is a writer, editor and journalist who is deeply committed to helping to change how older women are perceived in North America, and to dispeling the stigma around aging. Her blog can be found on the Blogroll on this web site, and on the link on her Twitter page, where she goes by the name SeptemberMay.

BLOG

Contact Jesse on Twitter

7 Myths About Women Over 50

SEVEN MYTHS ABOUT WOMEN OVER FIFTY

BLOGGERS: Renee Fisher, Joyce Kramer, and Jean Peelen

We three women over fifty decided some years ago to change the conversation about aging and dispel myths about women over fifty. These myths may have had validity when none of us humans lived much past age fifty or sixty. Remember our grandmothers? They looked old at forty. They wore housedresses and sturdy shoes. Their lives were all about raising their children, and when that was done it seemed that at least in society’s eyes, their lives were done.

Today we women over fifty have changed considerably. Our average life span is eighty-plus years. We are out in the world, making art, saving villages, improving our communities, keeping up with runway fashions, and living our lives. Yet somehow, myths remain. Here are the ones we keep encountering.

1. Women over fifty don’t care what they look like.

Since two out of the three of us are planning to have our next round of cosmetic surgery, we take exception to this. We now remember with fondness that construction workers used to give us wolf-whistles. We thought it obnoxious then. We miss it now. Women like us drag ourselves to the gym, where we get to compete with twenty-somethings for parking spaces and treadmills. We take Yoga and Pilates, go on diets, run marathons, go on diets, dye our hair, go on diets, get contact lenses, go on diets. We care. A lot.

2. Women over fifty don’t like sex.

Since one of the three of us is married, this is a touchy subject. The answer is, just let a healthy, willing, attractive male show up in our vicinity and we will be ready. Or, if even two out of three of those categories show up, we will be ready. Actually, “willing” might make up for any other shortfalls, depending on how long it’s been. And just think, since we can’t get pregnant, we can just zip past the pregnancy prevention shelf at the drug store.

3. Women over fifty find menopause terrible and debilitating.

YES! Menopause is TERRIBLE and DEBILITATING. It ruins our lives. It is the worst thing that has ever been invented in the history of the universe. It is worse than diet ice cream. OK, now that we have acknowledged that, can we please move on? The fact is that two of us didn’t even notice menopause, except that we could also zip right past the sanitary products shelf too. So, menopause exists and we’ll have it for awhile, and then we’ll get over it.

4. Women over fifty can’t keep up with the times.

Interesting, since women over fifty are the fastest growing group on Facebook. We three have six computers among us. We have and use PDAs, GPSs, and iPods. We have almost outgrown email, and are Facebooking and twittering. And let’s face it: Without us, a lot of the Help Lines would go out of business. We may have grown up in the Stone Age, but we have managed to survive into the computer age.

5. Women over fifty miss our children and only want to be with our grandchildren.

We love and adore our children. We love and adore our grandchildren. That’s the only acceptable answer, isn’t it, since this will be in print? We love them the most when they don’t ask us to baby sit too much. But seriously, we can love them and still want a life. That’s the bottom line.

6. Women over fifty fear change.

That’s really funny, since virtually everything about us is changing. Body parts are moving to different locations or vacating entirely. Hair is now appearing in places it never was and disappearing from places it used to be. We could go on and on. So, we say we don’t fear change. We are, and have been, the movers and shakers of our lives. Go to any art class and see who is involved in creative pursuit. Go to yoga or meditation classes to see the same. Look at the women starting new careers, or the ones running for office. Check out writing classes, art appreciation classes, cooking classes. Look at who is doing work in developing countries, starting foundations, traveling the world, raising money for causes, marching for causes. Change? Bring it on! We are well-practiced, and good at it.

7. Women over fifty are counting the days until retirement.

We agree with this statement. No matter how much we love our careers, we are chomping at the bit to have the time to travel, to explore, to start new businesses, to enroll in college, to volunteer, to write books, to inspire our daughters’ and granddaughters’ generations with the unlimited possibility we have. We can’t wait to retire so we can see what’s next. We have lived only the first half of our lives and are anxious to see what we will create in the second half.

So, let us bury the useless, outworn myths along with all other outmoded notions of who we women are and what we are up to in our lives. We are here. We’re living, laughing, loving, and planning to be so for the next fifty years.

