Many of us are in our latter years, i.e. old. Below is an excellent list for aging and good advice to follow.
1. It’s time to use the money you saved up. Use it and enjoy
it. Don’t just keep it for those who may have no notion of the
sacrifices you made to get it. Remember there is nothing more dangerous
than a son or daughter-in-law with big ideas for your hard-earned
capital. Warning: This is also a bad time for investments, even if it
seems wonderful or fool-proof. They only bring problems and worries.
This is a time for you to enjoy some peace and quiet.
2. Stop worrying about the financial situation of your children
and grandchildren, and don’t feel bad spending your money on yourself.
You’ve taken care of them for many years, and you’ve taught them what
you could. You gave them an education, food, shelter and support. The
responsibility is now theirs to earn their own money.
3. Keep a healthy life, without great physical effort. Do
moderate exercise (like walking every day), eat well and get your sleep.
It’s easy to become sick, and it gets harder to remain healthy. That is
why you need to keep yourself in good shape and be aware of your medical
and physical needs. Keep in touch with your doctor, do tests even when
you’re feeling well. Stay informed.
4. Always buy the best, most beautiful items for your
significant other. The key goal is to enjoy your money with your
partner. One day one of you will miss the other, and the money will not
provide any comfort then, enjoy it together
5. Don’t stress over the little things. Like paying a little
extra on price quotes. You’ve already overcome so much in your life. You
have good memories and bad ones, but the important thing is the present.
Don’t let the past drag you down and don’t let the future frighten you.
Feel good in the now. Small issues will soon be forgotten.
6. Regardless of age, always keep love alive. Love your
partner, love life, love your family, love your neighbor and remember:
“A man is not old as long as he has intelligence and affection.”
7. Be proud, both inside and out. Don’t stop going to your hair
salon or barber, do your nails, go to the dermatologist and the dentist,
keep your perfumes and creams well stocked. When you are well-maintained
on the outside, it seeps in, making you feel proud and strong.
8. Don’t lose sight of fashion trends for your age, but keep
your own sense of style. There’s nothing worse than an older person
trying to wear the current fashion among youngsters. You’ve developed
your own sense of what looks good on you – keep it and be proud of it.
It’s part of who you are.
9. ALWAYS stay up-to-date. Read newspapers, watch the news. Go
online and read what people are saying. Make sure you have an active
email account and try to use some of those social networks. You’ll be
surprised what old friends you’ll meet. Keeping in touch with what is
going on and with the people you know is important at any age.
10. Respect the younger generation and their opinions. They may
not have the same ideals as you, but they are the future, and will take
the world in their direction. Give advice, not criticism, and try to
remind them that yesterday’s wisdom still applies today.
11. Never use the phrase: “In my time.” Your time is now. As
long as you’re alive, you are part of this time. You may have been
younger, but you are still you now, having fun and enjoying life.
12. Some people embrace their golden years, while others become
bitter and surly. Life is too short to waste your days on the latter.
Spend your time with positive, cheerful people, it’ll rub off on you and
your days will seem that much better. Spending your time with bitter
people will make you older and harder to be around.
13. Do not surrender to the temptation of living with your
children or grandchildren (if you have a financial choice, that is).
Sure, being surrounded by family sounds great, but we all need our
privacy. They need theirs and you need yours. If you’ve lost your
partner (our deepest condolences), then find a person to move in with
you and help out. Even then, do so only if you feel you really need the
help or do not want to live alone.
14. Don’t abandon your hobbies. If you don’t have any, make new
ones. You can travel, hike, cook, read, dance. You can adopt a cat or a
dog, grow a garden, play cards, checkers, chess, dominoes, golf. You can
paint, volunteer or just collect certain items. Find something you like
and spend some real time having fun with it.
15. Even if you don’t feel like it, try to accept invitations.
Baptisms, graduations, birthdays, weddings, conferences. Try to go. Get
out of the house, meet people you haven’t seen in a while, experience
something new (or something old). But don’t get upset when you’re not
invited. Some events are limited by resources, and not everyone can be
hosted. The important thing is to leave the house from time to time. Go
to museums, go walk through a field. Get out there.
16. Be a conversationalist. Talk less and listen more. Some
people go on and on about the past, not caring if their listeners are
really interested. That’s a great way of reducing their desire to speak
with you. Listen first and answer questions, but don’t go off into long
stories unless asked to. Speak in courteous tones and try not to
complain or criticize too much unless you really need to. Try to accept
situations as they are. Everyone is going through the same things, and
people have a low tolerance for hearing complaints. Always find some
good things to say as well.
