So Baby Boomer: Life Tips

Marriage in America

Beginning this past summer, casting agents for NBC's "The Marriage Ref" scoured the countryside in search of bickering couples ("No problem is too small!") willing to submit to an arbiter advised by a panel of stars, including Alec Baldwin, who, though divorced, did play the title role in a movie called "The Marrying Man."  Meanwhile, a National Marriage Boycott is on: its members pledge not to get married, no matter how many people ask them.

Marriage in America is in disarray. 

Americans, among the marryingest people in the world, are also the divorcingest.  Even during the downturn, business is up at eHarmony, which has taken credit for one out of every fifty weddings in the United States.

   

"The State of Our Unions," a annual report issued jointly by the National Marriage Project and the Institute for American Values, warns of a "mancession": in a lousy economy, more men than usual are working fewer hours than their wives, making for unhappier husbands and angrier rows.  A spike in the divorce rate is anticipated, although this may be mitigated by the fact that divorce isn't cheap and people are broke.

You may think that the mancession would also foretell a falloff in couples counselling, which isn't cheap, either, but there's no sign of a "therapycession."  Up to eighty percent of therapists practice couples therapy.  Today, something like forty percent of would-be husbands and wives receive premarital counselling, often pastoral, and millions of married couple seek therapy.  Doubtless, many receive a great deal of help, expert and caring.  Nevertheless, a 1995 Consumer Reports survey ranked marriage counsellors last, among providers of mental health services, in achieving results.

As Rebecca L. Davis observes in an astute, engaging and disturbing history, "More Perfect Unions: The American Search for Marital Bliss" (Harvard; $29.95), the rise of couples counseling has both coincided with and contributed to a larger shift in American life: heightened expectations for marriage as a means of self-expression and personal fulfillment.  That would seem to make for an endlessly exploitable clientele, especially given that there's not much profit in pointing out that some things just don't get any better.  Not everything admits of improvement.

 Rebecca L. Davis: More Perfect Unions: The American Search for Marital Bliss

 

Source: The New Yorker, March 29, 2010

Unsafe Retirement Investing Path

A basic tenet of retirement investing states that as you get closer to calling it a career, you should grow more conservative--tilting away from volatile assets like stocks and toward more stable investments like bonds and cash--since you'll have less time to recover if the market turns against you.

But a study by consultants Hewitt Associates and Financial Engines found that many older 401(k) participants who invest on their own fail to take this precaution.  The portfolios of participants flying solo tend to remain at worrisomely risky levels, even late in their careers.  In fact, the study revealed that boomers were taking almost as much risk, on average, as someone investing 100% of their nest egg in equities.

On the other hand, the portfolios of those who receive help via online recommendations, target-date funds, or managed accounts reflected more of a "glide path," with the level of risk starting out high early but declining at older ages.

What's most important as you near retirement, when setbacks can derail your plans, is that you're fully aware of the risk in your portfolio--and are convinced that you're on the right path.

Source: MONEY, April 2010

 Robert R. Prechter Jr.: Conquer the Crash: You Can Survive and Prosper in a Deflationary Depression

 

Blogging Boomer Carnival #155

For what's happening in the life and times of Baby Boomers, please visit this week's Blogging Boomer Carnival #155 hosted by Wendy Spiegel at Gen Plus--Re-inventing 50 plus.

Permanently Engaged Boomers

The decision not to remarry is part of the fastest-growing subset of cohabiting couples in the U.S. nowadays — those over the age of 50.

The generation that most wanted marriage has become the generation that scoffs.  Most of their reasons are practical — remarriage can mean, for example, adjusting or possibly losing some Social Security benefits and risking a life’s savings to pay a new spouse’s medical bills.  It means entangling finances that adult children will, sooner or later, have to untangle.  Some of their reasons are more personal — memories of a bad first marriage, perhaps, loyalty to a good one or a reluctance to give up newfound independence.

But at its core, this trend is the latest twist in the redefinition of marriage — and what it means to be a spouse. 

For a woman, it is possible not to give a hoot what others think of your housekeeping but to simply enjoy making a home for someone you love.  It is not necessarily a contradiction to dream of a poufy wedding gown and a corner office, or to rely on someone else as fully as you are relied upon, to put their needs before yours and know that they would do the same for you.

The young men and women coming into adulthood right now consistently tell researchers that they are determined to make their marriages into partnerships and to not default to traditional gender roles at the expense of equality.  For the past decade or so, “partner” was a consolation prize, a second choice for same-sex couples who were not legally allowed to marry.

And these young people are getting a push, too, from their boomer grandparents.  That ring on your grandmother's finger?  They are engaged — permanently.  She’s in a deeply committed relationship of equals now, and they needed a word to describe that relationship.  For the not-getting-married couple, “fiancé” fits them better than husband or wife.

Source: The New York Times, March 28, 2010

Your Taste for Religion

Abstracted from an opinion article in The Wall Street Journal of March 27, 2010 by Lionel Tiger

At least 80% of human beings, some five billion souls, are affiliated with one or another of the 4,200 religious organizations statisticians have identified. Most are confident of the singular superiority of their group. But where does the basis for religious conviction come from?