All of these myths and more are dispelled in our new book Saving the Best for Last: Creating Our Lives After 50. You can read more about us and our books at www.invisiblenomore.com

Renee Fisher is a Realtor and writer who lives in the Washington, DC area.  She is the co-author of two award-winning books about life after 50www.invisiblenomore.com and is the DC Boomer Humor columnist forexaminer.com DC-Boomer-Humor-Examiner.

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SPANX

SPANX

BLOGGER: RENEE FISHER

I bought a lovely dress to wear to my son’s wedding last September.  I had to wear Spanx with this dress.  Most people know about Spanx.  I know about it because my former best friend Jean became a model, dumped me and now Spanx is her best friend.  I also know about it because the 5’9” Hollywood celebs who weigh 95 lbs but who have “no eating disorder of any kind whatsoever under any circumstances uh uh no way,” all say they wear Spanx under their size 000 (then altered down) dresses.

All of this instilled in me a Spanx Anxiety Attack.  First off, you could make Spanx out of steel-infused nuclear polymer and I still wouldn’t look like those people in the magazines.  Several years ago, I went to Macys and tried on a pair of Spanx.  Sure enough, my belly totally disappeared, as promised, but I immediately developed a midriff bulge that went all the way up to my neck.

When I got home from London, I went to Nordstrom. I brought the dress with me to the store.  Not knowing which particular body area would be in crisis mode at the time, I gathered up all the available styles of Spanx they had.  The only one I didn’t choose was the one with long legs.  This was, after all, a knee length dress, and while the Spanx would make my legs look great, I wasn’t sure how attractive it would be to appear to be wearing a wet suit.

The nice salesgirl led me to a dressing room and unlocked the door for me, assuring absolute privacy and protecting the general public from mistakenly entering my dressing room and seeing what a 62 year old woman looks like, sans bra, doing a St Vitus Dance in front of a three-way mirror while trying to pull on a rubberized garment .

OK, let’s discuss. I start with a warning: The following might be too graphic for small children and too emotionally damaging for younger women who fear the aging process.  The three-way mirror may be my friend (and I emphasize the word “may”) once I have completed putting on my clothing, but it is not something I enjoy when I am struggling to encase my torso in a space age tube of fabric.  The first one I tried on had no built in bra—the Girls got so smashed down that it took me several minutes to locate them.

Another style had a bra (hallelujah!) but stopped a few inches past my waist. The moment I put it on, it started to roll up. I was sure that it would be at my breasts by the end of the ceremony and up to my neck by the time we made it to the reception.  Subsequent styles had various other characteristics that didn’t work (don’t ask).  I finally had to admit that no style, no matter how uplifting, how packed with tight space age polymer, how much coverage it afforded, could turn back the clock to those glorious tiny bikini days.

I chose the best two and marched out twice to show my husband who had been patiently waiting just outside the entrance to the dressing rooms.  I let him choose the one he thought looked best with the dress; he preferred the one that was made like a leotard.  I paid the $85, and, while the salesgirl was ringing up the purchase, thought for $85 I should be able to pay someone to stand in for me in the wedding photos.

“I’m really discouraged,” I told my husband as we exited into the mall.  “What happened to my body?”

“I don’t know,” he said, “but if you find yours, look for mine as well.”

On the day of my son’s wedding, I put on the Spanx and noticed for the first time that the garment seemed to be missing a critical opening.  Without this critical opening, I would have to take my dress off and remove the Spanx entirely in order to use the rest room.  Basically, I would have to be naked.  As this seemed an item entirely too significant to have passed Quality Control, I searched again.  Sure enough, there was an opening, but it was so small and constructed in such a strange way that it would have required an accompanying video to explain its use.

I was fine during the ceremony.  But, the minute we arrived at the reception, I had to use the rest room.  I quickly calculated how long the Mother of the Groom would be required to be at the reception, and the answer was considerably longer than I would be able to contain myself.  There was no getting around it: I headed for the rest room.

I decided to be cool, calm, rational, and methodical.  That plan lasted about five seconds.  The rest of the time I spent contorting myself so as not to wet my Pale Grey Mother of the Groom Dress Constructed Of That Kind of Fabric That Shows Every Single Drop of Anything That Could Possibly Get On It.  Had I failed, I would have had to spend the entire reception in the bathroom stall and have food delivered to me under the stall door.

