A Little Wine For Your Stomach’s Sake
Sometimes the value of alcohol in the life of a senior citizen can be a source of controversy. If you have enjoyed a moderate use of alcohol throughout your adult life, it can be pretty insulting when someone takes that away from you as though you were a teenager without the ability to handle adult life in a responsible way. But to look at the issue of alcohol use in senior citizens from the perspective of your children or caregivers, there are ways that alcohol could be a medical problem during this time of life when health issues seem to become more central to your daily life.
A Little Wine For Your Stomach’s Sake - 641 words
Conquering The Food Budget
One of the things that takes some getting used to as a senior citizen is living on a fixed income. And even if you have a healthy retirement, investments, a 401K plan and Social Security benefits, when you stop working, your income comes out of that nest egg which is a diminishing bucket of funds. So anything you can do to protect your money and economize means your money will last longer, be there for you when you have an emergency or be available for fun things which is what retirement is all about.
Conquering The Food Budget - 733 words
Cut Your Caregiver Some Slack
Part of the organization system that is recommended for most senior citizens is the active presence of a close family member or friend who takes the role of “caregiver”. The job description of a caregiver is pretty wide and can include anything from buying your groceries, to making sure your Medicare paperwork is all correct, to doing your taxes to cleaning your apartment. In fact, there really is no list of jobs that makes a resume of a good caregiver except for the one job of doing “anything you need her to do.”
Cut Your Caregiver Some Slack - 615 words
From Grief To Joy
For some reason grief always sneaks up on us. But as senior citizens, we have more opportunities to deal with grief simply because the phenomenon of someone passing away is not that uncommon at your age. Nonetheless, when the passing of a loved one strikes close to home and particularly if it is your spouse or someone you were with every day, it still hits “like a ton of bricks” and we find ourselves at a loss for how to correctly grieve about the loss.
From Grief To Joy - 640 words
Gardening In A New Way
Gardening is a terrific hobby. If you have enjoyed gardening for most of your life, you know the joys it can bring to your life. It gives you the chance to work outside and to feel closer to nature by helping her make food, herbs or beautiful flowers where there was nothing but weeds before.
Gardening In A New Way - 750 words
Getting Some Help
One of the adjustments that is part of life once you end your working years is adjusting to living on a different kind of income. We get used t that regular paycheck over the life of our careers in the working world. And while we may be very happy to leave the stresses of the workaday life, that paycheck is one part of that world that we may miss when they finally stop.
Getting Some Help - 648 words
Getting Up A Good Head Of Steam
When you were thinking about the life you would live as a senior citizen, you may have held that old idea of sitting on a rocking chair and watching the world go by. That silly idea for some reason seems like an ideal situation for people in their golden years.
Getting Up A Good Head Of Steam - 646 words
Growing Into Your Rocking Chair
When you want a child to be more mature, you commonly say, “Act your age.” This phrase gets a lot of use even for adults, probably mostly for middle aged men who lapse into immature behavior from time to time. But there is a truth behind that little phrase.
Growing Into Your Rocking Chair - 649 words
How To Walk Away
Life is full of transitions. And your transition from a busy adult life to the more relaxed lifestyle of retirement and senior citizen status has its fair share of adjustments too. From retirement from a full time job to learning how Medicare works to becoming a full-fledged member of AARP, your move to senior citizen status is another of life’s big transitions.
How To Walk Away - 727 words
Jumping Jack Flash
Back in the nineteen sixties when the rock and roll was just getting started, there was this little old rock and roll band out of England that got some attention. You may have heard of them. They were called the Rolling Stones. And this little old band had a pretty good hit with the kids called Jumping Jack Flash.
Jumping Jack Flash - 718 words
Keeping Your Marriage Fresh In Retirement
You may be able to remember that year when the last of your kids moved out. That first year that you are “empty nesters” had a lot of adjustments. But one byproduct of suddenly having the house empty for a lot of couples is what has been called the real second honeymoon. Because parents no longer have to care for their children as actively and they have the big empty house all to themselves, the opportunity is there for some real sizzle to return to the marriage.
Keeping Your Marriage Fresh In Retirement - 641 words
Letting It Go
Resentment and unforgiveness can be destructive things to let stay in your heart. You no doubt taught that to your children and maybe you even give that advice to your grandchildren to help them get passed their childhood arguments and petty squabbles they have with their siblings.
Letting It Go - 639 words
More Funerals Than Weddings
It’s a dark side of being a senior citizen that you are going to face a higher incidence of people dying than you may have seen in other eras of your life. While we all have the experience of someone we know passing away from time to time throughout life, because of the stage of life we are in as senior citizens, it is going to be more common as we move along in years.