Are people religious because they find a particular theology convincing? Some converts might, though they are a tiny number of believers.  Far more likely is that their faith emerges from the group with which they are affiliating and in which they are likely to have been born and raised.  Religious groups are intensely social, and hitherto unexpected links between social behavior and brain chemistry are now almost routinely identified.

One such connection, identified at UCLA Medical School by Michael Mcquire, is between secretion of the neurotransmitter serotonin and the sense of status an individual possesses—which for well or ill led to psychoactive drugs such as Prozac.

Other researchers, such as USC's Antonio Damasio and former University of Mexico faculty member Jay Feierman, have combined interests in neurophysiology and the sources of social cohesion to explore the fundamental nature of religion.

Any thoughtful answers to questions about the nature of religion must account for the fact that for centuries and everywhere human beings have created and sustained a set of ideas well outside the realm of daily experience—ideas claimed as versions of that supernature that persists in the different flavors and textures of contemporary religions.

The scientific conclusion may be that religion is a natural system that replaces what we can call "brainpain," which everyone experiences, with its antidote, "brainsoothing."  This can result from exercise or meditation or perfume or simply chatting with friends.  The evidence of millennia is that it also can result from going to a house of worship on a regular basis and communing with the almighty and a group of fellow believers.

The stunning possibility is that religion will find its sturdiest roots in the natural, not the supernatural.

Mr. Tiger, a professor of anthropology at Rutgers, is the author, with Michael McGuire, of "God's Brain,"  published by Prometheus Books.

Boomer Stress Can Cause Grinding of Teeth

People who are stressed by daily problems or trouble at work seem to be more likely to grind their teeth at night.

Researchers writing in BioMed Central's open access journal Head & Face Medicine studied the causes of 'sleep bruxism', gnashing teeth during the night, finding that it was especially common in those who try to cope with stress by escaping from difficult situations.

Maria Giraki, from Heinrich-Heine-University, Düsseldorf, Germany, worked with a team of researchers to study the condition in 69 people, of whom 48 were 'bruxers'.  She said, "Bruxing can lead to abrasive tooth wear, looseness and sensitivity of teeth, and growth and pain in the muscles responsible for chewing.  Its causes are still relatively unknown, but stress has been implicated.  We aimed to investigate whether different stress-factors, and different coping strategies, were more or less associated with these bruxism symptoms."

Tooth grinding was measured by thin plates that were placed in trial participants mouths' overnight, while stress and coping techniques were assessed by three questionnaires. Bruxing was not associated with age, sex or education level, but was more common in people who claimed to experience daily stress and trouble at work.

Giraki adds, "Our data support the assumption that people with the most problematic grinding do not seem to be able to deal with stress in an adequate way.  They seem to prefer negative coping strategies like 'escape'.  This, in general, increases the feeling of stress, instead of looking at the stressor in a positive way."

Blogging Boomer Carnival #154

Baby Boomers make up 28% of the American population and keep setting trends throughout their lives.  The Blogging Boomers take a chronological view of these boomer trends and report them to you weekly.

Blogging carnivals start out by the thousands, but those that can sustain themselves for as many as 100 episodes are rare.  And a carnival which has turned out its 154th edition while heading toward 200 editions is practically unheard of!

Today, be sure to visit Blogging Boomer Carnival #154 hosted by Rhea Becker at:

The Boomer Chronicles 

Life is about hope not happiness!

In 1978, a trio of psychologists curious about happiness assembled two groups of subjects.   In the first were winners of the Illinois state lottery.  In the second group were victims of devastating accidents.  Some had been left paralyzed from the waist down.  For the others, paralysis started at the neck.

The researchers wrote up their findings on the lottery winners and the accident victims in the Journal of Personality and Social Psychology.  The paper is now considered one the founding texts of happiness studies, a field that has yielded some surprising morose results.  It's not just hitting the jackpot that fails to lift spirits; a whole range of activities that people tend to think will make them happy do not, it turns out, have that effect.

As the happiness researchers Tim Wilson and Daniel Gilbert have put it, "People routinely mispredict how much pleasure or displeasure future events will bring."

Several studies have been offered to explain why the United States is, in effect, a nation of joyless lottery winners.  One, the so-called "hedonic treadmill" hypothesis, holds that people rapidly adjust to improved situations; thus, as soon as they acquire some new delight their expectations ramp upward, and they are left no happier than before.  Another is that people are relativists; they are interested not so much in having more stuff as in having more than those around them.

In his bestselling book "Stumbling on Happiness" (2006), Daniel Gilbert, a psychology professor at Harvard, offers a catalogue of the ways that people misjudge their own satisfactions.  They tend to think they'll be happier with more variety, when, in fact, they get more pleasure from being offered the same thing over and over again.  They are willing to pay a premium to preserve their options, but they're more contented when they commit themselves to a particular choice.  They anticipate being overjoyed by events that, when they actually occur, leave them unmoved.