The wedding reception was fabulous, and, on my next trip to the rest room I surrendered and did what I had tried to avoid doing during the first trip.  I’m not sure what the other women in the rest room thought to see a pile of clothing on the stall floor.  I suspect that if I showed the Spanx to my husband he would have said, “Oh, you did this incorrectly,” or something like that, with that same voice he uses when he says, “You pushed the wrong button on the printer,” or “You were holding the remote backward (or upside down or sideways).”  I will never ask him—I simply refuse to have a man explain my undergarments to me.  Instead, I will go on a diet to lose ten pounds and never wear the Spanx again.  When that fails, I will go to my seamstress and have her alter the Spanx.

Renee Fisher is a Realtor and writer who lives in the Washington, DC area.  She is the co-author of two award-winning books about life after 50 www.invisiblenomore.com and is the DC Boomer Humor columnist for examiner.com DC-Boomer-Humor-Examiner.

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WHEN I AM 64 WILL I BE HAPPY? II

When I am 64 will I be happy? (Part 2)

BLOGGER:  PAUL GRIFFIN, PHD

Does happiness change with age? Although the difficulties of the aging process coupled with negative stereotypes about the elderly lead many to think that a decline in happiness is inevitable, in my first post I argued that some research contradicts this popular belief. A number of studies find that those who are 64 are more likely to report higher levels of happiness than those who are 34 or 44. These findings are revealing, and certainly they point to reasons why we should be somewhat optimistic about our “golden years.” But in this post I would like to add a note of caution. Although some have used these compelling findings to definitively conclude that happiness increases with age, I think this general conclusion is problematic for two primary reasons. After discussing these problems, I will try to keep the reader happy—especially the baby boomers–by nonetheless arguing that there are still considerable reasons to be optimistic about getting older, even if the future of aging presents a number of pressing issues for society as a whole.

The first problem with concluding that happiness increases with age is that findings on this subject vary according to how happiness is measured. This brings us to an issue that has perplexed greater thinkers throughout the ages: What is happiness? On the surface, this is a rather basic question that could be answered by most anyone. We have all experienced happiness, and, therefore, we all believe we know what it is. Yet because happiness is a subjective experience, a standard definition remains elusive. We all come to our own definitions of what happiness is, and subsequently use this definition to answer the question, Am I happy? Therefore, even with the understanding that people can be wrong about their own emotional states, most research on happiness is based on directly asking the people being studied to provide the answers themselves. The most basic way of doing this would be by asking a single global question like the following: “Taken all together, how would you say things are these days—would you say very happy, pretty happy, or not too happy.”

Some—particularly in psychology– approach the question of happiness a little deeper by more precisely trying to define the components of happiness. Since they often still take a subjective approach to answering the question, the term that is often used interchangeably with happiness is “subjective well-being” (SWB). Fancy terms for common words are often a part of academic disciplines, and it might be true that in many cases such substitutions are a way for people with PhDs to feel a wee bit smarter (and, thus, a bit happier). In this case, however, I think the use of the term SWB is way to arrive at a more precise definition of happiness. The three broad components that make up people who are high in SWB are characteristics typically associated with happiness: high life satisfaction, high positive affect (more likely to experience positive emotional states), and low negative affect (less likely to experience negative emotional states). Reliable multiple-item questionnaires have been created for all three components and used in hundreds of studies.

Now what is interesting is that when you take a close look at the research on aging and happiness, you find certain differences depending on how and what component of happiness/SWB is being measured. For instance, the single item question described above (“Taken all together..”) has been used in a number of large studies comparing thousands of people of different ages. Some research of this types indicates that happiness is high in people in young adulthood—in their 20s—and then shows a decline until one reaches their late 40s to early 50s, whereupon we once again see increases. Other research, using components of SWB, finds other results. For instance, considerable amount of research on life satisfaction does not often show the early dip in middle-age, but rather a gradual rise from individuals in their 30s to the early 70s. Also, research on negative affect often indicates significant declines in the experience of negative emotions as we move from young to older adulthood, but the research on positive affect is less conclusive, with some research indicating no change with age, other findings pointing to small increases, and yet other research finding gradual declines. Please note that even when these mixed results are considered, it still does not suggest that happiness is highest in young adulthood.

