Freeway of the future?
Why are retirees locking themselves away in leisureville?
William Hanley, Financial Post Published: Saturday, May 17, 2008
Had Walt Disney envisioned the housing development of 2008, he might easily have conjured up The Villages north of Orlando in central Florida. Had George Orwell envisioned the housing development of 2008, it also might have been The Villages, a sprawling age-segregated and gated retirement community that could have the motto: In Golf We Trust.
Indeed, after reading Leisureville: Adventures in America's Retirement Utopias, I'm inclined to believe The Villages is Disney's Magic Kingdom for the over-55s with an undertone of Orwell's Nineteen Eighty-Four, a place where utopia meets dystopia, where endless leisure coexists quite comfortably with numbing, autocratic conformity.
Author Andrew D. Blechman, a young New Englander, at first can't believe the descriptions of The Villages provided by a retired older neighbour who is moving there with his wife. They seem so over the top and kind of creepy. After all, the largest gated community in the world has 75,000 residents (with another 35,000 on the way), spans three counties, two zip codes and 8,000 hectares, sports three dozen golf courses and has 160 kilometres of trails for golf carts, which are the primary mode of transportation for the Villagers.
In this totalitarian gerontopia for retirees, residents can drive their golf carts to movies, supermarkets, churches, recreation centres, clinics, dozens of pools or two crime-free "village" centres. Just about everything can be found in this peculiar paradise except for one thing: children.
The Villages, like thousands of gated retirement (and non-retirement) communities across North America, offers residents not necessarily a world without children, but a world with children on demand. A person must be at least 55 to buy a home in The Villages and no one under 19 may live there. Children can visit, but their stays are limited to 30 days a year.
The rules of The Villages are strictly enforced:Weeds must be removed, lawns -- at least 51% sod -- edged and hedges over four-feet high are prohibited. So, too, are clotheslines and individual mailboxes. Pets are limited to two per house, window air conditioners are forbidden, Halloween trick-or-treaters are not allowed.
And big neighbour, like Orwell's Big Brother, is always watching. Golf-cart passersby are sure to complain if these and other covenants are broken. Further, the local newspaper, The Daily Sun, is a junior league Ministry of Truth of the corporation that runs The Villages, so bad news is no news.
Though Blechman was both dismayed and amused by descriptions of The Villages, he decided to visit with his older friends and find out for himself what the attraction is behind retirement community gates. Leisureville is not exactly an expose of age-segregated retirement living, but a lively and thoughtful account of a lifestyle that can be at once entertaining and appalling. The book is full of warm, appealing characters. It also has tinges of the sadness and wistfulness that often accompany the later years.
Blechman goes beyond The Villages -- "a retirement community on steroids" -- to Arizona and to the oddly named Youngtown, the first elders-only community, and to Sun City, which once bloomed in the desert but is now a half-century old and showing it. The many problems and issues that have caught up with Sun City, the butt of many an ageist joke in my youth, will likely one day visit The Villages and its smaller kin, he says. They include, most notably, a lack of tax-base support for local schools as retirees say they've paid their education support dues over their lifetimes. Blechman talked to many Villagers who said they'd also paid their share and were tired of giving back.
Blechman wonders what, exactly, they've given. "Blessed to be born into one of the richest generations in the history of the world, they've led a life that most people can only dream of. Such good fortune wasn't a matter of luck: it was given to them by previous generations who made untold sacrifices through two world wars and a devastating depression. ? Surely today's retirees have something more to pass on than a love of golf and perceived entitlement to lock themselves away
in leisurevilles. That's no citizenship; that's secession. It's a form of surrender, an acknowledgement of societal failure."
Hold on, Andrew. This is not the end of the world.
While there is something to worry about in the trend to leisurevilles, only a small percentage of retirees and Boomers will opt to lock themselves away. Indeed, well over half of Boomers say they're not going to retire. They and most others will stick around and work and coexist like the rest of society, possibly escaping for some R&R during the winter months.
In the meantime, many of those in The Villages and elsewhere will tire of the lifestyle, forgo the weather and head back home -- even if it is just for the summer or to visit family occasionally.
And those who stay the course will find their communities necessarily morphing over time into places resembling towns with the usual needs and problems.
The prospect of retiring to The Villages or any other gated retirement community doesn't interest me.
I've never even been in one, but I have this strong feeling that they're ghettos for the elderly --grey-ttos, if you will.
Yet, while I can't quite understand the desire some folks have to retire to such white-bread conformity, I respect the right of those who do. Even Andrew D. Blechman acknowledges that leisurevilles are "a powerful vision that has proved to be very appealing to a sizable segment of aging Americans."
whanley@nationalpost.com
Wednesday, May 21, 2008
Touring America’s Retirement Communities
Touring America’s Retirement Communities
By Daniel ElkindThu. May 15, 2008
HAVING A BALL: Seniors enjoy lawn bowling at an Arizona retirement community.
Leisureville: Adventures in America’s Retirement Utopias By Andrew D. Blechman Atlantic Monthly Press, 256 pages, $25.
