Securely taking Social Security

It surely is one of the most difficult and consequential of decisions for Baby Boomers: When can I retire and, more importantly, when should I start collecting my Social Security benefits.

Well, a writer at CNN.com (of all places) has done some of the heavy lifting for us:

"Say you want to retire at 62 and would draw a Social Security benefit of $1,125 a month. That's 25 percent less than the $1,500 you would collect if you waited until age 66.

"By age 77 and 11 months (let's call it 78) you'd have collected roughly $216,000 in total benefits, whether you opted for early benefits ($1,125 x 192 months from ages 62 until 78) or full retirement age benefits ($1,500 x 144 months from ages 66 until 78).

"But your break-even age is actually later when you factor in the investment value of your early benefits. Even if you don't invest those early benefits directly, taking them might mean you can leave other savings to keep growing. That could add three to five years to your break-even point...."

She even linked to the Social Security Administration's breakeven calculator.

The full piece is here. It is worth your time.

A Balancing Post (rimshot)

OK, so most of us remember the days before Black/CrackBerries, before cell phones and, more to the point I'll eventually get to, before pocket calculators. We remember pencils and paper. We remember those damn multiplication tables.

Boy, do we remember those multiplication tables. And, speaking for myself, I want to keep remembering them.

So I balance my checkbook the old-fashioned way. I insist on receiving hard-copy monthly statements in the mail (you have to be careful - banks are developing all sorts of tricks to get you to click the 'electronic delivery' box). And when the statements arrive, I pull out a pen and the checkbook, and I add and substract and curse and whine and so on and so forth.

Now, I'm no Luddite. I have computers, 6.0 DSL service, a wireless home network, satellite TV and XM Satellite Radio (I still have to get to that post), and I know I can go online and pretty much have the bank do it for me or program the computer to do it.

But I don't. And I usually don't use a calculator either, for the same reason I sometime walk stairs when I can ride an elevator. Exercise.

I want to keep this brain - or reasonable facsimile thereof - as sharp as I can. And I'm thinking (rimshot redux) the best way to do that is to keep exercising it.

Whaddya think? Anyone have a similar hard-headed policy about bank statements and checkbooks? Other examples of the same sort of thing?

I Think, Therefore I Am...I Think

Let's face it, we're slowing down on all fronts. We're fighting it and we'll keep fighting it, but there's no doubt about it - it's a struggle.

And I'm not talking about our tennis games, our jogging, our ability to sink those putts. I'm talking brain power - our ability to process information as efficiently and reliably as in the past.

The other day, I finally solved an annoying little problem with our pool pump. Darn thing kept taking in some air. In previous weeks, I tried lots of stuff - searched for leaks, replaced two rubber O-rings in the system, cursed it, banged it, kicked it. Nothing helped. Then, staring at it in pure hatred, the cause came into focus - the valve that controlled water flow into the pump. Gee, maybe if I readjust that? Sure enough. Problem gone. The simplest, most obvious solution had eluded me for weeks. I am utterly convinced that this would not have happened 30, 20, 10, even five years ago.

This is familiar to all of us. Some days, we're just sharper than other days, and it has nothing to do with how much sleep we had the night before, how much...see, right there, I momentarily forgot the name of my favorite beer...Corona we might have consumed, or anything else that we readily can point to. Some days, we wake up and the old sharpness is right there; some days, it's not.

Not to worry, it's normal, the experts say, and there is some compensating mental value to getting old moving along in time.

A study (actually a study of previous studies) recently found that the human brain's ability to process information deteriorates with age, but at the same time, our deepening well of experience provides growing benefits.

"Thinking capacity declines with time," said Ellen Peters, a professor of psychology at the University of Oregon and a senior research scientist with Decision Research, a non-profit research group. "We learn less easily. We process information more slowly."

However, from the emotional side of processing, "we may show improvements over time, she said. "We may tend to feel our way through decisions more when we are older."

Her work mostly involves the truly elderly, but much of it applies to Baby Boomers.

Take this insight and conclusion, for instance:

As we grow older (and time grows shorter), our motivation begins to change from doing what might be best for us in the future to doing what might feel best to us right now. (Yeah, I know, Boomers and self-indulgence and living for the moment and blah blah blah, but we're being serious here).

For instance, Another recently published study found that, when it comes to making choices about health and medical treatment, older people focus more on positive and fairly immediate benefits and less on the long-term negative risks.

So, for instance, though your doctor might tell you to try that Prilosec OTC for 14 days and then lay off it for awhile, if the acid reflux returns after just a day or two without it...boom...there you go, unsealing that annoying foil wrapper and popping one of those wonderfully effective pink pills. The heck with the future; I need this now.

Probably nothing wrong with that, but it could be helpful as we get older to keep in mind that...our minds keep changing.

Where WERE These Women? (I Was Looking Everywhere)

OK, this is really a little depressing.

Remember that sexual revolution thing in the 60s? That one that seemed to pass you right by? Well, you really have NO idea just how passed by you were.

A truly fascinating study has just come to BoomVista's attention through a link provided by an interesting site called seniorjournal.com . Released earlier this year and published in Public Health Reports, it concludes that pretty much everybody was doing it. All the time. Back then. Before back then. After back then. Allthedarntime.

From the report:

"Among cohorts of women turning 15 between 1964 and 1993, at least 91% had had premarital sex by age 30. Among those turning 15 between 1954 and 1963, 82% had had premarital sex by age 30, and 88% had done so by age 44.

"Conclusions: Almost all Americans have sex before marrying. These findings argue for education and interventions that provide the skills and information people need to protect themselves from unintended pregnancy and sexually transmitted diseases once they become sexually active, regardless of marital status."

Yeah, and it also argues that some of us Baby Boomers were incredibly unlucky back then.

Click here for the full report.

HEY! Get Off Your Butt

If this is true, it's scary stuff.

According to a front page Washington Post article, our generation may be the first to enter retirement in worse physical condition than the previous generation.

Basically, it suggests that the many advances in medicine and health are being counteracted by overweight and stress, among other things.

The first two paragraphs:

"As the first wave of baby boomers edges toward retirement, a growing body of evidence suggests that they may be the first generation to enter their golden years in worse health than their parents. While not definitive, the data sketch a startlingly different picture than the popular image of health-obsessed workout fanatics who know their antioxidants from their trans fats and look 10 years younger than their age.

"Boomers are healthier in some important ways -- they are much less likely to smoke, for example -- but large surveys are consistently finding that they tend to describe themselves as less hale and hearty than their forebears did at the same age. They are more likely to report difficulty climbing stairs, getting up from a chair and doing other routine activities, as well as more chronic problems such as high cholesterol, blood pressure and diabetes."

Read more here, preferably as you work out on the treadmill or somedamnthing. C'mon people. This is not acceptable. And, in most cases, it's at least somewhat under our control. (And thanks to David, a BoomVista-ista, for the tip.)