FROM SALAD TO SEX
THE MEN’S TRAINING GUIDE
TO
MENTAL
FINANCIAL
PHYSICAL
& SEXUAL
HEALTH & FUN IN RETIREMENT
James W. Gould
Smashwords Edition
Copyright James W. Gould 2011
License Notes: This ebook is licensed for your personal enjoyment only. This ebook may not be re-sold or given away to other people. If you would like to share this ebook with another person, please purchase an additional copy for each person you share it with. If you’re reading this book and did not purchase it, or it was not purchased for your use only, then you should return to Smashwords.com and purchase your own copy. Thank you for respecting the hard work of this author.
To my wife Jan and the rest of our lives together.
Table of Contents
PART ONE, GETTING EXCITED ABOUT RETIREMENT
2. BUCKET THAT LIST (THREE LEVELS OF RETIREMENT OPTIONS)
PART TWO, GETTING FINANCIALLY HEALTHY FOR RETIREMENT
3. TALKING ABOUT MONEY WITHOUT FIGHTING
4. FIRST COVER THE FINANCIAL CATASTROPHES
5. HOW BIG IS YOUR NUT? (Minimum Annual Expenses)
7. COMING UP SHORT - BUST YOUR BUTT OR CUT YOUR NUT? (Work Longer or Cut Your Expenses)
PART THREE, GETTING PHYSICALLY HEALTHY AND FIT FOR RETIREMENT
11. PHYSICAL HEALTH FOR THE LONG HAUL
12. HOW IS FAT BAD? LET ME COUNT THE WAYS
13. HOW MUCH FAT DO YOU HAVE? (THE UGLY TRUTH REVEALED)
14. THE SLO-MO SUBSTITUTION APPROACH TO SHEDDING FAT
15. EAT LIKE A HUNTER GATHERER
18. EXERCISE FOR FITNESS AND BUFFNESS
19. AS FORMER NY MAYOR KOCH LIKED TO SAY, HOW AM I DOING?
20. HOW TO HAVE BETTER SEX FOR BETTER HEALTH AND VICE VERSA (Dick Drugs, Wedges And A Few Secrets)
PART FOUR, MORE TIPS TO KEEP YOU HEALTHY
23. PLAYING HIGH/LOW WITH YOUR BLOOD PRESSURE
24. OH, SUGAR (Blood Sugar, That Is)?
25. VITAMINS, BAD SCIENCE AND SOME GOOD WEBSITES
26. MONITORING YOUR OWN HEALTH
27. SCREENING THOSE SCREENING TESTS
28. THE PEARLY WISDOM OF DENTAL HEALTH
29. SENIOR MOMENTS EXPLAINED AND MENTAL HEALTH
PART FIVE, SOCIAL SECURITY AND MEDICARE
30. SOCIAL SECURITY: WHEN TO PULL THE TRIGGER
31. THE MEDICARE ALPHABET SOUP: MEDICARE PARTS A, B, DP; MEDIGAP PLANS A TO N AND ADVANTAGE PLANS
PART SIX, GETTING READY FOR RETIREMENT THROUGH THE END
32. PHILOSOPHY FOR THE AGE[S]D & A FEW LIFE LESSONS
35. WHAT REMAINS AT THE END OF THE DAY
APPENDIX 1: CHECKLISTS FOR THE COUNTDOWN
APPENDIX 2: HEALTH CARE DIRECTIVE AND HEALTH CARE PROXY
INTRODUCTION
“I’m never retiring. Everyone I knew who did died within a year.”
As I approached and passed 65, these words from a neighbor raised the question of whether to retire at all. Answering yes based on “less work and more play” only raised more questions:
Will I run out of money before I die?
How do I figure out how much money is enough?
How should my money be invested to make it last while minimizing taxes?
What about “spending the house” to make ends meet?
Is it better to start Social Security at 66 or wait until 70?
How do I figure out Medicare and Medigap and that drug doughnut hole??
What will I do to fill all those hours now spent working, without driving my wife crazy?
How can I lose some of those pounds gained over the last 30 years and keep them off without starving?
Can my cholesterol, blood pressure and blood sugar be controlled without drugs?
Can exercise and weight training prevent me from becoming frail and decrepit?
Is sex, good sex, still possible as the years go by?
How can I make the rest of my life less stressful, more peaceful?
What end of life plans should I make now?
If you are also asking these kinds of question, this is the book for you. It is based on my own extensive research in answering them, using my training and experience as both an engineer and a lawyer to come to real world answers that made sense to me. As I talked with guys a little younger than me about my answers, they said they would come to me to avoid all that work. This book is what I would tell them.