Del Webb’s Sun Cities in the Arizona desert; The Villages north of Orlando, Fla.; a new Catholic-themed town called Ave Maria: Home to nearly 12 million people, these are America’s largest and most popular gated retirement communities, or, as Andrew D. Blechman calls them in his new book, “Leisureville,” “America’s retirement utopias.” The Sir Thomas More reference is neither obligatory nor inapt; the guiding concern of Blechman’s inquiry is what this age-based phenomenon means for us as a society, and what its moral implications are for the future.
Historically, Jews have often been at the forefront of utopian movements — especially failed ones — and from Karl Marx to William Levitt, they have publicly staked their reputations in these places that, by definition, do not or cannot exist. Youngtown, the first retirement community in America, was built outside Phoenix in 1954 by Benjamin Schleifer, a Jewish immigrant from Minsk who, apparently, was inspired by Plato and the 71st Psalm: “Be thou my strong habitation, whereunto I may continually resort.” (After Youngtown, he went bankrupt trying to found a kibbutz for American retirees in the Arizona desert.)
The founder of The Villages in Florida, Harold S. Schwartz — whose ashes are permanently part of the statue erected to him in the “village” of Spanish Springs — was the grandson of Jewish immigrants from Hungary. But while many members of these communities are Jewish, too, and synagogues can be found amid their golf turf and sprawl, Blechman’s primary interest is not in the eerily false perfection of such places, but rather in the American psychology of segregation, radical individualism and the fears underlying the dreams of their residents: Who or what are these pleasant-villagers trying to keep out?
One obvious culprit is old age itself. Blechman is shocked by the total absence of Halloween at his uncle’s upscale community in central New Jersey, where children “aren’t forbidden so much as discouraged.” He remembers that the new hospital in The Villages will not include a maternity ward. And in a chapter on housing laws, he correlates class with race, showing how legislation against families with children is often intended as a barrier of entry for minorities and other low-income groups. It is clear that after religion and language, the multigenerational family has become the last casualty of immigrant life in America. With their children and grandchildren living scattered across all 50 states and various parts of the world, many of those wealthy enough to retire prefer the arrested development of age-segregated communities, with their health care facilities, private newspapers, elevator music stations and, in one case, the world’s longest golf cart parade of “nearly 3,500 low-speed vehicles” to the exigencies of a typical hometown. Yet in one sense their excesses and feelings of entitlement are only symptoms of our own.
The Villages, for example, is the largest gated retirement community in the world, spanning “three counties, two zip codes, and more than 20,000 acres […] subdivided into dozens of separate gated communities,” that share “two manufactured downtowns, a financial district, and several shopping centers, […] all of it connected by nearly 100 miles of golf cart trails.” Unlike Sun City, which has aged less gracefully than it promised to, The Villages is still relatively young and expanding. With 75,000 residents and room for 35,000 more, it comprises a kind of Disneyland for people who no longer want to pay taxes for schools they’ll never attend — though presumably their grandchildren will — and, just like Disney’s pet project in what once was Florida swampland and citrus, it is essentially a company state accountable only to Chapter 190, an umbrella law that gives developers jurisdiction over the land they’ve purchased at lucrative rates and over the homeowners who reside there in ignorance of how their villages are actually governed. Thus beloved by real estate developers, by the food and beverage industry and by such retailers as Wal-Mart, these retirement colonies are in many ways the reactionary offspring of late capitalism, utopias for tax-shy seniors who would rather turn their backs on a system that provided for them when they were “55-” and on its tradition of democratic representation in which the welfare of all citizens — not just the leisure class — is taken into account.
But not all retirees are deadbeats; some of them just want to live completely surrounded by people exactly like themselves. In their increasingly younger old age, more and more Americans prefer to be comforted by the predictability of a fabricated paradise where they can ultimately choose to ignore the world beyond. Living under a kind of voluntary siege, promiscuity and its consequences are the only things thriving in these “geritopias”: According to Blechman, seniors “are now one of the fastest-growing populations at risk of STDs,” because “more than sixty percent of sexually active older singles have unprotected sex.” As if on cue, he meets Mr. Midnight, a pot-smoking, Corvette-driving, 63-year-old former biology teacher from Illinois. Mr. Midnight tells Blechman that due to the favorable female-to-male ratio, a bachelor can have a memorable time in a retirement community, though he does have a couple of rules: not sleeping with anyone younger than his kids, and not falling in love.
Another resident bachelor, 73, tells him about the teenage waitresses, wife-swapping and a group of swingers allegedly posing as a wine club. Finally, a female retiree says, “The only problem with being a widow in The Villages is that you’re so busy you forget you are one,” and life, presumably, beats on at its electronically synchronized pace.
Part exurban exposé, part postmodern Roald Dahl parable, “Leisureville” reads more accurately like a dark Stanley Elkin novel — remember the mortuary ‘burbs of “The Rabbi of Lud” or Main Street, U.S.A. in “The Magic Kingdom”? — in which a satiric journalism of today’s lifestyle realities has replaced the journalistic satire of yesterday’s consumer fads. Only whereas Elkin’s novels ultimately reassured us by mocking the sincerity of human folly, the surreal humanity of characters like Mr. Midnight and Del Webb — the construction magnate whose experience in building planned communities before Sun City included internment camps for more than 25,000 Japanese — is often all too real, and close, for comfort.
