A Home For Grandma
When you have a senior parent, the concern for their ability to maintain their lifestyle can be a significant worry. Almost without exception, senior citizens resist the idea of moving out of their house and into an assisted living facility or nursing home. You as a child of a senior citizen may see issues of safety if your aging parent continues to live independently. If their spouse has passed on, there may be issues of loneliness and depression. Hallways and doors of old homes are often not built to accommodate walkers or wheelchairs. And the vision of your children’s Grandma or Grandpa falling and being unable to reach you for help is frightening. And then there is the financial side of maintaining their home and paying the mortgage if it is still active.
A Home For Grandma - 641 words
A Time Consuming Hobby
When you are raising a family and involved in a demanding career, if someone asks you what your hobby is, you probably would answer “Who has time for a hobby?” That is why retirement and your senior citizen years are the perfect opportunity to get involved in a time consuming hobby and be able to throw yourself into it with gusto.
A Time Consuming Hobby - 647 words
Becoming Gandalf
In the classic books, The Lord of the Rings, Gandalf was the wise old wizard that guided the heroic party through to success. While we don’t have real Gandalfs in our lives, you may be able to remember when you were young that wise elder statesman that you looked up to and revered because they were a source of wisdom and caring when you as a young person seemed to be continuously confused and afraid about what was happening to you in life.
Becoming Gandalf - 742 words
Bringing In The New Blood
When a senior citizen finds a new romantic companion late in life, it’s a wonderful moment for both. Romances late in life can provide a much needed source of companionship and love that may be missing if the senior has lost a spouse or is going through their golden years alone. But it’s common for children of seniors to go through some anxiety when they see dad or mom enjoying the company of another romance in their lives. And getting the kids to accept your new girlfriend or boyfriend, especially if that romance is going to result in a wedding.
Bringing In The New Blood - 624 words
Can Grandpa Still Drive?
Some of the issues involving helping your senior citizen parent or grandparent can be difficult and full of tough decisions. Seniors face unique medical and lifestyle issues that call upon them and those that love them to find solutions that they can live with. And it’s very common for senior citizens to live in denial about the effects of their advancing years and to accept the changes in the way they live that must happen for them to continue live in a safe and healthy way.
Can Grandpa Still Drive? - 644 words
Coping With Anger About Aging
They say there are stages of grief. Some of those stages include denial, depression and acceptance. But one that many of us experience is anger. While we most often associate grief with the emotions when a loved one passes away, we can go through grief about a lot of things. People go through grief when their house burns down or when they lose a job or a pet. An area of loss that we don’t often lump in with grief causes is the physical decline of aging.
Coping With Anger About Aging - 723 words
Ethical Wills
You probably did not wait until you officially became a “senior citizen” to prepare your will. Most of us put one together early in life and at least when we have children and realize we do have assets and we need to make sure the kids are taken care of in the case of an accident that suddenly takes you out of their lives. So you know well what goes into your will and how to document exactly how you want your estate taken care of in the event of your death.
Ethical Wills - 698 words
Fighting Loneliness
When you are raising your kids in your adult years, it seems you will never know a minute’s peace. Each day was another explosion of yelling, running and wild activity in the house from the moment the kids are born until they are grown and moving out. It was when the last one finally made their way into the world that you actually knew what is was to be alone, at least the two of you.
Fighting Loneliness - 717 words
Finally Dealing With God
There is an area of life that for many of us, is a big unanswered question. When we are in the decades of working hard to support a family and raise kids, we don’t have as much time to deal with big unanswered questions. Philosophy and things having to do with ideas often take a back seat to the necessities of life. But as you move out of your active working life and into retirement and the life of a senior citizen, you finally have the time to ponder the bigger questions and try to resolve troubling issues of the heart and soul, now that you have the time to grapple with them.
Finally Dealing With God - 725 words
Fun Is Different Now
Even as senior citizens, you can probably remember being a child when the most important thing in the world was having fun. Well there are some remarkable similarities between your life as a senior citizen and those carefree days of childhood. For one thing, when you were a child, you didn’t work for a living, you felt secure that you had what you need. Hopefully in your senior years, you too are able to retire with the knowledge that you did a good job preparing for retirement so you have some carefree days to enjoy now too.
Fun Is Different Now - 756 words
Giving Your Time Away
One of the joys of retirement is that you are into a time of life when making a buck and worrying about using your time “profitably” is less of an issue. But it’s not entirely accurate that all senior citizens want to retire to spend the day rocking on the back porch and taking long naps. Human beings are by nature workers and doers and that need to be productive and be a part of something bigger than yourself doesn’t go away the day you stop working for a living.
Giving Your Time Away - 614 words
Going Back To School
For most of us, our senior citizen years are a time to relax, maybe pursue a hobby, travel or just relax and let life go by. But, for many, retirement isn’t just a time to lay the goals of life down. It is a time to look back over life at the unfinished challenges and then go back and finish them. And for many, an unfinished goal in life is to go back and get that degree. Whether it is finally graduating from high school, finishing your bachelor’s degree or starting and finishing a masters or PHD, it’s a big challenge to go back to the classroom and get that certificate, especially when you do that as a senior citizen.
