Attention All Bocce . . .
. . .aficionados ! ! !
It’s Friday again
so dive into your playing gear
and climb aboard the team bus
at the Verena front door at 11 a.m.
= = = = =
Mental Exercise Sharpens Seniors’ Mind
A few mental push-ups here and there can help keep an older adult’s mind just about as sharp as ever — much the same way physical exercise can help maintain physical fitness, according to the Pennsylvania State University’s Gerontology Center. Researchers worked with 5,000 men and women for more than three decades and found less than half showed a decline in mental ability, even those aged 74 to 81.
Does mental ability start to decline in middle age? Ridiculous, not even at age 60, they report. Just as you can maintain physical well-being as you age by exercising and eating properly, you can maintain mental well-being by engaging in stimulating activities, continuing to make decisions and leading an active life.
Mind-sharpening exercises include watching television informational programs rather than soap operas, playing bridge instead of bingo, playing blackjack instead of slot machines, and taking up word games like Scrabble or anagrams. They even recommend square-dancing because not only is it good for you physically, it’s also mentally challenging because you have to follow intricate patterns chanted by the caller.
Thirsty Thursday . . .
. . . is always welcome and
it’s a bridge to Friday’s Super Supper Shuttle
that gets us to
Olive Garden,
Old Chicago Pizza,
Village Inn and
In.N.Out Burger this week.
= = = = =
Compound Interest Beats the Odds
Famed physicist Albert Einstein is credited with describing the most powerful force in the universe as “compound interest.”
Yet just as many people who don’t understand his theory of relativity also don’t understand what he was driving at in this instance.
Three out of 10 Americans think their best chance of amassing half a comfortable financial cushion in their lifetime is to win a lottery or sweepstakes, according to a Consumer Federation of America poll. The odds of winning a lottery are one in 10,000,000 to 20,000,000.
When the Consumer Federation asked how much money you would earn by investing $25 a week for 40 years at a 7 percent return, no one guesses as high as the actual amount — $286,640. Invest $50 a week at that same 7 percent rate – the average annual return of the Standard and Poors 500 — for the same period and you double that amount, which is well more than half a million dollars.
What makes compound interest so powerful is that you not only earn interest on the money you put into an investment, but you also earn interest on the interest. If you put $100 in an investment program at 7 percent, you should have $107 at the end of the first year. The next year you earn 7 percent on the $107 not just the original $100.
Dr. Raz in Residence
Therapist Dr. Candace Raczkowski
will introduce her healing service to us at
1 p.m. in the 2nd floor theater
Her knowledge, experience, training and background
treating and preventing problems with
balance,
post-surgical recuperation,
joint inflation and
a wide-range of chronic conditions
will help most us overcome stiffness and pain.
= = = = =
Married Couples More Wealthy Than Singles
Just like love and marriage, marriage and wealth‑building go hand in hand.
Don’t leap astride your high horse should someone suggest you or a dear friend or relative is marrying for money.
A Purdue University study reveals that marriage has a lot to do with wealth accumulation. Getting and staying married appears to provide institutional benefits that greatly impact long‑term economic well‑being.
A survey of more than 7,000 households that included at least one pre‑retirement person between 51 and 61 years of age indicated that people who never married had only 14 percent of the financial assets that married people accumulated.
Even when divorced individuals and surviving spouses remarried, they still did not make up as much financial ground as partners who were continuously married. The negative effects are greater when a marriage ends in divorce.
Financial potentials that are greater in marriage include home ownership, insurance coverage for spouses, survivor pension benefits, and increased rates of saving. A continuous marriage is more important to acquiring housing equity than other type of assets.
Which leads sponsors of the study to warn married couples pondering divorce to consult with a financial counselor before calling their attorneys.
A financial consultant can help because quickly liquidating jointly held property and establishing two households with the proceeds can be costly to both parties. And spinning off from that is the need to review individually held property before forging a marriage contract, whether it’s the first marriage or the latest in a series. Pre‑nuptial financial agreements should be given as much priority as legally binding romantic bonds.
OK, We’re In . . .
. . . what used to be called a “rest home.”
Sunday is a day of rest,
so what the heck do we do
the rest of the week?
What Would Weekends Do . . .
. . . without Saturdays?
No mowing the lawn,
shopping for Sunday,
packing for the weekend trip
and on and on.