Were the sun to have set on him in The Villages, even Ben Flesh — the Franchiser — might have run for the still-underdeveloped Florida hills.
Daniel Elkind is a writer and translator who lives in Brooklyn.
By Daniel ElkindThu. May 15, 2008
HAVING A BALL: Seniors enjoy lawn bowling at an Arizona retirement community.
Leisureville: Adventures in America’s Retirement Utopias By Andrew D. Blechman Atlantic Monthly Press, 256 pages, $25.
Del Webb’s Sun Cities in the Arizona desert; The Villages north of Orlando, Fla.; a new Catholic-themed town called Ave Maria: Home to nearly 12 million people, these are America’s largest and most popular gated retirement communities, or, as Andrew D. Blechman calls them in his new book, “Leisureville,” “America’s retirement utopias.” The Sir Thomas More reference is neither obligatory nor inapt; the guiding concern of Blechman’s inquiry is what this age-based phenomenon means for us as a society, and what its moral implications are for the future.
Historically, Jews have often been at the forefront of utopian movements — especially failed ones — and from Karl Marx to William Levitt, they have publicly staked their reputations in these places that, by definition, do not or cannot exist. Youngtown, the first retirement community in America, was built outside Phoenix in 1954 by Benjamin Schleifer, a Jewish immigrant from Minsk who, apparently, was inspired by Plato and the 71st Psalm: “Be thou my strong habitation, whereunto I may continually resort.” (After Youngtown, he went bankrupt trying to found a kibbutz for American retirees in the Arizona desert.)
The founder of The Villages in Florida, Harold S. Schwartz — whose ashes are permanently part of the statue erected to him in the “village” of Spanish Springs — was the grandson of Jewish immigrants from Hungary. But while many members of these communities are Jewish, too, and synagogues can be found amid their golf turf and sprawl, Blechman’s primary interest is not in the eerily false perfection of such places, but rather in the American psychology of segregation, radical individualism and the fears underlying the dreams of their residents: Who or what are these pleasant-villagers trying to keep out?
One obvious culprit is old age itself. Blechman is shocked by the total absence of Halloween at his uncle’s upscale community in central New Jersey, where children “aren’t forbidden so much as discouraged.” He remembers that the new hospital in The Villages will not include a maternity ward. And in a chapter on housing laws, he correlates class with race, showing how legislation against families with children is often intended as a barrier of entry for minorities and other low-income groups. It is clear that after religion and language, the multigenerational family has become the last casualty of immigrant life in America. With their children and grandchildren living scattered across all 50 states and various parts of the world, many of those wealthy enough to retire prefer the arrested development of age-segregated communities, with their health care facilities, private newspapers, elevator music stations and, in one case, the world’s longest golf cart parade of “nearly 3,500 low-speed vehicles” to the exigencies of a typical hometown. Yet in one sense their excesses and feelings of entitlement are only symptoms of our own.
The Villages, for example, is the largest gated retirement community in the world, spanning “three counties, two zip codes, and more than 20,000 acres […] subdivided into dozens of separate gated communities,” that share “two manufactured downtowns, a financial district, and several shopping centers, […] all of it connected by nearly 100 miles of golf cart trails.” Unlike Sun City, which has aged less gracefully than it promised to, The Villages is still relatively young and expanding. With 75,000 residents and room for 35,000 more, it comprises a kind of Disneyland for people who no longer want to pay taxes for schools they’ll never attend — though presumably their grandchildren will — and, just like Disney’s pet project in what once was Florida swampland and citrus, it is essentially a company state accountable only to Chapter 190, an umbrella law that gives developers jurisdiction over the land they’ve purchased at lucrative rates and over the homeowners who reside there in ignorance of how their villages are actually governed. Thus beloved by real estate developers, by the food and beverage industry and by such retailers as Wal-Mart, these retirement colonies are in many ways the reactionary offspring of late capitalism, utopias for tax-shy seniors who would rather turn their backs on a system that provided for them when they were “55-” and on its tradition of democratic representation in which the welfare of all citizens — not just the leisure class — is taken into account.
But not all retirees are deadbeats; some of them just want to live completely surrounded by people exactly like themselves. In their increasingly younger old age, more and more Americans prefer to be comforted by the predictability of a fabricated paradise where they can ultimately choose to ignore the world beyond. Living under a kind of voluntary siege, promiscuity and its consequences are the only things thriving in these “geritopias”: According to Blechman, seniors “are now one of the fastest-growing populations at risk of STDs,” because “more than sixty percent of sexually active older singles have unprotected sex.” As if on cue, he meets Mr. Midnight, a pot-smoking, Corvette-driving, 63-year-old former biology teacher from Illinois. Mr. Midnight tells Blechman that due to the favorable female-to-male ratio, a bachelor can have a memorable time in a retirement community, though he does have a couple of rules: not sleeping with anyone younger than his kids, and not falling in love.
Another resident bachelor, 73, tells him about the teenage waitresses, wife-swapping and a group of swingers allegedly posing as a wine club. Finally, a female retiree says, “The only problem with being a widow in The Villages is that you’re so busy you forget you are one,” and life, presumably, beats on at its electronically synchronized pace.
