Millionaires Have Simple Lifestyles

Janet Luhrs writes re: retirement:

Millionaires (are) not born wealthy, nor do most of them have high-level, exotic jobs. What they do have are simple lifestyles.

It's the simple lifestyles, not the big paychecks, that turned these people into millionaires...Their wealth is the result of hard work, perseverance, planning and most of all, self-discipline.

Bleak Speculation: Broke in Retirement in America

Scott Burns bleakly writes about retirement:

Several years ago a Dallas couple approaching retirement disappeared. Well-known on the charitable-event circuit, the couple were in Dallas one day and gone the next. Phone disconnected. No forwarding address. No working cell-phone number.

Eventually, word spread that they were somewhere in Mexico. They had sold whatever they owned, packed their car and headed for the border. They were, conflicting reports said, living in small towns, the kind of places seldom featured in travel magazines.

We can only speculate on what happened. I think they were broke, had little or nothing in savings and knew they had to make a major change to survive on their Social Security income and minimal savings. Like millions of other Americans, their ship never came in. They got older. Work became harder to find. Suddenly, they realized their life was entirely unsustainable. They were heading toward a cliff.

They had to do something radical. Like live in an RV. Or leave the country.

Scott Burns has a bleak view of Americans' future, i.e. retirement from the world of work. Bleak if you agree that having to change one's lifestyle is unacceptable. I think we forget how many people have to change lifestyles in order to survive. People change lifestyles to survive unexpected pregnancy, failure to graduate from high school, college, graduate school, unexpected loss of health or job, separation and divorce.

Should these people also leave the United States? I wonder if Scott Burns would agree.

"Whee" Say Seniors for Nintendo's Wii

Six seniors at the Sedgebrook retirement community gathered in the lounge after dinner last year as the holiday season was getting under way. The center's residents were an unlikely test audience for the season's hottest toys. The plan: determine which toys their grandchildren might like.

The assumption was that they'd give their grandchildren the toys they approved. But it didn't quite turn out that way. The Nintendo Wii was so popular that the residents clamored for their own.

Today, each of the Erickson chain's retirement communities, including Sedgebrook, outside Chicago, owns at least one Wii.

Other retirement communities and municipal senior centers in recent months have followed, many using wellness grants and public funds to pay for the video-game system. The Wii retails for about $250.

Proponents say the Wii offers a welcome reprieve from a sedentary lifestyle

Christian Science Monitor