With that in mind, I made it easy to find things in the book. The chapters are to the point and generally short. (Take a look at the Table of Contents). Longer Chapters are divided into subchapters. A glossary of terms at the back refers back to the relevant chapters. To help you focus on the issues depending on how close you are to retirement, an appendix has checklists for 5, 4, 3, 2, 1 years and 6 months out, again with cross reference to the Chapters.
There are work sheets for Net Worth in a format I devised to see at a glance asset allocation, tax impact and order of asset drawdown. There is a Slo Mo Substitution weight loss program I devised that works (I dropped 30 pounds and kept it off).
In short, this is your training guide to a happy, healthy, active, sexually satisfied and financially secure retirement. I say training because you should not wait until the day of retirement to begin, any more than waiting until game day to start training. Do not worry if your plan is not perfect; it will change as things change. But as the Army taught me, even a bad plan well executed is far better than no plan at all.
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Here is a little more detailed preview of the book. The book is organized into Parts and Chapters covering many of the issues we face as we get older. Part One, Getting Excited About Retirement, covers how to make your retirement fun, interesting and fulfilling.
Part Two, Getting Financially Healthy for Retirement, is about how to fund all your plans. Its Chapters cover how to talk about money with your partner, avoiding financial catastrophes, determining your Nut (minimum annual expenses) and your Number (minimum investments to cover the Nut), extracting money from your house, allocating your investments among fixed investments (bonds), various types of annuities and equities (stocks), tax planning and different ways to draw down your investments.
Part Three, Getting Physically Healthy and Fit For Retirement is about how to be sure you have the health and long life to enjoy all your great plans. It covers why fat is so unhealthy, how to determine how much you have and how much you should lose. Other Chapters describe a Slo-Mo Substitution and exercise approach to shed the pounds, increase fitness and reduce cholesterol, blood sugar and blood pressure without drugs. The Chapter on sex covers the emotional and health aspects of sex, how to talk about sex, how ED drugs work and how to use them, and ways to enhance sex for both you and your partner.
Part Four, More Tips to Keep You Healthy, covers cholesterol, blood pressure, blood sugar, screening tests, vitamin supplements, dental health and senior moments.
Part Five covers deciding when to start Social Security and the intricacies of Medicare, including Parts A, B, D, Medigap insurance and Advantage Plans.
Part Six, Getting Ready for Retirement Through the End, has some life lessons to help reduce stress and make life more peaceful and thoughts on planning for the end of life.
As mentioned before, the Appendices at the back have checklists for years 5, 4, 3, 2, 1 and six months prior to retirement and a glossary of terms, both cross referenced to the Chapters. At the back there is also a Health Care Advance Directive and Health Care Proxy.
Feel free to skip around the Parts and Chapters in this book, although reading each Part from the beginning may be better, as the later Chapters in each Part are often built on the earlier ones. Also, feel free to skip any Chapters (like Chapter 20 on sex) where you feel you have enough expertise. Then again, as I discovered, even an old dog can learn a few new tricks.
PART ONE, GETTING EXCITED ABOUT RETIREMENT
The first and most important part is to get excited about retirement, not depressed.
2. BUCKET THAT LIST (THREE LEVELS OF RETIREMENT OPTIONS)
Let’s start with that cliché bucket list. When working and raising children, there is not enough time to worry much about leisure activities or enough extra energy to do them. As my retired brother Wayne told me, until you retire you do not realize how wound up you are all the time from your job. But in retirement there have to be activities to fill the hours and a good reason to get up in the morning. Waking up with an empty day and nothing to do that excites you is a sure prescription to get depressed, sick and age fast. As part of my job, I had occasion to interview men who had retired. I recall one who had been a research scientist and had written brilliant technical papers. Two years after retirement he was sitting in a darkened, unkempt house and having difficulty focusing on a conversation. Another retired man was heavily involved with collecting barber shop quartet music and supplying it free to singers around the country. He had a youthful enthusiasm and zest for life.
Do not be like the retired guy who wandered about the house waiting for something to break so he had a project to occupy his time. Your mate will also be thankful you have planned for retirement activities before retiring. A common complaint wives make is that their retired husbands just hover near them, asking what she is doing, looking for guidance on what he should do. Take charge and be your own guide.
The point is not that there is one perfect set of retirement activities for everyone. But there is one perfect set for YOU. And if you think that there is no rush, plenty of time to do everything, try this exercise a retired guy recently showed me. Get a tape measure and pull it out to your life expectancy, say 83 (one inch = one year) if you are now 65. Now put your finger on your age. Look at how much is gone and how little is left. Change your mind? The guy who showed me this tape measure demo sold his business and retired at 55 after someone else showed it to him.