Part exurban exposé, part postmodern Roald Dahl parable, “Leisureville” reads more accurately like a dark Stanley Elkin novel — remember the mortuary ‘burbs of “The Rabbi of Lud” or Main Street, U.S.A. in “The Magic Kingdom”? — in which a satiric journalism of today’s lifestyle realities has replaced the journalistic satire of yesterday’s consumer fads. Only whereas Elkin’s novels ultimately reassured us by mocking the sincerity of human folly, the surreal humanity of characters like Mr. Midnight and Del Webb — the construction magnate whose experience in building planned communities before Sun City included internment camps for more than 25,000 Japanese — is often all too real, and close, for comfort.
Were the sun to have set on him in The Villages, even Ben Flesh — the Franchiser — might have run for the still-underdeveloped Florida hills.
Daniel Elkind is a writer and translator who lives in Brooklyn.
Saturday, May 10, 2008
Is A "Phased Retirement" Your Best Option?
By Kent Johnson
There's been a lot of buzz lately about so-called "phased retirements," where older workers choose to work less -- and on their own terms -- rather than retire completely. This can ease the financial burden of having to live entirely off your retirement savings or social security, while still allowing flexibility and time to do the things you really enjoy in life.
And this doesn't mean you have to settle for working part- time in a fast food restaurant or as a greeter in a department store. More and more companies are using phased retirements as a way of retaining their older employees, which they see as valuable assets (which of course they are). Older workers often have decades of critical knowledge and experience that they can pass on to their younger co-workers, which benefits everyone concerned.
Easing into retirement can lessen the shock of suddenly having no place to go in the morning, a situation that many newly-retired workers have difficulty adjusting to. This is especially a problem for workaholic types who've been logging 50 or 60 hour work weeks for most of their adult lives. And for people who have no hobbies, outside interests, or children, the hours of the day can seem to stretch on and on.
There are also financial considerations with retirement. With people living longer than ever, and the ever-increasing cost of living, it's becoming harder to retire with a comfortable standard of living (especially if you want to travel, upgrade your home, buy expensive furnishings, etc).
Which is where phased retirements come in. In one recent survey, over 60 percent of workers between 50 and 70 years old said that they'd like to work part-time before they fully retire. These older workers also want retirement benefits, health insurance, and other benefits -- although most realize that a smaller paycheck will be part of the deal as well.
Not all employers are willing or able to allow their older workers to ease into retirement. In fact, formal programs of this type are rare, so you'll probably have to approach your boss or human resource department and make some sort of informal arrangement. If there are other older workers at your company already in a flex program, then you ask them about their arrangement, and how it was established.
One reason that formal phased retirement programs are rare is the fact that the Federal Government hasn't enacted legislation in order to define just how such programs should be administered. There are health insurance issues with some companies, and pension rules that prohibit some employers from giving partial retirement payments to workers who wish to trim back their hours before full retirement age.
But with the overall population aging, and the baby boom generation approaching 60, look for more companies -- large and small -- to implement some sort of phased retirement program.
After all, if done correctly, it can turn out to be a win- win situation for everyone.
Kent Johnson - author, publisher, career coach. "Helping people realize their dreams one career at a time." Your Dream Career.com - your source for career tips and info ==> http://your-dream-career.com
Article Source: http://EzineArticles.com/?expert=Kent_Johnson
There's been a lot of buzz lately about so-called "phased retirements," where older workers choose to work less -- and on their own terms -- rather than retire completely. This can ease the financial burden of having to live entirely off your retirement savings or social security, while still allowing flexibility and time to do the things you really enjoy in life.
And this doesn't mean you have to settle for working part- time in a fast food restaurant or as a greeter in a department store. More and more companies are using phased retirements as a way of retaining their older employees, which they see as valuable assets (which of course they are). Older workers often have decades of critical knowledge and experience that they can pass on to their younger co-workers, which benefits everyone concerned.
Easing into retirement can lessen the shock of suddenly having no place to go in the morning, a situation that many newly-retired workers have difficulty adjusting to. This is especially a problem for workaholic types who've been logging 50 or 60 hour work weeks for most of their adult lives. And for people who have no hobbies, outside interests, or children, the hours of the day can seem to stretch on and on.
There are also financial considerations with retirement. With people living longer than ever, and the ever-increasing cost of living, it's becoming harder to retire with a comfortable standard of living (especially if you want to travel, upgrade your home, buy expensive furnishings, etc).
Which is where phased retirements come in. In one recent survey, over 60 percent of workers between 50 and 70 years old said that they'd like to work part-time before they fully retire. These older workers also want retirement benefits, health insurance, and other benefits -- although most realize that a smaller paycheck will be part of the deal as well.
Not all employers are willing or able to allow their older workers to ease into retirement. In fact, formal programs of this type are rare, so you'll probably have to approach your boss or human resource department and make some sort of informal arrangement. If there are other older workers at your company already in a flex program, then you ask them about their arrangement, and how it was established.
One reason that formal phased retirement programs are rare is the fact that the Federal Government hasn't enacted legislation in order to define just how such programs should be administered. There are health insurance issues with some companies, and pension rules that prohibit some employers from giving partial retirement payments to workers who wish to trim back their hours before full retirement age.
But with the overall population aging, and the baby boom generation approaching 60, look for more companies -- large and small -- to implement some sort of phased retirement program.
