Rock Your Retirement Show

This episode is from the vault and was first released November 20, 2017. Dr. Newton wants to educate people on how medications can cause dementia. Also, how to avoid these medications. The only thing worse than having dementia is taking care of a loved one with dementia. Many people do not realize that many medications can cause dementia. Dr. Camille Newton is a home visiting physician. You may also know it as a traveling doctor or mobile doctor. It is such an important service for seniors that are not able to travel for the doctor’s appointments. She focuses on minimizing medications. Especially psychotropic pharmaceuticals, to help senior brains stay healthier longer. Medications get tested by the FDA to see if they are safe. But those medications are not really tested to see if they cause brain failure. While performing house calls, she has seen the effect psychotropic medications have on people who take them for a long period. Some examples of psychotropic drugs are: * Antipsychotics including Risperdal

This episode is from the vault and was first released January 15, 2018. This might be a hard question for some people, but let's face it, what does your retirement life look like? Steve Cousins is one of our listeners. (Hi Steve!) After graduating from college Steve joined an oil company at a refinery in Arkansas where he worked as an engineer, manager and eventually as the VP and General Manager.  He stayed with the same company for his entire career and remained at the same location. Last year Steve retired upon turning 60 and immediately stepped into a retirement career designed to be part-time, low stress and lots of fun.  After a year, the plan is working great!  I wanted to discuss with him his choice in a “semi-retirement”. “You Shouldn't run away from something, you have to run towards something.” Steve always thought he would be working until he was 70 or later because he really enjoyed his job. The last few years, things changed he did not enjoy it very much, but he hung on

This episode take you back on the 24th of October 2016 where I was a guest on The Podcasters Unplugged. In here we talk about how I got started into podcasting from seeing a need in the market and wanting to help others retire successfully and happily. Dusty Porter is the creator of Podcast Unplugged and has been podcasting for several years. Podcasters Unplugged is a place for Podcasters who wants to make a difference. Where It All Began As you all know, I was a financial adviser for 25 years. Then after being in that profession for so long, I decided that I needed a change. So, I basically went from a large practice to a very small one. I was looking at my clients and I thought, “Wow! Money does matter, but it’s not everything.” You can have millions of dollars and have a horrible retirement or you can have almost no money and completely rocking it. And I thought to myself, what is the difference between these two types of people? Then I thought I needed to learn more about this. That is why I s

In this week’s episode, I got featured in Yaya Diamonds' Dream Chasers podcast; This was 2 years ago to date and we talked about the Secrets about Retirement. Yaya has been inspiring and changing people’s lives for over 8 years. She believes that in every state of life, whether it’s the beginning or the end, there’s always something to do. Your life just doesn’t stop. Retirement Is Just at the Tips of Your Fingers You can retire at almost any age. One of my guests retired at 40. She and her husband were living in Los Angeles and they had these highly powered, highly pressured jobs working 80 hours a week. Then, one day she picked up all her stuff and moved to Costa Rica. That is why you can retire anytime you want; You just have to make sacrifices. Her sacrifice was really a great internet like what we have, but she still loves it. Laugh and Have a Good Attitude Another one of the secrets on retirement is laugh and have a good attitude. One of my guests on The Rock Your Retirement Show, her name is Vikki Claf

This is Angie, the Rock Your Retirement producer. Kathe has been featured in other podcasts over the years. This episode takes you back to 2017, where Kathe appeared on the Retire Hoppy Podcast. We hope you enjoy it. And while you're enjoying our podcast, can you do us a quick favor? Click on this link to join the Retirement Community and Rock Your Retirement at http://www.rockyourretirement.com/group. One challenge of early retirement is finding affordable health insurance. Enter Health shares a more cost effective option for some. On this episode, I joined Roy Weinberg and Ted Carr of Retire Hoppy to break down what a health share is. Also, who might be interested and what a health share is not. What is a Health Share Ministry? I sell Medicare Insurance, so that is my background on health insurance. Because if that, I also look into a health share ministry for myself back in 2015. There’s not a lot of them and I was seriously considering it. What I know about health shares is that you have to be a Christia