Going Back To School - 731 words
Grandparents Raising Grandchildren
There is a family phenomenon that you may face now as you should be heading into a leisurely life of a senior citizen and retirement. But if you find that you are being called upon to raise your own grandchildren, that is a senior citizen lifestyle that is very different than what was expected. It might be somewhat comforting to know that the incidences of grandparents being called upon to raise their grandchildren is more common now than ever before. But the fact that a lot of senior citizens have to raise their grandkids doesn’t make it any easier to face that challenge yourself.
Grandparents Raising Grandchildren - 753 words
Hide And Seek
Children love to play hide and seek. When you were raising those sweet kids of yours, it was great fun to join them in that game. Another variation on it that lots of us play with the grandkids is “where’s Grandpa?” This is the one where you hide your face and then suddenly show it to a baby just to see that look of surprise and delight when they see Grandpa or Grandma over and over again.
Hide And Seek - 748 words
Making Washington Listen
The federal government is the type of institution that works on the squeaky wheel principle. That principle, simply stated, is that the squeaky wheel gets the grease. Applied to Washington, that means that it will be the areas of life that public officials think will get them the most votes that will get attention and the rest will get ignored. It’s sad to say that about our representative system of government but it’s true.
Making Washington Listen - 729 words
Putting Your Affairs In Order
Moving into the phase of life of a senior citizen calls for thinking about things that you might have put off before. This includes many of life’s philosophical questions and looking back on life and thinking about what you did well and what you regret. But aside from those reflective questions, there are some basic things you should do now to “put your affairs in order” so that in the event you come to that final day of your life, your children and those charged with such affairs know what to do.
Putting Your Affairs In Order - 744 words
Retirement Isn’t For Everybody
Are you the type of person who never was able live up to stereotypes? When we think of a stereotype, the classic is the image of your standard senior citizen. That image is as a slowly moving Grandma or Grandpa who is long done working at their career and wants nothing more than to sit on the back porch and wait for the next holiday to see the grandkids. Well, if you are like a lot of senior citizens of the new century, we look at that stereotype and say – forget it!
Retirement Isn’t For Everybody - 618 words
Romance In The Sunset Years
When you watch television or the movies, you would come to the conclusion that romance is only the stuff of those in their teens or 20s. As though somehow once someone reaches full adulthood, much less senior citizen age, the concept of romance is completely out of the question. This may be more a function of the fact that more people in those age groups go to the movies than any grounding in reality about romance. But we know for a fact that romance in the sunset years not only is possible, it might be the sweetest romance of them all.
Romance In The Sunset Years - 597 words
Senior Citizen Scams
If you have a senior citizen in the family, there really is nothing more heartbreaking than to discover than to find out that your loved one has been the victim of a senior citizen scam which robbed them out of their precious retirement savings and puts their retirement at risk. When you come to the realization that this wholesale robbery has occurred, you don’t know who to be angry at. It’s easy to want to be angry at your parent or grandparent but its they who are the victim here. They need your love and help more than ever now, not guilt and anger.
Senior Citizen Scams - 740 words
Smart Traveling For Senior Citizens
One of the real joys of retirement and enjoying your senior years may come in the form of travel. Travel is broadening and many senior citizens save for a lifetime to enjoy a lifestyle of travel once they are retired. The image of becoming a world traveler in their senior years is one of those dreams that kept them going when life was tough in their working years so they certainly deserve to hit the road and enjoy the fruit of a lifetime of work.
Smart Traveling For Senior Citizens - 619 words
Stalker Stalkers
There is an epidemic of crime going on around us. And it’s an epidemic that is invisible and happening in homes all around your community quietly so that nobody knows its happening. It’s a crime that will take the dedication of people who care deeply for their families and have a lot of time to track down these criminals and see to it they are brought to justice. The crime is internet stalkers and they are out to steal the souls of our children and grandchildren.
Stalker Stalkers - 755 words
Stretching Your Retirement Savings
There is what we call in business a “paradigm shift” when you move from the working world to the world of retirement. A paradigm shift means that the rules we live by and the economy that regulates our lives will change dramatically. Whether you have a large retirement package or you have retirement savings that are going to take some care to stretch out, you will begin to live on a fixed income and stretching your retirement savings will become a hobby, a passion and a lifestyle that you will get good at over time.
Stretching Your Retirement Savings - 610 words
Stripped Shirts And Straw Hats
There was a study recently that found that the majority of people who graduate from college with majors in music never go on to a career in music. Besides the natural conclusion that a lot of kids never use their degrees, it leads to another less obvious conclusion. And that is that there is a lot of musical talent out there that is not properly tapped.
Stripped Shirts And Straw Hats - 652 words
Take Some Risks
There is a classic image of a senior citizen driving with their turn signals continuously on and poking along 20 miles under the speed limit on the highway. A popular comedian once quipped that if he was 80 years old, he would “drive like hell” since, after all, why not take some risks at 80?
Take Some Risks - 665 words
Time To Write The Great American Novel
How many times when you was moving through the decades of raising a family and building a career did you say that you were going to write the great American novel when you retired? Now as you settle into a life of retirement and the lifestyle of a senior citizen, do you wonder if now might be the time? After all, this is the time of life when you always promised yourself you would uncork all of that creativity you have been keeping pent up all these years and let it spill out onto the world. So why not give it a try? Nobody ever got hurt trying for greatness.
Time To Write The Great American Novel - 556 words