You Know . . .
. . . you’re getting old when,
The Heat arrives and
you have to ask yourself
if you want a nice dish of ice cream
or a nice cold glass of beer.
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Test Your Financial IQ
So your braggart broker brother-in-law bugs you about not taking his advice and making a billion in the stock market. Or you think you have all the answers to present and possible problems in your financial future.
A financial IQ test published in Kiplinger’s Personal Finance magazine could put both of you to the test with a few basic questions that examine some rudimentary tenets of a sound personal fiscal policy.
A fun question asked how big a check you think you would get if you chose the cash option after winning a lottery jackpot of $100 million but had to split it with another person who also had the winning lottery number. After cutting the winnings in half and choosing a one-time cash payment, you would get a check for about $20 million.
By taking the one-time payout instead of monthly payments over 30 years, the prize amount is whittled down based on what is known as the “time value of money” according to a formula comparing the worth of today’s dollars against $1 three decades from now. This cuts your half-share of the lottery winnings to about $27 million, of which the Internal Revenue Service will claim some 25 percent. And then there are layers of other state and federal taxes to cut through before being able to tote your final total to the bank.
Then there’s the question about remarrying after your spouse of several decades has died. Should you marry the person who has emerged in your life as a possible mate or should you just move in and live together so you don’t forfeit Social Security survivor’s benefits based on your late husband’s hefty earnings history.
Go ahead and remarry, the article states. Widows and widowers 60 years and older may remarry and collect benefits based on their deceased spouse’s record if its more than what they’ve earned.
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grab a nap . . .
. . . so you can be up for
Peppur’s book signing
at 7 p.m. in the dining room.
SORRY that’s next Tuesday…
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Welcum . . .
. . . to a new week and a new month and,
in this part of the nation, a new level of warmth.
Gear up for a couple of meetings tomorrow afternoon —
a Town Hall gathering at 4 p.m.
after the food-service meeting.
Pick Up . . .
. . . your May calendar
in the mail room and
prepare for a marvelous month that includes
Mother’s Day, Memorial Day, and Cinco de Mayo,
a jazz performance and Verena Voices concerts,
a Zinfandel wine tasting, book signing, car show
and much more. . .
OK, So The Dining Services Meeting . . .
. . .has been resked for
2 p.m. next Tuesday
in the 2nd floor theater.
So now get down to
3 p.m. Thirsty Thursday because this will be
Nick’s last turn behind the bistro bar.
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Nevada’s Other Side Also a Good Bet
By Beverly Rahn, Mature Life Features
ELY, Nevada — If you want to get away from it all, this is the place.
As we zipped along Highway 50 — “The Loneliest Road in America” — that bisects this state, we saw how this land looked when pioneers bumped over it in Conestoga wagons.
We drove for hours through cactus-dotted plains under horizon-less skies just a half day from two of the glitter-gulch capitals of the world — Las Vegas and Reno. This is a land of wild mustangs and wrecked Mustangs. It’s where the deer and the antelope still play under an assortment of rainbows prancing with storms that clamber over the mountains.
We embarked on our week-long trip through rural Nevada from Reno and drove 320 miles east to Ely and 280 miles south on Highway 93 to Las Vegas.
While the land is harsh, the folks are friendly. We learned quickly the difference between a fairy tale and a cowboy story. A fairy tale begins with ‘Once upon a time.’ A cowboy story starts with, ‘Now listen, this is no bull—-.’
Planning to stretch our legs a mite on a fuel stop in Austin, we pulled over to a fence and saw a sign that said “Don’t even think of parking here.” We moved on because it was quite a clear statement in a land that has nothing but space.
In Eureka, we parked under the courthouse balcony that was used for, among other things, public hangings during the town’s heyday when it was the leading lead producer in the world. There were 13 smelters operating in this Pittsburgh of the West during the 1870s.
We took some time to hunt for pine nuts. These nuts, about the size of your little fingernail, were harvested by Native Americans each year after the first frost. They thrashed the pinon (pine) trees to tumble these seeds out their cones. The nuts were, and still are, roasted, salted or mashed into a meal or butter.