This is the last episode of this 4-part series podcast, and today we will talk about the Unretirement. You won't find this word inside a dictionary, but the question is why should you a retiree who have worked for many years, consider to unretire yourself? In the first episode of this series, we talked about why it is important to Rightsize Our Homes. The second part talked about the value of owning a second home, while in the last episode we have dwell into why it is the right time to feel contentment in life as we approach our golden years. These days, many workers who have retired are coming back into the fold. Your life doesn't end at 65 years of age, That is why older workers unretire because many of us derive work as our sense of purpose. People are living longer and because of that they are healthy enough to take on another job that can give them a sense of fulfillment in their career. Partial Retirement / Semi-Retirement Kathy Gottberg loves to write. Even though she can already afford to retire, she

As we approach our golden years, it is a great time that we feel that contentment with life. No more worries, no more insecurities, and no more busy schedules in life. What you need to have is that freedom to do all the things you ought to do. The article, The Secret to Aging Well? Contentment dwell into the subject that in order for us to age gracefully, we need to have that contentment with life. Positive Aging We have always been on the lookout for information and ideas about positive aging. We have so much to learn from the people who have gone before us and are ahead of us and this article is a perfect example of it. There are plenty of messages from the media and the world that as you get older, you lose things and have to be taken care of. Kathy believes that there is still a lot of positive information out there, but it requires a little shift in mindset. We change, we are different as we age, so why not find out what that is, what that means and make the best of it. The Key for Contentment with Life

The value of owning a second home can be very rewarding, fun, and tempting. You can buy it in your own city or that vacation spot you are longing for. It can also be a bad idea to purchase a new home. Today's episode talks about Tom Sightings article on Do You Really Want to Own a Second Home? and it details the pros and cons of owning a second home. It could be a great investment or it could become a drain on your retirement finances. The Need for a Second Home? My co-host for this episode Kathy Gottberg lives in the Palm Springs area of Southern California. It is also a dessert but not as humid as South Carolina where I live and the weather in Palm Springs is about 115 degrees. But instead of being there experiencing that heat, she stays in a mountain cabin that she and her husband rent every summer for a month. They’ve been doing it for 23 years. That is why they always get the question of why don’t you buy a second home because you go there every summer for a month? People may not realize the downside of

Rightsizing or Downsizing? The size of our house is critically important when you are rightsizing. The reason Kathy called it rightsizing rather than downsizing is that she thinks it’s all very individual. What’s right for you might not be right for me. Also, rightsizing isn’t a sacrifice; instead of a downgrade, it’s an upgrade. The article, Think you need a 2000 sq ft house to be comfortable? Think again! talk about the benefits of rightsizing for you and your family. Unused Spaces A vast majority of us live in a tiny percentage of our actual square footage. Mostly when people come over, we just hang out in the kitchen or dining room. But the guest rooms or all these extra rooms and anything formal gets seldom used. That’s where so much of the square footage of the house goes to all those things that aren’t being used. In my old house, we had a parlor, a formal dining room, and a breakfast area. We only used the formal dining room 3 times in the whole 10 years that we lived there. I never used the parlor; M

If you listened to the previous episode in this series, you’ll remember that retirement is a new idea. The first episode of the series discussed that. The second episode discussed that so many baby boomers aren’t really planning on retiring until they are physically unable to work. Then, the third episode talks about maybe we don’t ever want to retire. Today’s episode discussed why you might want to hire some of the people who don’t even want to retire and have better skills. The article, How hiring the over-50s is the key to beating the skills crunch, talks about the shortage of people with better skills and hiring the older worker will help. It's a WIN-WIN for Everybody Basically, hiring older people is a win-win situation in the workplace. Because here are these experienced workers and big employers who are looking to fill positions with people who know how they can jump into the job and takeoff. These experienced workers have the wisdom and better skills to really take that job, that position and that com

