Contemporary Retirement Coaching Blog

The Health Calculator

Check out this new health calculator from the Daily Mail - it claims to provide you with everything you need to stay healthy and will calculate your BMI, your daily calorie, protein, carbs, fat and calcium requirements, and your target heart rate.  I'm not so sure that's EVERYTHING you need but it's a good start...  Now all I need are some bathroom scales and a tape measure...

Are you a SWOFTIE?

A SWOFTIE is a Single Woman Over Fifty and, if you happen to fall into that category, I want to let you know about a fabulous, FREE Telesummit coming up very soon (with lots of great speakers, including me!) that I'm pretty sure has information you'll find really valuable, especially if you like the idea of less stress, more confidence and more fun in your life.

Click here to visit the Talking Prime Time Women Telesummit website

The Talking Prime Time Women Telesummit is run by Chris Moon Willems, and if you don’t already know her, she specialises in helping women over 50 to get their lives back on track after that messy divorce, relationship breakdown or death of a partner.

Chris understands - from personal experience - exactly how devastating this sort of loss can be and how it can knock the confidence and self esteem of the brightest and most successful women.

Now she's assembled eleven speakers - experts in reinvention, confidence, self esteem, finances, setting up your own business, mid-life career change and lots more, and persuaded them to share their tips and secrets, the stuff many people pay hundreds and even thousands of dollars to get hold of!  I will be talking about retirement as a single woman, of course, and giving lots of hints and tips about things you can do, both now and in the future, to make sure you get the retirement you deserve. 

I’m so excited to be joining Chris on this FREE Telesummit and I would urge you to check this out immediately as places are limited and going fast.

Click here to visit the Talking Prime Time Women Telesummit website

I'm sure that the rewards you'ill reap from this FREE telesummit will truly be worth your time to listen. It's been designed for women exactly like us – single and over 50 - and I just know you'll come away with loads of great information.

UK Pensions News Round-Up

From Mail Online:  The £140 pension for all: Huge boost for stay-at-home mums and married couples in historic shake-up

From Mail Online: Pensions apartheid: Current OAPs would not qualify for the rise to £140 a week

From BBC.co.uk: Vince Cable vows 'decent' state pension for all

From BBC.co.uk: State pension: The overhaul and you

Blogging Boomers Carnival #181

The guys at Life Two are hosting this week's Blogging Boomers Carnival.  Check it out here.

Women pay price of retirement at 66

Until just a few years ago, UK women who were born around the same time as me - 1958 - were able to retire and receive a state pension at age 60.  The last Labour government decided to increase the state pension age, gradually, from 60 to 65 between 2010 and 2020, and to 66 between 2024 and 2026. 

However, Chancellor George Osborne, tore up these plans on Wednesday, increasing the state pension age to 66 for both women and men from April 2020 - a move that will affect 5.1 million of those of us born between 1953 and 1960.

So, when I started work I expected to retire at age 60.  Now I've got to work for another 6 years... How annoying is that? 

Read more here.

Why older couples break up

Figures from the Office for National Statistics, here in the UK, have revealed that divorce among the over-50s peaked in 2004 at around 25,000-a-year before falling slightly to the current annual rate of 22,000.

And, if you're wondering what reasons older couples give for the demise of their marriages, here you go:

28%  Partner was emotionally cold

27%  Lack of commitment to the marriage

25%  Lack of interest in physical relationship

23%  Inability to resolve or manage conflict

23%  Other

14%  Nagging

13%  Met someone else

12%  Abandonment

11%  Alcohol/drug addiction

10%  Nothing to talk about

9%  Difficult relationship with step-children

9%  Not contributing enough financially

8%  Job that made things difficult

8%  Other half spent too much money

5%  Partner flirted with friends or colleagues

5%  Waited for their children to move out before separating

4%  Parents or parents-in-law made things difficult

Read more here.

Quick Links

From SuperLiving.com.au: What you need to know about going back to University as a mature student

Blogging Boomers Carnival #180

The Blogging Boomers Carnival is back after a week's absence and it's the turn of John Agno of So Baby Boomer to host.  Here's the link.

A happy day for Chile

I have no idea how I'm going to get any work done today - I'm totally glued to the BBC coverage of the Chilean mine rescue.  The fourth miner has just been brought to the surface as I write and he, like the three before him, is looking incredibly fit and well.

What a remarkable and wonderful achievement for all concerned - I can see that I'm probably going to be in tears for most of the day today...

Update: 9 men out and still in tears on a regular basis... but I'm also enjoying some of the comments made by other people who are watching the rescue unfold. Lucas Maahs from Buenos Aires, Argentina, tweeted: "The rescue of the miners is not a miracle - the miracle is that they were alive. The rest has been an enormous effort made by people with a great sense of humanity."

Allan B Beaton II from Cardiff, UK, tweeted: "It makes everything that I could possibly complain about today irrelevant and actually selfish. Each rescued miner is a miracle and a blessing."

Chile's Mining Minister, Laurence Golborne, has just tweeted: "We are speeding up the rescue. Even the most at risk group are doing well. Hold on miners!"

Quick Links

From ThirdAge.com: When your parents move in with you