After all, if done correctly, it can turn out to be a win- win situation for everyone.
Kent Johnson - author, publisher, career coach. "Helping people realize their dreams one career at a time." Your Dream Career.com - your source for career tips and info ==> http://your-dream-career.com
Article Source: http://EzineArticles.com/?expert=Kent_Johnson
The Workplace is going Grey
By Teena Rose
Article provided by SuccessfulResumes.com.
Leading executive resume writer to catapult your second career.
A popular perception in the workplace has always been that employers were all too eager to offer early retirement packages to encourage older workers to step aside because of their salary and benefit costs to the company. That perception may be on the way out, as the greying of the baby-boomer generation is poised to leave American companies short-handed.
Concern in the U.S. and abroad is quickly approaching a watershed moment as employers are staring a shortage of workers right in the face. In 2011, the Employment Policy Foundation expects there to be 4 million more jobs than workers. That number is expected to rise to 35 million unfilled jobs by the 2030.The outcome, experts say, will be more seniors remaining or returning to a job site that will include many more post-65 workers. The terms blue-collar and white-collar workers will be joined by a new adage. The silver-collar worker.
With 76 million people in the baby boomer generation (1946-64) and just 45 million Gen-Xers, the numbers define a clear gap that will need to be filled using various strategies, including extending the typical working life beyond 65 years as advocated for years.
The trend has become so pronounced, companies have formed partnerships with the AARP (American Association of Retired Persons) to create a Featured Employers community, which highlights employers who are senior-friendly. Some of the companies include big names like Home Depot, Walgreen's, Verizon and MetLife. As demand increases, AARP expects the list of employers eager to hire older workers will grow substantially.
According to networking website ExecuNet, industries where seniors are seeing the biggest gains include health care, high tech, financial services, business services and defense/aerospace. And the three biggest industries where huge future gaps are expected, include retail sales, registered nurses and postsecondary teachers. Retaining or hiring older workers also gives employers the loyalty advantage. According to a recent study, workers age 55 to 64 have been in their jobs three times as long as their younger counterparts. The study, released late last year by the Bureau of Labor Statistics, revealed that 25-34 year-olds averaged 2.9 years at the same job, while 55-64 year-olds averaged 9.3 years. Since turnover is costly, and the glut of workers is expected to rise soon, the retirement-age worker may hold more advantages than the recent college graduate."We've definitely seen that older workers are more loyal," Astra Group consultant Sara Jung told Inc.com. "Younger workers are more likely to jump ship if they get a more attractive offer."Another trend focused on recently by Time magazine is the "bridge job."
Before going into full retirement mode, many workers over 55 are slowing instead of stopping their careers with part-time jobs of full-time jobs for typically less than a decade.
Not only will companies need older employees. Older employees will need the companies, and the income they provide.
"In the next five to 20 years, we're going to see a lot of people who think they're going to be ready for retirement, and all of a sudden they're going to work out the numbers, look at how much money they've saved and realize, 'I can't retire,' " Bouchey Financial Group CEO Steven Bouchey told the Albany Times Union in January. "I always say that everybody dreams about retiring on a hill overlooking a lake. Many people are going to be retiring in a trailer overlooking a swamp."
_____________________________________________________
Teena Rose, Book Author, Columnist,Resume Writer,Career Specialist, 1999 - Present. Provide resume writing and career services to an array of career professionals, ranking from new graduates and entry-level jobseekers to business owners and executives. Target advice and coaching services to give jobseekers a leg-up against "the competition."
Article provided by SuccessfulResumes.com.
Leading executive resume writer to catapult your second career.
A popular perception in the workplace has always been that employers were all too eager to offer early retirement packages to encourage older workers to step aside because of their salary and benefit costs to the company. That perception may be on the way out, as the greying of the baby-boomer generation is poised to leave American companies short-handed.
Concern in the U.S. and abroad is quickly approaching a watershed moment as employers are staring a shortage of workers right in the face. In 2011, the Employment Policy Foundation expects there to be 4 million more jobs than workers. That number is expected to rise to 35 million unfilled jobs by the 2030.The outcome, experts say, will be more seniors remaining or returning to a job site that will include many more post-65 workers. The terms blue-collar and white-collar workers will be joined by a new adage. The silver-collar worker.
With 76 million people in the baby boomer generation (1946-64) and just 45 million Gen-Xers, the numbers define a clear gap that will need to be filled using various strategies, including extending the typical working life beyond 65 years as advocated for years.
The trend has become so pronounced, companies have formed partnerships with the AARP (American Association of Retired Persons) to create a Featured Employers community, which highlights employers who are senior-friendly. Some of the companies include big names like Home Depot, Walgreen's, Verizon and MetLife. As demand increases, AARP expects the list of employers eager to hire older workers will grow substantially.
According to networking website ExecuNet, industries where seniors are seeing the biggest gains include health care, high tech, financial services, business services and defense/aerospace. And the three biggest industries where huge future gaps are expected, include retail sales, registered nurses and postsecondary teachers. Retaining or hiring older workers also gives employers the loyalty advantage. According to a recent study, workers age 55 to 64 have been in their jobs three times as long as their younger counterparts. The study, released late last year by the Bureau of Labor Statistics, revealed that 25-34 year-olds averaged 2.9 years at the same job, while 55-64 year-olds averaged 9.3 years. Since turnover is costly, and the glut of workers is expected to rise soon, the retirement-age worker may hold more advantages than the recent college graduate."We've definitely seen that older workers are more loyal," Astra Group consultant Sara Jung told Inc.com. "Younger workers are more likely to jump ship if they get a more attractive offer."Another trend focused on recently by Time magazine is the "bridge job."