17. Pain and discomfort go hand in hand with getting older. Try
not to dwell on them but accept them as a part of the cycle of life
we’re all going through. Try to minimize them in your mind. They are not
who you are, they are something that life added to you. If they become
your entire focus, you lose sight of the person you used to be.
18. If you’ve been offended by someone – forgive them. If
you’ve offended someone - apologize. Don’t drag around resentment with
you. It only serves to make you sad and bitter. It doesn’t matter who
was right. Someone once said: “Holding a grudge is like taking poison
and expecting the other person to die.” Don’t take that poison. Forgive,
forget and move on with your life.
19. If you have a strong belief, savor it. But don’t waste your
time trying to convince others. They will make their own choices no
matter what you tell them, and it will only bring you frustration. Live
your faith and set an example. Live true to your beliefs and let that
memory sway them.
20. Laugh. Laugh A LOT. Laugh at everything. Remember, you are
one of the lucky ones. You managed to have a life, a long one. Many
never get to this age, never get to experience a full life. But you did.
So what’s not to laugh about? Find the humor in your situation.
21. Take no notice of what others say about you and even less
notice of what they might be thinking. They’ll do it anyway, and you
should have pride in yourself and what you’ve achieved. Let them talk
and don’t worry. They have no idea about your history, your memories and
the life you’ve lived so far. There’s still much to be written, so get
busy writing and don’t waste time thinking about what others might
think. Now is the time to be at rest, at peace and as happy as you can
be!
REMEMBER: “Life is too short to drink bad wine and warm beer.”
Yummy honey
Honey is far more likely to do you good than
antibiotics if you have a cold and cough this autumn. That is the
recent new guidance from the NHS. Research has found that honey
significantly reduces the frequency and severity of coughs.
The National Institute for Health and Care
Excellence (NICE) and Public Health England (PHE) are urging us to buy
'self-care' products such as honey, herbal remedies and cough medicines
instead of asking our doctors for antibiotics. Only if coughs get
very bad and prolonged, or if you feel really unwell and breathless
should you consider antibiotics.
When your phone rings and rings
You've just sat down to supper and the phone
rings. It is yet another cold-caller, trying to sell you something.
A nuisance to most of us, but a potential danger to hundreds of
thousands of elderly and vulnerable people who might respond to the
offer of 'personal injury' claims or 'protection insurance'.
It is reckoned that in the current epidemic
of cold-calling that is sweeping Britain, nearly half of landline phone
calls made to the elderly and vulnerable are from cold-callers.
Furthermore, as many as a million people estimated to be on so-called
'suckers lists' are being bombarded with around 150 nuisance and scam
calls a month.
In a bid to protect vulnerable customers, 166
local councils have now resorted to fitting phone blockers in people's
homes, which only allow calls from pre-selected friends and family.
What is happening to our attention span?
Social media and video games are harming our young
people’s minds. They are being so bombarded with
instant gratification that, like young children, they need to have
‘something every moment to distract them.’
So says Baroness Greenfield, a senior research
fellow at Oxford University. She refers to studies at
Harvard and Princeton which found that students even preferred to give
themselves electric shocks rather than face 10 minutes sitting quietly
on their own. ‘People are no longer able to go into their own mind,
think laterally and have their own thoughts.’
She predicts that in future, many people will end
up emotionally stunted. ‘They are going to be like three-year olds:
emotional, risk-taking, with poor social skills, weak self-identity and
short attention spans.’ They will be become ‘more
narcissistic, with lower self-esteem and higher depression rates’.
Hospitals are certainly treating almost twice as many girls for
self-harm as they did 20 years ago.
Lady Greenfield urges parents to read with their
children, play sport with them, or do gardening together: ‘all
activities with a beginning, a middle and an end, which cannot be
rushed’.
Take hoarding seriously
How much stuff do you have? Do
you find it really hard to throw things away? You are
not alone! But the problem is so serious for some
people that hoarding has now been classified as a medical disorder.
The World Health Organisation (WHO) says this could benefit
thousands of people, because they will finally qualify for medical help.
But lots of us like our stuff without being ill.
So, what does it take to ‘qualify’ as a real hoarder?
(About 2 to 5 per cent of us exhibit some symptoms.)