It’s relaxing game time around here.
= = = = =
NO BOCCE today . . .
. . . bus (and driver) has to traipse to
Goldfield Ghost Town.
If You Don’t Like . . .
. . .tucking your hearing aids into your ears,
put them in your pocket and take them down to
the 2nd floor multi-purpose room
at 3 p.m. to get them
checked and cleaned.
= = = = =
It’s a good thing I became a wordsmith because
I can’t even count the times I failed math at school.
= = = = =
Too Sick to Seek Care
Imagine being too sick to get help from becoming sicker. That’s what appears to happening to a lot of the elderly. Poor physical health and disabilities could be keeping older patients from seeking preventive care, such as mammograms and flu shots, according to a report by the Washington, D.C.-based Center for the Advancement of Health.
It also seems that physical-health problems affect the elderly’s health behavior more than mental-health problems like depression. The one exception, according to results of a survey of more than 4,500 individuals aged 65 to 103, is that older patients who reported being depressed were more likely to smoke.
Most people are less likely to smoke or drink alcohol frequently as they age but are also less likely to have mammograms, lose weight, and exercise as they grow older. Minority and low-income patients, as well as those with physical-health limitation, are less likely to use preventive medical services.
On the other hand, elderly respondents taking multiple prescription medications or who had recent falls were more likely to use preventive care and to practice good-health behaviors. This suggests that regular contact with health-care providers encourages better good-health practices. Additional visits also give health-care providers more opportunities to suggest vaccinations, go over opportunities for advance directives, and discuss needs for behavioral changes.
Anyone Still Interested . . .
. . . in writing their life story
can get started in the weekly writing class
at 1:30 p.m. in the 2nd floor multi-purpose room.
= = = = =
I’ve always felt it’s
better to be thought of as being
abreast rather than behind.
= = = = =
Getting to Know the British Mind
By Igor Lobanov, Mature Life Features
British dramatist George Bernard Shaw is credited with remarking that “America and Britain are two nations divided by a common language.” But different word usage is perhaps the lesser part of the split. If you’re contemplating a trip to the British Isles, learning about differences in how we and the English think and act may help make the trip more enjoyable.
Pittsburgh native Jane Walmsley, who is married to a Brit and has lived and worked as a television broadcaster, producer and journalist in England for more than two decades, has compiled several different customs and characteristics that set Yanks and Brits apart.
Starting with the way we look at life. Americans, Walmsley notes, think death can be delayed by aerobics, prune juice, and plastic surgery. Britons live life with a certain detachment and let events run their course and are “never be seen to try too hard.” Simply, that means never run for a bus or skip afternoon tea.
Americans want lots of choices, she says, and want the right to substitute a tossed salad for French fries. In short, we like to live life a la carte. The English keep their number of choices limited – “dresses come in four sizes, shoes one width, ice cream in three flavors.” They believe that too many options sew confusion.
She sees Yanks as having a go-for-it mentality and adoring movers and shakers, even flawed ones. Many ask, “If I can have it all, why haven’t I got it?” Brits prefer to relax and enjoy working within life’s natural boundaries and find a lot of satisfaction from small successes.
Then there is regionalism. As Walmsley explains, the British Isles is about the size of Pennsylvania encompassing 11 distinct and potentially warring parts. These include Scotland, Wales, Ulster (Northern Ireland), Republic of Ireland, West Country (Cornwall, Devon, Somerset), North (Manchester, Liverpool, Leeds), Northeast (the Newcastle-upon-Tyne area), Midlands (Birmingham), East Anglia (Norfolk, Suffolk), South, and Central London.
In summation, Walmsley opines that the only two things that really matter for the British are the Royal Family and the pub, which is the great leveler. What really matters for an American is even simpler, and also a leveler, is ice cream.
In another view, Roger Axtell, author of numerous books/guides on differences in international behavior, points out the really basic difference between the Brits and the Yanks: the way we hold a fork while eating.
In England, they keep the fork firmly in the left hand. By contrast, “We appear juggler-like, cutting the food with the fork in the left hand, dropping the knife, flipping the fork to the right hand, holding it like a pen and finally eating.”
Our zigzag eating style has had its ups and downs. Down (and out) were many U.S. secret agents in enemy territory during World War II who accidentally fell back into their early-childhood table manners.
Mature Life Features 