Longevity: Making Boomer Women's Worry More Concrete

In a previous blog I addressed the worry of a growing number of women boomers: longevity. Just to drive the point home (and explain my calendar above for 30 years from now), I'll share this online source for making your worry more concrete: Life Calculator at http://gosset.wharton.upenn.edu/mortality/second_version.html

The statisticians behind this calculator took a number of variables into account, including left- and right-handed-ness, appreciated by all us left-handers who are aware that statistically speaking we die earlier than right-handers. I recall learning of this handed-ness research as a young woman and feeling aghast that I would be shorted years of life. Over the years, the aghast-ness has dissipated, partly because I know the statistic may merely reflect a cohort effect (stats from the olden days being compared to modern times and essentially a different population) and partly because I figure I'll be ready to go a few years early.

To take a shorter questionnaire (with nearly the same result), just back up the URL to http://gosset.wharton.upenn.edu/mortality and to learn more about the academic responsible for this work, keep backing up the URL to http://gosset.wharton.upenn.edu.

© 2008 Mary Bold, PhD, CFLE. The content of this blog or related web sites created by Mary Bold (www.marybold.com, www.boldproductions.com, College Intern Blog) is not under any circumstances to be regarded as professional, legal, financial, or medical advice. Or education advice. Or marital advice. Or even a tip.

Boomer Women's Worry

Longevity: A Hard Thing to Appreciate. According to the Society of Actuaries, boomer women nearing retirement are worried—and they are more worried than men. Setting aside the possibility that men and women just naturally worry differently, the Society's 2008 survey concludes that the concern is about longevity and widowhood.

15 Years. For a male-female couple, the gap in longevity is 15 years. That assumes a traditional age difference at marrying and another difference for age at death. Those differences will probably change for younger cohorts as marrying ages are already very different from previous generations. For now, the women in the upper range of the baby boom expect to outlive males by about 15 years.

Another Financial Shift: Boomer women's worry is not characterized as being upset about living alone. The worry is that widowhood will present another change in finances and it won't be a positive one. About a third of boomer women will live to age 90, so a widowhood change in finances could occur at age 75. Forget that we are all prepared to keep working—we weren't planning to do that at 75.

Planning for Longevity: Just to add to the worry, stir in reluctance to talk about it. Americans are not known for open communication about death, so we're not necessarily planning well for such events. "Planning for longevity" doesn't have quite the punch as "planning for widowhood," but it's probably as close as we'll get to addressing the worry out loud.

© 2008 Mary Bold, PhD, CFLE. The content of this blog or related web sites created by Mary Bold (www.marybold.com, www.boldproductions.com, College Intern Blog) is not under any circumstances to be regarded as professional, legal, financial, or medical advice. Or education advice. Or marital advice. Or even a tip.

Encore Career

Encore. Once more. Repeat performance. Except the encore career is not a repeat at all. It's the newly crafted career that replaces the one that came before. Bankers become adventure guides. And probably fewer adventure guides become bankers.

Boomers invented it. Boomers are responsible for the new concept of encore career. First, because they are the first generation living long enough to want/need a second career. Second, because they want the second career to be more fulfilling or more rewarding or just more fun.

Website guide: Googling "encore career" will produce about a zillion links. Here's the one I recommend as the first one: Encore Career. This link will take you to the home page, but I recommend you visit the "find" page, too. It is a great place to dive in. (If you see a pop-up box about google and APIs and maps, just persist. Or, check out the URL in that message and learn about embedded maps, which is pretty interesting, too.)

On a personal note: I'm composing. That's to say that I have my date in sight and I have preliminary plans accomplished. Just a couple of months more. ~ Lida

© 2008 Mary Bold, PhD, CFLE. The content of this blog or related web sites created by Mary Bold is not under any circumstances to be regarded as professional, legal, financial, or medical advice. Or education advice. Or marital advice. Or even a tip.

Working for Benefits

A recurring theme: Boomer women increasingly report, "I'm working for benefits," which may suggest that they would pursue different work or use of time if it weren't for "the benefits." Those other pursuits can be addressed another time; our topic today is what those benefits are. Typically, the primary need is for health insurance. Mentioned less frequently, at least among the women I talk to, is retirement or pension. (That doesn't mean retirement benefits are less important—just less immediate.)