Why is it so Difficult to Break Through Retirement? The concept of retirement cannot be achieved in today's world without having the appropriate planning and funds in motion well before you reach retirement age. One of the problems is we’re stuck in a rut. It works for our parents it worked for our grandparents. But when you look at the whole picture of life, that was only a very short period of time. Things change but we are reluctant to change. That is why, when the economy went flat, we were trying to hold on to what we believe in, what we were groomed for and it wasn’t going to change. This has happened in the past as well. If the people's concept hadn't changed, we would still have people who were building a horse and buggy. The Concept to Retire Retirement This article, Should We Retire Retirement, is very pro on not retiring and it talks about, baby boomers aren’t really taking jobs away from people. But there are also many articles from millennials who do say that baby boomers not retiring is taking s

65 is Not the Right Time to RETIRE The reality nowadays is that Baby Boomers have turned its back on the belief that 65 is the right time to retire. As a matter of fact, most of them want to work well into their 70s or their 80s or even yet, they might never retire. Baby boomers are born between 1946 and 1965. So, most of them are now in their 70s and the youngest would be 54. Boomers will definitely hold a lot of the most senior and best-paying jobs in the workplace. But some of them won't retire, simply because either they haven't saved up yet or are just not ready to hang it up. 5 Generations in the Workforce With the trend of those people in their 60s, 70s, and even 80s deciding to stay with their jobs and never retire, it resulted in a new occurrence of more generations in the workplace. That is why today, many workplaces are composed of five generations: * Traditionalists – born before 1946 * Baby Boomers – born between 1946 and 1965 * Generations X – born between 1965 and 1980 * Gene

Social Security Then and Now When they brought up Social Security, life expectancy for men was 58 and it was 62 for women. What they did is they made the Social Security retirement age at 65. If social security now was similar in concept to social security then, you wouldn’t even start receiving it til’ you’re 85. As what our co-host Kristen Edens said, we already know what’s happening with them, because they are considering to increase it to 70, 71 or 72. A lot of people are realizing that they can’t rely on those services, those things that our parents and grandparents relied on. That is why, in the last few years, there’s been this massive shift of, “I’m gonna take care of myself.” Not really fully relying on 401ks, pensions or Social Security. Today's episode will have some insights on Mike Drak's article about, Where did the idea of Retirement come from? Why Retirement is Being Brought Up? The Social Security, pensions, and your own savings used to be the 3-legged stool for you. But nowadays nobody has

This is the last episode of our 4-part series where we talk about the ConsumerReports.org article on, Real Pain Relief, Now! In our first episode, we have talked about How Pain Affects People. The second part talked about the Therapies that Ease Pain while the third episode dwells into the Different Pain Medications. Here on our last episode, we will discuss the alternative treatments for pain and why steroids and surgeries can help. Self-Preservation Pain is the body's mechanism to protect yourself from harm. It acts as a signal to our body that harm is about to happen to tissues in our bodies. It is well known to everybody and yet it is so compounded and subjective that it cannot be easily treated. There is also the emotional component when it comes to pain and that is called suffering. Alternative Treatments for Pain There are therapies that will help you ease pain, there are also medications for your pain but if these remedies don't work for you there are other alternatives such as steroids and surgeries.

Medications Do Not Eliminate Pain Completely There are different pain medications out on the market. Pain medications are drugs used to relieve discomfort related to an illness, an injury or surgery and it is a complex process. Kathe and Les are back in this episode to talk about the article, Real Pain Relief, Now! There are different pain medications that provide relief by acting through a variety of mechanisms. When you are taking any kind of medication, you should start with the lowest dose possible. This is to alleviate your pain and not jump into a large dose. If you start with Ibuprofen for instance, which is usually 200mg per pill. The doctor will prescribe 800mg but you should start with the 200mg, if the 200mg does it, that’s what you should live with. A section of the article starts out by saying, “The goal of pills, patches, and creams is to take the pain down a couple of notches, not eliminate it completely.” This is to allow the person to exercise, work and socialize. Because, when you can take t