Before going into full retirement mode, many workers over 55 are slowing instead of stopping their careers with part-time jobs of full-time jobs for typically less than a decade.
Not only will companies need older employees. Older employees will need the companies, and the income they provide.
"In the next five to 20 years, we're going to see a lot of people who think they're going to be ready for retirement, and all of a sudden they're going to work out the numbers, look at how much money they've saved and realize, 'I can't retire,' " Bouchey Financial Group CEO Steven Bouchey told the Albany Times Union in January. "I always say that everybody dreams about retiring on a hill overlooking a lake. Many people are going to be retiring in a trailer overlooking a swamp."
_____________________________________________________
Teena Rose, Book Author, Columnist,Resume Writer,Career Specialist, 1999 - Present. Provide resume writing and career services to an array of career professionals, ranking from new graduates and entry-level jobseekers to business owners and executives. Target advice and coaching services to give jobseekers a leg-up against "the competition."
Friday, May 9, 2008
Boomers troll Net on sites of their own
Networking sites help people meet for fun, friendship, more
Associated Press
Rose Campbell was widowed after 26 years of marriage. John Souza's wife died after 44 years and five children together.
Both Campbell and Souza were looking for friendship and fun, not a second chance at love, when they bumped into each other online last October on a social network called Eons.
Soon they were chatting regularly. "There was a little flirtin' and a little serious conversation," said Souza, 70, who lives in Ocklawaha, Fla., across from the cemetery where his wife is buried.
The online encounters blossomed into a real-life meet about a month later. "It was a little awkward. I thought he didn't like me. He thought I didn't like him," said Campbell, 57, a retired schoolteacher and mother of two grown children in Ormond Beach, Fla.
"Then we just clicked," she said. Their wedding is planned for Sept. 6.
Eons is one of at least two dozen social networks aimed squarely at Baby Boomers, the population bubble born between 1946 and 1964 that has defied traditional perceptions of aging and retirement. Many boomers jumped into the Internet mashup to keep track of their kids on Facebook or MySpace, then moved on to their own networks in search of more common ground.
They're blogging about the virtues of oatmeal and the beauty of aging, posting video clips from their favorite old movies, and sharing ideas and support on grieving the death of a spouse, caring for a sick parent or sex after 50.
Besides Eons, other sites include BOOMj, BoomSpeak and BoomerGirl, along with Eldr, Secondprime and Growingbolder. "Being 50 and over we all grew up around the same things. The same TV shows, the same history. When I say Roy Rogers, they know who I'm talking about," said 61-year-old Didi Moe of Melbourne, Fla., who started Central Florida Singles, the discussion group on Eons where Campbell and Souza met.
The Boston-based Eons was founded by Internet pioneer Jeffrey C. Taylor in 2006, the year after he left his job-listings startup, Monster.
"People kind of laughed at me when I said I was launching a boomer Web site," said Taylor, 47.
Some of the boomer networking sites are loaded with staff content and expertise, or have a particular focus such as social change. Others, Eons included, are more user-driven, with hundreds of discussion groups, beginner widgets and age-specific applications like Eons' "LifePath," a way to plot a timeline of important personal events and future aspirations.
Associated Press
Rose Campbell was widowed after 26 years of marriage. John Souza's wife died after 44 years and five children together.
Both Campbell and Souza were looking for friendship and fun, not a second chance at love, when they bumped into each other online last October on a social network called Eons.
Soon they were chatting regularly. "There was a little flirtin' and a little serious conversation," said Souza, 70, who lives in Ocklawaha, Fla., across from the cemetery where his wife is buried.
The online encounters blossomed into a real-life meet about a month later. "It was a little awkward. I thought he didn't like me. He thought I didn't like him," said Campbell, 57, a retired schoolteacher and mother of two grown children in Ormond Beach, Fla.
"Then we just clicked," she said. Their wedding is planned for Sept. 6.
Eons is one of at least two dozen social networks aimed squarely at Baby Boomers, the population bubble born between 1946 and 1964 that has defied traditional perceptions of aging and retirement. Many boomers jumped into the Internet mashup to keep track of their kids on Facebook or MySpace, then moved on to their own networks in search of more common ground.
They're blogging about the virtues of oatmeal and the beauty of aging, posting video clips from their favorite old movies, and sharing ideas and support on grieving the death of a spouse, caring for a sick parent or sex after 50.
Besides Eons, other sites include BOOMj, BoomSpeak and BoomerGirl, along with Eldr, Secondprime and Growingbolder. "Being 50 and over we all grew up around the same things. The same TV shows, the same history. When I say Roy Rogers, they know who I'm talking about," said 61-year-old Didi Moe of Melbourne, Fla., who started Central Florida Singles, the discussion group on Eons where Campbell and Souza met.