Make the list NOW. Put it on paper. What were your dreams in your youth or middle age that never came to be? What excites you? What are you curious about? What would you like to do to give back? If you have a hard time coming up with ideas that excite you, check out AARP (come on guys, it is cheap to join, has a good magazine and gives you lots of discounts on stuff). Or go to an adventure travel convention and collect brochures. Buy a travel magazine and circle all those numbers on the postcard inside to receive brochures on lots of places. Talk to friends about their travels. Look at catalogs of local adult education courses.
Some things might have a prerequisite, such as certification for SCUBA diving, a license for motorcycling, a racing license for local tracks, a pilot license for flying. If you have always wanted to try something like that, start the process NOW. And if the activities require a certain level of fitness you lack, the time to start is NOW to get in shape. See, Chapters 17 and 18.
A suggestion is to include two types of things in the list. The first type is one time things, like travel to a particular country or destination or a one-off activity like rafting the Grand Canyon. (Yes, it is as good as they say.) The second type is ongoing activities, like improving your golf game or guitar playing or learning to fly or fly fish or gardening or writing or painting or woodworking. If you have a spouse or significant other, the travels are best discussed together because it is more fun to travel together than alone, and to share the memories after. If she is not interested, at least you have staked out your territory of what you intend to do. The learning activities are more yours to decide alone, since they tend not to intrude as much on someone else.
There are various ways to prioritize the list; level of physical fitness needed is one. Another way is to segregate the activities into different Option Lists by expense to help the financial analysis in Chapter 5. Option 1 is activities that are free or have only nominal cost. Option 2 includes Option 1 but adds things of medium cost. Option 3 is the blowout, no holds barred wish list. You should estimate the yearly cost for each level. You will need it to create your budget, also in Chapter 5. If you know Option 3 is just not realistic, try to hold fast to at least one thing on the list. It will give you incentive to save more and reduce your other minimum annual expenses (your Nut) to afford it. See, Chapters 5 & 7. Besides, you need a plan in case you win the lottery.
To help with Option 1, try this activity, suggested by an early retiring doctor friend. When the house or apartment is empty, stand in front of a mirror and ask yourself, “What am I?” If all you can answer is doctor or lawyer or businessman or whatever job or career you have, then transition to retirement will be a problem. But perhaps a better phrasing for the mirror question was overheard from a train conductor on Metro North: “It is not what you are. It is who you are.” Your Option 1 list should be a reflection of who you are.
This question of who you are also impacts how spending money affects your sense of self. Research has shown that many people feel badly when buying generic or store brands rather than the heavily advertised (and expensive) nationally branded goods. Is this you? How much longer would you be willing to work to continue buying brand name goodies, a new car every two years and keep a big house in retirement?
A related question of self is how unique you need to feel. Dunkin’ Donuts conducted a survey of DD vs. Starbucks customers to figure out the difference. Education? Nope. Income? Nope. In fact every marketer’s usual measure failed to show a difference. But one difference did stand out, namely how unique do you think you are? Starbucks people saw themselves as very unique, so only their unique Grande Half Decaf Soy Latte would do. DD guys saw themselves as not that different from other people and asked for regular or black coffee, please. Me, I am a DD guy. Besides, I drink coffee black, and Starbucks roasts their beans so much it makes their coffee taste pretty harsh to me. (Maybe that is why they recently added Blonde, a more mellow coffee.) So in retirement, ask yourself if you really need to pay $5 more ($1825/year) for your daily Starbucks coffee? Think about this as well as your other spending habits when calculating what your “Nut” (minimum annual expenses) is (Chapter 5), which should be based on what you need, not on what you might think you want based on Madison Avenue brainwashing. One technique I use to keep my head straight on this is to ask myself whether I would want something just as much if no one else in the work know I had it.
We all should fight being manipulated by marketing, even the youngsters who think themselves above it all. Yet they are the ones who must have the very latest smart phone or iPad or whatever Apple convinces them is the best ever, until the next one six months later. (I am something of a Luddite, or at least a very “late adopter”, as my cell phone remained a dinosaur dumb phone until it died and the contract expired. Even then, I just had phone service added to the Blackberry my firm issued to me. ) Another funny example of people who pretend to be above marketing is snowboarders. For years they scoffed at the fashions of skiing, wearing baggy clothes to be different. Of course, their boarder clothes are now branded and expensive. And recently a group running snowboarding competitions banned tight clothing as not fitting the image. Skiers never mandate anything about clothing, except that something warm is a good idea. Even that is nicely flaunted by girls in bikinis risking abrasions during spring skiing.