How Can Sleep Help Your Pain? In this 2nd episode of our 4-part series on pain, Les and I talk about an article on pain relief. Did you know that sleep also helps with dementia? When it comes to easing pain, It will depend on what the pain is. If the pain is caused by inflammation, it tends to go down as you sleep because your body is trying to heal itself. But there are other things that cause pain in your brain. For example, neuro pain. Your brain is running during the day on full but in sleep, your brain is resting so oftentimes the neuro pain also rest along with your brain. This is a combination of healing and calming your body when we’re talking about not skimping on sleep. If you’re working while you’re sick your sickness is going to last longer. You’re going to feel horrible longer because you didn’t give yourself time to heal. That is why, in any case when it comes to chronic pain sleep is really important. Combining the Treatments is the Key to Ease Pain In the last episode, Les touched on the fact

Today's subject affects 20% of the US population because 1 of 5 adults experience pain. In our audience, it’s probably more than that because as you get older, it's more likely that you’re going to have pain. For the retirement years, this is also a good subject to talk about. My husband Les Briney is joining us for today's show as we discuss, how pain affects people. Acute and Chronic Pain As a result of Les’ cancer. He has pain that is semi-chronic. By the way, there are 2 types of pain, there’s acute pain and chronic pain. Acute is usually very sharp pains and they don’t last that long. Chronic pain lasts for more than 6 months. This is according to the definition by Cleveland Clinic. Les has stage 4 advanced metastatic prostate cancer. Meaning his cancer has spread to several places in his body. But he seems to be doing ok yet feeling some pain. He has acute pain from time to time. When he went for his chemo he has a lot of pain. Mainly the pain was a nerve type as opposed to joint type. The pains are sha

In this last episode of our 4 part series, we talk about the article, Multigenerational Families Provide Benefits for Everyone. In the first episode, we talked about Families Living Under One Roof. The second delves into the Pros of Families Living Together. Also, while multigenerational living has its pros it also has its downside, which we discussed in the third episode. Multigenerational living is one of the hottest trends in housing nowadays. Putting multiple generations under one roof could be a difficult task. However, if done with planning and open communication, it can be successful. A multigenerational household could be meaningful and happy for everyone involved. Anybody who is thinking about entering into this type of living arrangement should follow the tips below to make sure the transition is smooth and stress-free. Have Family Meetings Having family meetings depends on the family. In Jonna's household, it’s very calm. There’s a lot of conflict diversion. Not a yelling household. It’s very placi

It Can Be a Daunting Task People who experience multigenerational homes know that it can sometimes have its downside. But it isn’t all that rare in our close-knit society. Where we often find 3 generations of families living under the same roof. Sometimes, there comes a time that older adults make the decision to give up their home and move in with their adult children. They may not need complete care at all. But the deeper reason here is that they are unable to stay by themselves anymore. This results in a multigenerational household where seniors, their adult children, and young grandchildren are living together under one roof. It can be a daunting task but so can the benefits. And many families are making this thing work. The Downside of Families Living Together When you’re living in a multigenerational household, you are stepping outside as we used to as our cultural norm a little bit. Because there are some differing expectations from what we may have thought we were going to have of our future self-pi

Functional and Engaging There are about 49 million families living together in the US. And most of them are in their 20s. From sharing chores to expenses and everything in between. This multigenerational lifestyle is proving to be functional and engaging for many Americans. There are many upsides to multigenerational living. These days, it’s typical for both partners to work to make ends meet, which raises the issue of childcare. There’s also the problem of finance. Huge mortgages undoubtedly stretch family budgets and relationships. Multigenerational Living is Changing A lot of us are out there working hard but it is a different environment then. Things are changing and moving so fast that being a little bit older on the scale. The technology the younger millennials are using blows my mind. It's hard to keep up a little bit. The economy has changed a lot. Therefore, the job market has changed. So the trend for families living together is really changing. That is because of the factors we talked about in the