The Boston-based Eons was founded by Internet pioneer Jeffrey C. Taylor in 2006, the year after he left his job-listings startup, Monster.
"People kind of laughed at me when I said I was launching a boomer Web site," said Taylor, 47.
Some of the boomer networking sites are loaded with staff content and expertise, or have a particular focus such as social change. Others, Eons included, are more user-driven, with hundreds of discussion groups, beginner widgets and age-specific applications like Eons' "LifePath," a way to plot a timeline of important personal events and future aspirations.
Wednesday, May 7, 2008
The book "Leisureville: Adventures in America's Retirement Utopias"
By Shay Harris FOX 35 NEWS
LAKE COUNTY, Fla. (WOFL FOX 35, Orlando) -- The book "Leisureville: Adventures in America's Retirement Utopias" is heating things up in The Villages a retirement community near Ocala. According to author Andrew Blechmans book The Villages is a place where seniors go to drop out of society and live under legal segregation.
Some people who live there, like Harry Cook, say they disagree with it because The Villages is their idea of utopia. Cook said he enjoys being able to kick up his heels, with nothing pressing to do.
"We just love it here,” said Cook. “Its the best place in the world.”Cook said he's lived in The Villages for eleven years now and he disagrees with Blechman's view of his retirement community. "I think everybody has their own opinion,” he said. “Not everybody should live here, not everybody wants to live here.”
Others though, like resident Henry Anderson, said they agree with the author because The Villages is not the as perfect as you think."It’s a good place,” Anderson said. “But there’s a lot of things that need to be corrected.”
Anderson said every night turns into a party and there's always something to do. While he does enjoy golfing on the green here with friends, Anderson says Blechman is on to something.
"I call this Cuba,” he said. “They own all the land they control everything there’s a lot of people who’ve been here a long, long time old timers, they living just barely living and the villages keep raising the prices, nickeling and diming.”
The book is on display inside The Villages Barnes and Nobles book store. And you better believe its getting lots of attention.According to management at the store the buzz is not only picking up but helping the book’s sales as well.
LAKE COUNTY, Fla. (WOFL FOX 35, Orlando) -- The book "Leisureville: Adventures in America's Retirement Utopias" is heating things up in The Villages a retirement community near Ocala. According to author Andrew Blechmans book The Villages is a place where seniors go to drop out of society and live under legal segregation.
Some people who live there, like Harry Cook, say they disagree with it because The Villages is their idea of utopia. Cook said he enjoys being able to kick up his heels, with nothing pressing to do.
"We just love it here,” said Cook. “Its the best place in the world.”Cook said he's lived in The Villages for eleven years now and he disagrees with Blechman's view of his retirement community. "I think everybody has their own opinion,” he said. “Not everybody should live here, not everybody wants to live here.”
Others though, like resident Henry Anderson, said they agree with the author because The Villages is not the as perfect as you think."It’s a good place,” Anderson said. “But there’s a lot of things that need to be corrected.”
Anderson said every night turns into a party and there's always something to do. While he does enjoy golfing on the green here with friends, Anderson says Blechman is on to something.
"I call this Cuba,” he said. “They own all the land they control everything there’s a lot of people who’ve been here a long, long time old timers, they living just barely living and the villages keep raising the prices, nickeling and diming.”
The book is on display inside The Villages Barnes and Nobles book store. And you better believe its getting lots of attention.According to management at the store the buzz is not only picking up but helping the book’s sales as well.
Sunday, May 4, 2008
Tax Rebate checks
WASHINGTON (AP) -- President Bush said tax rebates will start going out Monday, earlier than previously announced, and should help Americans cope with rising gasoline and food prices, as well as aid a slumping economy.
Democrats said they were glad the rebate checks were about to go out, but suggested that multinational oil companies were not among the businesses the stimulus package was originally designed to help.''Starting Monday, the effects of the stimulus will begin to reach millions of households across our country,'' Bush said Friday in remarks on the South Lawn of the White House.
Those first rebates will be directly deposited into people's bank accounts. The Internal Revenue Service had been saying direct deposits wouldn't start until next Friday. Bush said paper checks would begin going out on May 9, a week earlier than previously announced.
''The money is going to help Americans offset the high prices we're seeing at the gas pump, the grocery store, and also give our economy a boost to help us pull out of this economic slowdown,'' Bush said.
Bush's emphasis on fuel and food prices differed from other comments he's made since signing the economic stimulus legislation, intended to aid the economy by boosting overall consumer spending -- which accounts for roughly two-thirds of the nation's economic activity.
Bush has suggested the rebates could trigger a spending spree. ''When the money reaches the American people, we expect they will use it to boost consumer spending,'' he said last month.
By saying expressly that people could use these one-time checks to pay for such necessities as food and gas, Bush underscored the deepening challenges facing the economy.Democrats were quick to pick up on the change of focus.
''It's galling to think that taxpayers' stimulus checks will be lining the pockets of OPEC. The sad truth is that the average American family will spend almost their entire stimulus check on higher gas prices this year,'' said Sen. Charles Schumer, D-N.Y., chairman of the Joint Economic Committee of Congress.
OPEC is the Organization of Petroleum Exporting Countries.''Unless the administration gets OPEC to increase oil supply, American consumers are going to be in for a scorching summer of $4 gasoline with no relief in sight,'' Schumer said.