More Funerals Than Weddings - 620 words
Not A Nursing Home
There are a lot of things we look forward to when we prepare for a life of retirement and those “golden years” of being a senior citizen. Of course, it takes a bit of getting used to transition to becoming granddad or grandma and no longer having all those stresses of job and family. This is not to say that we don’t have our share of concerns as senior citizens.
Not A Nursing Home - 749 words
Opening The Flood Gate Of Communications With The Grandkids
You may remember what it was like to raise teenagers. They seem to go into a funk at the age of 13 and stay that way until they have kids of their own. So now that you are a grandparent and it’s your kids struggling with getting the silent treatment from their kids, do you have to write off those sweet grandkids who used to love to climb on your lap when they came over?
Opening The Flood Gate Of Communications With The Grandkids - 647 words
Rebuilding Bridges
Family is important. Sadly in the busy world of your adult life, it’s easy to get completely absorbed with taking care of your immediate family of your spouse and kids and dealing with issues of career, home ownership, finances and all of the other worries of life that so often we lose touch with those we grew up with. The outcome is that a lot of senior citizens reach their retirement years and when they do inventory of their life, they realize that their relationship with their brothers or sisters has gone cold.
Rebuilding Bridges - 748 words
Sharing The Grief
How do you go about comforting a friend who has lost someone close? This is a question that haunts people of any age bracket. But learning to share the grief of a friend is particularly important for you as a senior citizen because it’s going to happen more often for you.
Sharing The Grief - 745 words
Should You Buy Before You Die?
When your senior years are approaching, one natural instinct is to get your affairs in order so if your time to leave this life comes along “before expected”, your estate is ready to go. “Getting your affairs in order” means a lot of things. It means making sure your debts are paid off and your investments are where they should be. It means making sure your insurance policies, stock documentation and all other financial information is secure and where your primary caregiver can get to it to resolve your financial affairs if you are gone. And it means making sure you have a will and that it is up to date so there is no question on what should happen in the event of your demise.
Should You Buy Before You Die? - 750 words
Smart Senior Shoppers
Sometimes when you are retired and maybe living alone for the first time in your life, that telephone can be a godsend or the bane of your existence. When it sits there for days on end and never rings, it can have an effect on your mood and state of mind. But we have to beware that we don’t let the phone become our salvation when people abuse it for solicitation to sell you things that you just don’t need.
Smart Senior Shoppers - 758 words
The Best Senior Citizens Ever
If you could sit down with a pencil and paper and list what the top five goals most people would put for their senior citizen years, what do you suppose would go on that list? Financial security would probably rank pretty high. And time with family would get good marks. But just based on the thing that seems to be most on the minds of senior citizens, the thing that would probably rank the highest would be good health, avoiding injury and continued long life.
The Best Senior Citizens Ever - 736 words
The Craftiness Of Crafts
Retired life often brings along with it more free time than we are used to. While having time to do things you always dreamed of doing and to just take life slow seemed like a dream when you were working for a living, raising kids and dealing with a mortgage. There never seemed to be enough time to do anything.
The Craftiness Of Crafts - 648 words
The Hardest Words
We face a lot of hard moments in life. As you have raised your family, dealt with business issues and tried to be an upstanding citizen in your path from youth to retirement, you have many moments you are proud of. But anyone who has successfully come to their senior years also has a few relationships and moments that they are not proud of as well.
The Hardest Words - 731 words
The Vacation You Have Been Waiting For
One of the things many of us do as we dream of the life of retirement and living in our golden years is to enjoy some adventures and vacations that you may have put off when raising the kids. When you have those little ones in your life, you don’t want to miss a single summer when you can take them to Disneyworld or to discover America with them so you can make memories with your family. So if your library of vacation pictures is mostly with Mickey and Goofy or on a huge water slide at Sea World, those are memories worth keeping forever.
The Vacation You Have Been Waiting For - 681 words
What You Know That They Don’t Know
Several years ago, on the popular comedy show Saturday Night Live, a skit was often presented called “Middle Aged Guy”. In this skit an overweight middle aged man was a super hero to come to the aid of young couples who don’t know basic things like how a 401K works or how to unplug a kitchen sink. It was a funny skit but it also pointed up something about aging that it’s important to remember. And that is that you are valuable to your kids and their families because there are things you know that they don’t know.
What You Know That They Don’t Know - 747 words
Winning Or Whining
When you were raising that houseful of kids, it seemed that there was never a moment’s peace for you. Of course, as a parent you like being with your children. But when you got home from a long days work, sometimes a little peace and quiet was what you were hoping for rather than a chorus of needs, demands, complaints and requirements for litigation of their petty squabbles. But that’s what you got and you were dad so you took care of business for your family.
Winning Or Whining - 752 words