Midway through our trek, we cruised into Ely, birthplace of the late First Lady Pat Nixon and home to a Basque community (and its gusto food) that was born when these Pyrenees people were imported to tend to the flocks of sheep raised here.
We had called well ahead to make arrangements to ride the Ghost Train of Old Ely and wave to the call girls who greeted us you as the train chugged by the pleasure houses on the edge of town. We used our Golden Age passports at nearby Great Basin National Park to tour the Lehman Caves. This was another stop in the past that included several museums and a leap into prehistory to tour petroglyphs (stone etchings) across the ribbon of road and an expanse of desert from Fallon Naval Air Station.
The next morning, we took a side trip to Rachel, which is on the real loneliest road in America — Highway 375. The settlement perched on the edge of Nellis Air Force Bombing and Gunnery Range and Area 51/Groom Lake, is reportedly a major Earth terminal for unidentified flying objects (UFOs). The social center of the community is the Little A’Le’Inn, where we ordered an alienburger that tasted “out of this world,” of course.
Lore has it that it’s easy to identify aliens in the Little A’Le’Inn: they enter the watering hole and sit at a table for hours without ordering anything to eat or drink.
Gliding by sparkling Lake Mead as we dropped down into Las Vegas the next morning gave us the time cushion to adjust to our return to the clattering casinos of Reno’s neon neighbor.
It seems odd that a state in which most of the homes and buildings we saw dated back to the 19th century has enacted laws that prohibit anyone from disturbing anything that’s more than 50 years old. My husband, who’s older than that, says he likes the idea.
Enjoy . . .
. . . the previous entry
‘cuz I’m busy
writing for my newspaper readers.
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Pour Yourself . . .
. . . a cup of coffee
or a glass of wine
and enjoy this:
Val Vista Pharmacy . . .
. . . is back again
at noon today
to answer all your prescription questions.
THIS HAS BEEN CANCELLED
A Friend Recently .. .
. . .mulled replacing some of her furniture
but she gave it up because she said
she and her recliner go way back.
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Caregivers Pay Economic, Emotional Prices
Besides the shoulder-stooping emotional cost of caring for ill and ailing loved ones, there is can be an enormous economic price to pay by the more than 22 million U.S. families who provide such care.
Caregiving costs individuals some $660,000 over their lifetimes in lost wages, and lost pension contributions and Social Security because they take time off, leave their jobs or miss out on opportunities for training, promotions, and plum assignments.
Almost 85 percent of employees reportedly make adjustments to their work schedules by taking sick leave or vacation time, decreasing work hours, taking a leave of absence, switching to part-time employment from full-time, resigning, or retiring.
Elder care has more negative impacts on workers than does child care, particularly for those who are the primary caretakers for an older adult. Taking care of an aging parent is always difficult, but it is even more difficult for employees who have to care for their parent in their own home. It essentially means employees have a second shift of work when they get home.
As the population ages, the number of caregivers grows and the personal and corporate costs rise. Employees who care for elderly or sick relatives with long-term-care insurance are twice as likely to stay in the workforce as are workers who care for relatives without coverage, according to data from three MetLife institute surveys.
In addition, working caregivers of loved ones with long-term-care insurance coverage are less likely to experience such types of stress as having to provide constant attention to the care recipient or having to offer caregiving while ailing themselves.
The Reason . . .
. . . so many people
have a clean conscience
is because
it’s never been used.
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Health-Care Costs Top Concern
More than one-third of the people in this country are worried about the rising cost of their health-care services and insurance coverage. This level of concern indicates that more than twice as many people are worried about health-care costs than not being able to pay their rent or mortgage.
The public also is worried about a wide range of health matters, according to a nationwide poll. About one-third said they were very worried that their health plan will be more concerned about saving money for the plan than about what is best for them.
Almost 30 percent said they are very worried that the quality of health care they receive will get worse. About the same percentage said they were concerned about affording prescription drugs. And about a quarter said they worry about the availability of health services they think they might need.
The top issues facing government, according to more than a quarter of those polled, expanding health coverage for the more than 40 million people without insurance and providing prescription-drug coverage for seniors. These two items rank higher than other health-care problems such as malpractice reform and assuring the fiscal health of the Medicare program.
Mature Life Features 