But back to answering the question in the mirror of “who you are.” Think about your other roles in life as husband, father, grandfather, friend. Think about volunteer work or other ways of helping others. Think about what you have been saying all your life that someday you would do. One tip I find useful is that if your work involved problem solving, find something that will keep your brain active. (Good for fending off dementia and Alzheimer’s, too. They say coffee helps with that too, even the DD kind.)
Choose at least one thing for your Option 1 list that is a pleasurable struggle. That phrase came to me at 6 A.M. when it was pitch black and cold outside. The old steam radiator in our little apartment In New York City was hissing, and my wife Jan was asleep on this work day. I was working on this book, over a cup of coffee (hazelnut, brewed from the local Westside Supermarket house brand). It came to me that the act of writing was a pleasurable struggle; why else would I get up early to do it?
How to define what is a pleasurable struggle? One that intrinsically interests you and can be continued the rest of your life. Something that forces you to think, to practice, to learn new skills. Something that engages the skill set that you have. Maybe you will become an expert, maybe not. The difference is really time; it is said that anyone can become an expert in something by devoting 10,000 hours to it.
Examples of pleasurable struggles include learning a new language, learning to draw or paint, learning a new sport or craft or taking an old one to a new level. For me, finally starting to write other than for my legal job after so many years of saying someday I will, was the choice. A couple of local writing classes, a writing blog to get over the fear of publishing, and now this book. Since I am still working, the writing is done early mornings, late after work like now and weekends. Writing in dribs and drabs is actually fun, as during the day (and night) my brain is mulling over the next section, the next edits, leading to eagerness to write it down. This approach is like the poet Robert Frost who, when a bit stuck, went out and plowed a field. The writing is also eclectic, including travel, essays and short stories. They are on my blog, jimslifecycle.com[1]. They were all fun to write. I hope you find them fun to read. And the price is right, free. As one of my favorite sayings goes, “Cheap is good, but free is better.”
Enough about the pleasurable struggles. What about the hard ones relating to who you are, namely trying to improve ourselves. Do you have trouble building trusting relationships? Do you take responsibility for your own actions and decisions rather than blaming others or the world at large for your own failings? Can you recognize and correct your own shortcomings rather than focus on those of others? Can you let go of addictive or obsessive behavior? Can you not react in anger when things happen? These struggles are not pleasant at all, but the rewards are the greatest. In retirement you will have a lot of time to face yourself without the frenetic distractions of work or raising a family. Be or become someone you would want to live with. Or as my Father used to say, judge a man by whether you could be with him on a weeklong camping or fishing trip in the wilderness and come back liking him as much or more than when you started the trip.
Remember that the point of creating the lists is to get excited about what you can do and what you can be in retirement. To be able to do it all will be the motivation for all rest of the training in this book.
OPTION 1 - LITTLE OR NO COST
WALKING, RUNNING, HIKING, BIKING, FISHING (WITHOUT BOAT), CAMPING, FREE CONCERTS AND LECTURES, LOW COST LESSONS TO LEARN NEW SKILLS, VOLUNTEERING, TEACHING, TUTORING, CAMPING, ART, WRITING, PHOTOGRAPHY (WITH THE CANON, NOT THE NIKON), READING, ETC.
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OPTION 2 - OPTION 1 PLUS THE FOLLOWING MEDIUM COST DREAMS
FISHING (WITH BOAT), DRIVING VACATIONS WITH INDOOR LODGING, FLYING TO DOMESTIC LOCATIONS, LOW COST CRUISES, DISCOUNT LIVE PERFORMANCES, AN UNTOUR[2] FOREIGN TRAVEL, ETC.
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OPTION 3 - OPTIONS 1 + 2 PLUS THE SKY IS THE LIMIT DREAMS
LEARN TO FLY, TAKE AN AUTOMOBILE RACING COURSE, AFRICAN SAFARI, EXOTIC FOREIGN VACATIONS, ADVENTURE TRAVEL WITH OAT OR REI OR ???, EUROPE IN STYLE VIA BARGE AND HOT AIR BALLOON, MEDITERRANEAN ON A YACHT OR IN A VILLA, GET THE NIKON AND EVERY LENS YOU WANT, CHARTER A JET TO WHEREVER, GET AN APARTMENT IN NEW YORK OR PARIS OR WHEREVER AND PLAY. DON’T BE AFRAID TO PUT DOWN SOMETHING CRAZY LIKE FREE FALL SKYDIVING OR MOUNT EVEREST OR SOMETHING TAMER LIKE TREKKING NEPAL OR NEW ZEALAND. PUT DOWN WHATEVER POPS INTO YOUR HEAD. DREAM.