House Speaker Nancy Pelosi, D-Calif., agreed that people ''need this rebate to cope with the rising cost of gas and groceries.'' She said that, while the rebates would help to get the economy moving, there was a need for a second stimulus package ''and we have begun some conversation with the administration and Republicans.
''As he had earlier in the week, Bush used the word ''slowdown'' to describe the state of the economy. He has denied that the nation is in a recession, although many economists say it is.
''It's obvious our economy is in a slowdown. But, fortunately, we recognized the signs early and took action,'' Bush said.The rebates -- up to $600 for an individual, $1,200 for a couple and an additional $300 for each dependent child -- are the centerpiece of the government's $168 billion stimulus package, enacted in February. Roughly 130 million households are expected to get them.Bush made the comments before boarding his helicopter at the start of a day trip to Connecticut.People must file a tax return for their 2007 income to be eligible for a rebate check.
The IRS now says all checks for those who filed tax returns on time are scheduled to be deposited or mailed by July 11.
The economy -- burdened by the collapse of home prices, a financial and credit crisis, and now rising energy and food prices -- grew at an anemic 0.6 percent in the final three months of last year and is believed to have gotten even weaker in the first three months of this year.
The government will report on the first quarter's performance next week.With the economy faltering, the nation's unemployment rate has climbed to 5.1 percent, the highest since September 2005, when it suffered from the devastating blows of the Gulf Coast hurricanes. Job losses in the first three months of this year neared the quarter-million mark.
Foreclosures have surged to record highs and financial companies have taken multibillion losses on mortgage investments that soured. The situation has sent a tremor through Wall Street and has sent the administration, Congress and presidential contenders looking for ways to provide relief.------
AP Economics Writer Jeannine Aversa contributed to this report.
-->
Democrats said they were glad the rebate checks were about to go out, but suggested that multinational oil companies were not among the businesses the stimulus package was originally designed to help.''Starting Monday, the effects of the stimulus will begin to reach millions of households across our country,'' Bush said Friday in remarks on the South Lawn of the White House.
Those first rebates will be directly deposited into people's bank accounts. The Internal Revenue Service had been saying direct deposits wouldn't start until next Friday. Bush said paper checks would begin going out on May 9, a week earlier than previously announced.
''The money is going to help Americans offset the high prices we're seeing at the gas pump, the grocery store, and also give our economy a boost to help us pull out of this economic slowdown,'' Bush said.
Bush's emphasis on fuel and food prices differed from other comments he's made since signing the economic stimulus legislation, intended to aid the economy by boosting overall consumer spending -- which accounts for roughly two-thirds of the nation's economic activity.
Bush has suggested the rebates could trigger a spending spree. ''When the money reaches the American people, we expect they will use it to boost consumer spending,'' he said last month.
By saying expressly that people could use these one-time checks to pay for such necessities as food and gas, Bush underscored the deepening challenges facing the economy.Democrats were quick to pick up on the change of focus.
''It's galling to think that taxpayers' stimulus checks will be lining the pockets of OPEC. The sad truth is that the average American family will spend almost their entire stimulus check on higher gas prices this year,'' said Sen. Charles Schumer, D-N.Y., chairman of the Joint Economic Committee of Congress.
OPEC is the Organization of Petroleum Exporting Countries.''Unless the administration gets OPEC to increase oil supply, American consumers are going to be in for a scorching summer of $4 gasoline with no relief in sight,'' Schumer said.
House Speaker Nancy Pelosi, D-Calif., agreed that people ''need this rebate to cope with the rising cost of gas and groceries.'' She said that, while the rebates would help to get the economy moving, there was a need for a second stimulus package ''and we have begun some conversation with the administration and Republicans.
''As he had earlier in the week, Bush used the word ''slowdown'' to describe the state of the economy. He has denied that the nation is in a recession, although many economists say it is.
''It's obvious our economy is in a slowdown. But, fortunately, we recognized the signs early and took action,'' Bush said.The rebates -- up to $600 for an individual, $1,200 for a couple and an additional $300 for each dependent child -- are the centerpiece of the government's $168 billion stimulus package, enacted in February. Roughly 130 million households are expected to get them.Bush made the comments before boarding his helicopter at the start of a day trip to Connecticut.People must file a tax return for their 2007 income to be eligible for a rebate check.
The IRS now says all checks for those who filed tax returns on time are scheduled to be deposited or mailed by July 11.
The economy -- burdened by the collapse of home prices, a financial and credit crisis, and now rising energy and food prices -- grew at an anemic 0.6 percent in the final three months of last year and is believed to have gotten even weaker in the first three months of this year.
The government will report on the first quarter's performance next week.With the economy faltering, the nation's unemployment rate has climbed to 5.1 percent, the highest since September 2005, when it suffered from the devastating blows of the Gulf Coast hurricanes. Job losses in the first three months of this year neared the quarter-million mark.
Foreclosures have surged to record highs and financial companies have taken multibillion losses on mortgage investments that soured. The situation has sent a tremor through Wall Street and has sent the administration, Congress and presidential contenders looking for ways to provide relief.------
AP Economics Writer Jeannine Aversa contributed to this report.
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