If happiness research simply confirmed what people already believed, there would be no need, and really no reason, to argue for its relevance.  It's the counterintuitive cast of the results that makes the work provocative.  Life satisfaction comes from the hope of tomorrow being a brighter day.  As Alexander Pope wrote in 1733, "Hope springs eternal in the human breast."

Source: THE NEW YORKER, March 22, 2010

 Daniel Gilbert: Stumbling on Happiness

What Can Movies Tell You About the Stock Market?

The following article is adapted from a special report on "Popular Culture and the Stock Market" published by Robert Prechter, founder and CEO of the technical analysis and research firm Elliott Wave International. Although originally published in 1985, "Popular Culture and the Stock Market" is so timeless and relevant that USA Today covered its insights in a recent Nov. 2009 article. For the rest of this revealing 50-page report, download it for free here.

This year's Academy Awards gave us movies about war (The Hurt Locker), football (The Blind Side), country music (Crazy Heart) and going native (Avatar), but nowhere did we see a horror movie nominated. In fact, it looks like Sweeney Todd, The Demon Barber of Fleet Street was the most recent to be nominated in 2008, for art direction (which it won), costume design and best actor, although the last one to win major awards for Best Picture, Director, Actor and Actress was The Silence of the Lambs in 1991.

Whether horror films win Academy Awards or not, they tell an interesting story about mass psychology. Research here at Elliott Wave International shows that horror films proliferate during bear markets, whereas upbeat, sweet-natured Disney movies show up during bull markets. Since the Dow has been in a bear-market rally for a year, now is not the time for horror films to dominate the movie theaters. But their time will come again.

In the meantime, to catch up on why all kinds of pop culture -- including fashion, art, movies and music -- can help to explain the markets, take a few minutes to read a piece called Popular Culture and the Stock Market, which Bob Prechter wrote in 1985. Here's an excerpt about horror movies as a sample.

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Come to the carnival where a dozen participating blogs focus on Baby Boomer issues from health to midlife crisis to finance and travel.  As the boomer generation's 60s become the new 40s, this week's boomer-centric articles document newsworthy happenings in their lives.

Be sure to visit SoBabyBoomer's tent at the Blogging Boomer Carnival #153 hosted this week at Vaboomer.com

Boomers' Reading Media is Changing

According to the Magazine Publishers Association, 174.5 million people paid to subscribe to magazines in 1970; that number has steadily and consistently risen over the years, to 324.8 million as of 2008.  Publishers, eager to fatten their rate bases (which ad pricing is based on) have been known to reduce subscription fees significantly and add other incentives to resubscribe in order to pump up circulation. 

Magazines are just vertical collections of content that feed our individual interests.  Like blogs.  The trick for publishers will be to figure out how to be compensated for individual articles as well as for magazine subscriptions or paper book sales.

Here come the tablets!

In a few years, more people will be browsing the Web via a tablet than on laptops and desktops.  Steve Jobs pitched the new iPad as a better way to access the Web.

Apple's iPad was exactly what we all imagined it might be--a giant iPod Touch that does what we want it to do: browse the Web, display images and video in color and run downloadable apps that we can buy or sell.  ABI Research predicts that some 58 million tablets a year will be shipping by 2015. 

A great device is actually the key.   When you've invested in a tablet (or an iPhone or a Droid or a Kindle, etc.) and love it, you want to increase its functionality--with media.  That's why nearly half of the 75 million iPhone and iTouch users download one paid app a month, by the way, when they could get the same kind of stuff for free elsewhere.  For example, you could download SoBabyBoomer blog life tip postings on the Kindle (delivered wirelessly) for a small monthly subscription fee from Amazon.com rather than reading this posting for free on your computer screen.

Steve Jobs proved with the first iPod that people would willingly pay for music when you made it easier to buy than to steal--especially when the media is linked via a store to a cool, fetishistic device.

Are tablets going to save the newspaper or magazine as we know it?  Probably not.

However, I predict we won't see publishers dragging their feet as tablets take hold, because the potential revenue model is clear: Publishing companies will need to do more than simply port their print products to the new tablet-friendly formats.  They'll need to be thinking about selling attention rather than the shape of the media.  In the ever-burgeoning universe of media overload, content creators are battling for a user's time.  If a book is a 20-hour call on one's attention, a magazine might be better defined as a bid for an hour and a blog posting 5 to 10 minutes. 

The tablet is ideal for busy people on the move: a more portable, more visually interesting way to deliver news, articles and blog postings that can be constantly updated.  Unlike the computer screen, a tablet might be able to create a sense where the reader takes a few relaxing minutes to read subject matter that he or she has a unique interest in (that has already been preselected, wirelessly delivered and awaits the reader's attention).

The interesting thing is that through the Kindle, I'm giving money to select blogs that I wish to follow for the first time ever.  I can go on the Web to read the same content for free, but it's about the package and delivery that works for me.  If you aren't experiencing this yourself, I predict you soon will be.

Source: FORTUNE, March 1, 2010