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One final comment as you fill in the lists. People ask if I am retired yet. My reply is that I am not ready to be put out to pasture yet, but sure do not want to die in harness. Your lists will make the pasture greener. Our lists sure do. Once a year Jan and I revisit our list to cross off what we have done, add more and rearrange to put the most physically demanding ones near the top while we are still able to do them.
PART TWO, GETTING FINANCIALLY HEALTHY FOR RETIREMENT
So you are excited about all the great things you can do in retirement. The next step is figuring out how to pay for it all. In this Part we will cover how to talk about money, how to avoid two financial catastrophes that can derail your plans, how to calculate the money you will need for retirement, how to invest in retirement with allocation and tax planning, how to spend in retirement and how to take money out of your house. Again, feel free to skip around the Chapters in this Part although there is some logic to their order.
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3. TALKING ABOUT MONEY WITHOUT FIGHTING
You should talk with your mate about money even though it can be a highly charged topic because of all the underlying subtexts of how important is status and how that is measured; the degree of self-definition by acquisition; differences in the lifestyles you and she covet and differences in immediate gratification versus saving.
If talking openly about money has been difficult before, financial planning for retirement is the place to start. Use the approach of this book. Start talking about how both of you view the shape of retirement, using the Option Lists in Chapter 2 and trying for some consensus. Then move to money and how to finance the consensus and the relative strength of desires versus fears of running out of money before running out of life. Not easy stuff.
If she resists getting involved, tell her you want her to be reassured that she will be OK if something happens to you (and make sure this is true.) If either of you are frozen from the fear of making a financial mistake, or of owning up to a mistake you already made by trying to swing for the fences with your investments, get over it. Everyone makes mistakes, join the crowd. But not planning at all is the worst mistake of all.
You may also have to sort out underlying power issues involving who earns the money and who controls how it is spent. If you find you cannot have a rational discussion about retirement finances, go to a financial planner together. Pay one by the hour to get more neutral advice than from a broker or insurance salesman. He or she will raise issues that need to be raised and help to inject reality into balancing desires and your available money.
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4. FIRST COVER THE FINANCIAL CATASTROPHES
What can blindside you financially and leave you struggling to make ends meet, without a prayer of doing all the neat things on your list? A catastrophe like a long term illness or injury or a lawsuit from an accident could wipe you out. While whether and how much life insurance to carry in retirement is debatable, in my view you should have insurance beyond the usual house, car and medical (more on Medicare below) to cover these two catastrophes. Full disclosure, I have no connection whatsoever to insurance companies or the industry, other than as a policy holder. These are just my personal opinions, but based on hours of research and thinking, and reinforced by advice of financial advisors who are not just insurance agents. Here are the two insurance policies that help me sleep at night.
Long Term Health Care Insurance.
This covers the first catastrophe of a long term illness or a long recovery from an injury. Recovering physically from either is hard enough without also seeing your assets dwindle away. If you have no assets to protect and are indigent you can rely on Medicaid. Or if you have $4 to $5 million or so in liquid assets you can insure yourself. For the rest of the world in between, this insurance can be a good idea. If you and your mate buy it when you are in your mid to late fifties and in good health, you can lock in low premiums. (Jan and I bought in our fifties and have a combined annual premium of about $2300.) If you wait until you are older, the cost goes up dramatically. Also, if your health becomes bad, it will become very hard to get this insurance at all at any price. In doing your analysis, check whether your state has a plan to backstop your policy. New York, for example, guarantees lifetime coverage if you cover the initial years. Also, check if your state (like New York) gives a tax benefit for buying the insurance when calculating the net cost.
One of the overall planning benefits of this insurance is that you don’t need as much savings to cover this huge contingency. This is one of those sleep at night things. It is also helps your mate (and children) sleep at night, not worrying if your illness will lead to her being impoverished. But remember that long term health care is not a replacement for regular health insurance in retirement. More on that under Medicare in Chapter 31.
Umbrella Insurance.
An umbrella insurance policy covers the second catastrophe of a lawsuit. Your auto policy probably has a limit of $300,000, which will likely not be enough if someone dies or is crippled in a car accident that is your fault. An umbrella insurance policy also covers certain liabilities associated with your house or apartment. Of course the best thing is to never have an accident, but that is hard to count on. An umbrella adds protection to the assets you need to keep your retirement plan intact. This is another of those peaceful sleep things. And that to me is worth a lot more than the premiums, even though I hope never to need any of these policies.
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