WHO defines it as someone with an ‘accumulation of possessions
due to excessive acquisition of, or difficulty discarding possessions,
regardless of their actual value.’ For example, a hoarder might have a
cup of tea – but then be unable to throw away the used tea bag.
Signs of a problem hoarder include: keeping items
of absolutely no value, such as junk mail and old newspapers;
struggling to organise themselves and make decisions; an over-attachment
to various items; and increasing difficulty with everyday tasks.
The results can be awful: living spaces fill up
with clutter that makes the proper use of the room impossible, and even
dangerous. Such impairment will slowly ruin a
person’s personal, family, social, educational, and working life.
Anyone who is a serious, compulsive hoarder needs
help. The mental health charity Mind may be useful
for starters:
www.mind.org.uk
Is it Joe or Jo? Amy or Aimee?
How do you spell popular names for boys and girls?
This argument has rumbled on for years. Now a recent YouGov poll
has asked the public, and some results point to a swing back to
preferring more traditional spellings.
Joe 87 per cent; Jo 4 per cent
John 79pc; Jon 9pc
Mark 78pc; Marc 9pc
Alan 76pc; Allan 9pc
Stuart 55pc; Stewart 21pc
Carl 54 pc; Karl 23pc
Geoffrey 48pc; Jeffrey 28pc
Stephen 47 pc; Steven 29pc
Abbie 47pc; Abbey 12 pc
Amy 79pc; Aimee 10pc
Sarah 72pc; Sara 10pc
Rebecca 83pc; Rebekah 6pc
Claire 66pc; Clare 13pc
Deborah 68pc; Debra 17pc
Theresa 51pc; Teresa 27pc
Catherine 48pc; Katherine 26pc
Are you a club-sandwich pensioner?
We all know about the sandwich generation – those
of us who are caught in between trying to support our children in buying
a home, and also in supporting our parents who need social care.
But now there is a new generation – the
club-sandwichers. They are those of us whose money is
now going out in three directions: towards helping our parents, our
children – and our grand-children.
People planning to stop work this year expect to
hand over on average £360 a month to their various family members.
The money will fund university fees and living costs, help
children buy a home, or even just help with food.
A spokesman from Legal & General says: ‘The 2018
generation of retirees have benefited to a large extent with the
property boom, with stock market booms, with having final salary pension
schemes. I think that parents and grandparents who
have that money are feeling that they don’t want to go to their grave in
a gold-lined coffin, they’re quite happy to help where they can.’
What an apple might do for you
Here’s some good news: an apple a day
could help keep diabetes at bay, according to new health guidelines.
Yoghurt, cheese and regular cups of tea or
coffee are among other food and drinks that could also help ward off the
condition. But keep an eye on the meat and potatoes – they may
actually increase your likelihood of diagnosis.
The dietary advice comes from Oxford
University and Diabetes UK. It also suggests eating more wholegrains and
fruit and vegetables.
Keep your brain healthy
Here’s an excellent reason to get regular
exercise: women who are fit at 50 are five times less likely to
get dementia.
A Swedish study found that middle age is the
key time for people to take steps to promote their brain health.
And boosting your exercise does not have to mean major exertion – just
try a brief jog, or a brisk walk with friends. Doctors suggested
that the best way to maintain good brain health was to ‘eat a balanced
diet, maintain a healthy weight, not smoke, and keep blood pressure and
cholesterol in check.’
Don’t fight ‘book block’
Don’t feel guilty about giving up on a novel.
If you don’t enjoy it, simply abandon it.
That’s the advice of the Reading Agency, a
literary charity which recently surveyed our novel reading habits.
It found that more than 20 per cent of us refuse to give up on a book
once we have started – even though it is hard work. Some of us
struggle for weeks, or even months, before acknowledging defeat.
The Reading Agency suggests instead that
anyone who hits ‘book block’ should simply let the book go. ‘You
should never force yourself to read something you’re not enjoying.’
Best way to clean your house
The most efficient way to clean your house is
to tackle it chore by chore, not room by room.
Dusting, vacuuming, and tidying room by room
wastes time, according to the Good Housekeeping Institute (GHI).
Instead, once the duster is out, go over the whole house with it.
Follow the same procedure with the vacuum cleaner, mop, dustpan and
brush, window cleaning gear and other cleaners.
Other good tips: keep a running list of ‘groceries to get’, put a damp sock on your hand to wipe the dust off of blinds, add dishwasher rinse to water to clean windows and leave them streak free.