I will try to make sense of these discrepancies in a moment. But let’s take up the second problem, which is that a considerable amount of the age and happiness research is composed of populations that often do not include many people in their 80s and beyond. Not including such age groups might have made sense several decades ago, when they made up smaller amounts of the elderly population. But that is not the case today, and it is likely that “late life” for increasing number of people in the future will not mean late 60s or 70s, but the decades beyond. Therefore, this is an important population to consider, and when we begin to expand our research pool to include these age groups, the picture of happiness and aging becomes more complicated. For instance, while SWB research comparing samples of people in young adulthood and middle-age (30 to 50) to older adulthood (60 and 70s) often indicate higher SWB in the older populations, when we look at groups beyond their 70s, declines are more pronounced. My own longitudinal research with a sample of 1500 men found that while negative affect showed a significant decline between middle to older adulthood (from 40 to 70 years), these declines began to flatten when they reached their early 70s, and then the experience of negative emotions showed a gradual increase as men moved into their 80s. Therefore, while it is true that a number of studies do find increases in happiness with old age, many of these studies fail to define “old age” with individuals beyond their late 70s. Studies that do focus on the very old (>80) often find reductions in SWB with age.

What are we to make of all of these discrepancies? First, it seems that if we want to get a more defined picture of how happiness changes across the lifespan, we need to fully consider what aspects of happiness are being measured. When we consider the different components of SWB and how they show different changes across the lifespan, rather than think of these findings as inconsistencies we might instead want to consider how they reveal the different ways that aspects of the happy life manifest themselves across the lifespan. A more complete picture of happiness requires us to move away from a global and singular answer to this question. Different changes in different indicators of SWB might point to the varied ways we adjust to the aging process.

Second, recent research that finds declines in happiness in very late life make it clear that we should be careful about coming to any general conclusions about the direction of SWB across the lifespan. Although it is now more common to find headlines—in both academic and popular outlets—claiming that happiness is highest in later life, I think this optimistic picture of aging is incomplete. Yes, there is considerable amount of research that indicates that people are quite happy at 64, but we know considerably less about this question when we ask those who are 84. And while 64 years of age might have once produced the iconic image of the later years of life in a song written several decades ago, this picture of late life has shifted and thus must our conceptions of what it means to get old. Recent research indicating declines in happiness in the very old (>80 years) should be reason for concern. They probably point to the many stressors of the aging process as increasing difficulties accumulate.

Yet before you say I don’t want to be 80, consider a couple of points. Several longitudinal studies on SWB find a significant degree of variability in how people change across the lifespan, even in these later years. This is another way of saying that while a considerable number of people might show decreases in happiness in very late adulthood, a considerable number do not. Yes, people are still flourishing, even in their 80s and 90s. Why? What predicts differences in the ways we cope with the aging process? This is an essential question that I will address in a future post. The important point to consider now is that there is no reason to believe that such declines are inevitable. This leads me to my next point, which is that not so long ago our perceptions of aging and what was to be expected of those in later life were considerably different from today. Ageism and common negative stereotypes of the elderly remain, but consider the more sedentary lives of those in their 60s and 70s a half century ago, and compare that with the active lifestyle many in this same age group are practicing today. This profound cultural shift can be attributed to a variety of factors, including greater amounts of social capital, better health, and expanded life expectancies.

One of the most influential researchers in gerontology and positive aging, Paul Baltes, once wrote, “The greatest invention of the 20^th century is old age.” In saying this, Baltes was saying how none of the changes we described were inevitable. If people live longer and in some cases better at later ages, it is because of the significant contributions made by society to cause these changes. But Baltes’ comment also points to the tremendous strain that such an invention places on society and individuals. If getting older is to continue to mean getting better for a significant portion of the population, it will also require considerable effort and sacrifice. When you consider that whatever the age of the person reading this post, it is now more likely than ever before in human history that he or she will spend more years at advanced ages of life, such commitment and sacrifice will be an essential part of ensuring a happy populace now and in the future.

To find out more about Dr. Griffin, click his photo below.  All links for Dr. Griffin will be listed below his bio.

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Finance Question Answered

Finance Question Answered

Answered by:  Arin Goldman

Vivian asked the question:

“Does one have to be retired to remove money without penalty from an IRA, 401K, 403B etc at age 59 1/2?”

Arin’s answer to Vivian’s question:

Once you reach age 59 1/2 you can start taking money out of your IRA or 401K in any amount you want. Keep in mind that you’ll owe tax on the amount you withdraw from a traditional account.  The amount that you withdraw will be added to your other income and you will pay taxes based on your total income. With a Roth, there’s no tax at all provided your account has been open at least five years and you’re 59 1/2.  Most advisors recommend that you hold off witdrawing funds from your retirement accounts until you’ve actually retired because at that point you will presumably be paying taxes at a lower rate and because you probably will need your retirement funds to last as long as possible. I recommend that you check with your financial advisor and/or accountant to make sure that withdrawing funds makes sense for you.

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