Why are women working for health insurance? To start, our modern society keeps us notified about the high cost of medical care and imparts a sense of responsibility to be prepared for the worst. It's not something earlier generations had to address, mainly because they didn't live long enough to have the choice. At the last turn of the century, death came at age 40 or 50, if one was long-lived. (The wise old person in the village was honored perhaps mainly for being the only old person in the village.) At the current turn of the century, we predict death at 70 or 80 and even 90 for great numbers of our population.

But boomer women are not 70 yet. They are a decade or more younger and simply planning for a very long rest of life. In terms of health benefits, they see Medicare in the near or distant future. In the meantime, they are working for benefits and almost always mean they are purchasing insurance from an employer's group plan. A boomer woman may be covering just herself, or self plus a dependent such as spouse or child. The great historical change of note: the increasing number of women who are the earner of the benefits (not the dependent on a spouse's plan).

If they weren't working for group benefits: They would either purchase private insurance or go without. There is a middle option referred to short-hand as COBRA, typically uttered with fear and loathing. In fact, COBRA is an extension of group benefits (upon leaving employment) and a potential bridge to converted benefits (moving from group to individual coverage at the same or similar advantaged pricing). Those are good options for the person who has resources on hand to pay for COBRA in transition months. Admittedly, if resources are scarce, COBRA may not provide needed coverage, and more expensive private insurance may be completely beyond reach.

• COBRA: Keeping Your Group Health Insurance
  (Web page - 2006 article by AARP with helpful definitions)
  
• An Employee's Guide to Health Benefits Under COBRA
  (PDF - 2006 reprint by U.S. Government with comprehensive explanations)
  

On a personal note: I remember my longevity moment. I was reading a Gail Sheehy book in which she reported some statistical research: if a woman of my age cohort (people born in the same 10-year period) made it to age 50 without having a cancer, then life span could be estimated at 90 years. That describes me, although I quickly point out that the prediction is actually based on probability. Some of us in my group will reach 90, not all of us.

Will I COBRA: I will probably COBRA this year. In leaving a university position, I have opportunity to continue my group coverage through COBRA for some months. This occurs at the same time that my husband is COBRA-ing. A lay-off package provided him with 9 months extended company-paid group insurance, to be continued through 9 months of COBRA coverage. Our coverage is not coordinated as we each carried separate insurance coverage through employment. The timing is interesting now, as we research the options for each of us. If one of us returns to employment with benefits, then we might return to a earlier pattern of carrying the other as a dependent. If neither of us returns to a company plan, we will have to research the options—and report them here.

2011 is coming

The boomer identity: Baby boomers (everyone born in the U.S. between 1946 and 1964) form the largest generation cohort in history. Our impact has already been huge (we produced the baby boomlet, for example) and we will likely live longer than any previous generation. Barring a global disaster that affects longevity, we will work to retirement, retire, and then possibly work some more in ways that will influence the U.S. economy for the next half-century. Our housing and health care decisions will impact not just our own generation but the next one, too, both at the macro (economy and social supports) and micro (family and community) levels. In short, we will expect the next generations to support us, sometimes financially. And in a fashion reminiscent of our own coming-of-age in the 1950s and '60s and '70s, we will be loud and demanding.

2011 is coming: In conversation with a young relative, I asked when we would gather for her high school graduation. She said, "2011" and I exclaimed, "that's the start of boomer retirements—what a year!" And she had no clue as to what I was talking about. Will the first wave of boomer retirements eclipse her milestone of high school graduation? Of course not. But her rite of passage will be part of a very busy year because even though a lot of boomers will not be able to retire in 2011, even a fraction of them taking retirement will make news. 2011 is coming.

On a personal note: Call me Lida. It's a nickname, so if you want to know more about me you'll have to search my professional name, Mary Bold. What you'll find is my identity as a consultant and teacher and author. I work in the fields of higher ed assessment, distance learning, and family studies. The overlap for this column is my academic discipline, family studies. I come to the topic of demographics with an intense interest in how families operate and I take a socio-historical view of all things normative-adaptive. (That's a fancy way of saying that I do not think the family or society is in decline. I consider all changes to be adaptive, and I consider change inevitable.) And I come to the topic of boomer women with intense self-interest. I was 40 years old before I realized that most of my assumptions about health, wealth, and retirement were wrapped up in a "package deal" of spousal benefits. Of course, that package doesn't fit today's realities. I had to replace that generational mindset and look for new ways to navigate middle age and plan for retirement. I am adapting.

~ Lida