Home Instead Senior Care has commenced a new public education campaign to help family carers. “Our research and day to day experience shows there are many people worried about their ageing parents and are trying to care for  someone who says they’d rather not have any help at all” says local franchise owner Sarah Warner.

“This resistance can be a real problem for family carers – they can be worried about the safety of a senior loved one forgetting food on the stove or neglecting to take their medications. We are spreading the message that keeping fiercely independent seniors safe at home isn’t a lost cause; there are solutions for them and their family carers.”

The campaign includes a free a resource booklet When Seniors Say No! – overcoming resistance to assistance and features practical tips and insights.

The Home Instead Senior Care survey revealed that 42% of carers spend more than 30 hours a week caregiving. And that’s what makes countering that resistance to assistance so important. “Many times family carers make assumptions but never ask: ‘Mum, I’ve noticed that every time I bring up having someone come in to assist, you don’t want help”.

Why is that?

Sometimes the parent doesn’t realize they’re being resistant. Also, reassuring a senior loved one that you have the same goal in mind will help. Start with something like: ‘My goal for you is to be independent, too. You know I can’t be here all the time. A little extra assistance will help you stay at home.’”

You can download the resource booklet When Seniors Say “No!” from the Home Instead website.

It is estimated that the baby boomer generation in Australia owns around half of all residential investment property. As this age demographic moves into retirement (the BB’s started reaching retirement age in 2011) many will be seeking to sell their investment properties to fund their retirement. This was a subject I covered in a past blog post HERE.

Due to the current softness of the residential property market in many areas around the country, a significant number of BB residential property investors are wanting to sell their investment properties but are worried about the price they will get, the length of time it will take to sell the house, or even if they CAN sell the house.

Now unless you are an experienced property investment professional, and many of the baby boomers who invested in residential investment properties are not, you will be thinking that a sale of your investment property is the only option. However, this is not the case.

One strategy used by sophisticated property investors to transact their investment properties that you should consider is vendor financing. Vendor financing is where you as the seller also act as the bank for the purchaser. This style of buying is popular with those people who would struggle to get a bank loan because they are self-employed or have recently started a new job, they are a contractor, or perhaps they simply haven’t saved the required bank deposit of 10% or more. As you can see, these people are not necessarily bad credit risks, despite what the bank thinks of their situation!

Vendor financing works well for the seller if you don’t require the sale money immediately (vendor financing transactions typically take around 3-5 years to complete) or you need additional cash flow to fund your own loan repayments, property purchase or lifestyle. Furthermore, it locks in the purchase price at today’s value.

The way vendor financing works in practice is that the buyer enters into a standard residential property lease agreement with you as the owner for a period of time such as three years. The buyer rents the property from you for this time period and pays you a weekly amount that covers a component of loan interest and principal (just like a bank loan!), as well as the property costs such as rates, utilities and insurance. The actual weekly amount is whatever you can negotiate with the buyer, but is usually more than what they would be otherwise paying in rent on the property but similar or less than what the bank would be charging in principal and interest repayments.

A further contract called an “Option” is also executed with the buyer. The option can be structured in many ways, but it essentially gives the buyer the option to buy the house at an agreed price at an agreed time in the future. The objective for the buyer is to build up enough equity in the property through capital growth and principal repayments, so that by the end of the lease term they can re-finance the property through a proper bank loan and settle their purchase of the property from the seller.

Vendor financing works for the buyer because they get to buy a property now at today’s prices and are no longer paying rent to a landlord. This is a terrific way for the younger generations to get into the property market without waiting years to save up a 10% deposit.

It works for the seller because the method appeals to a wider range of potential buyers, they can execute a sale of their property in a soft market, their holding costs are covered, they retain ownership of the asset for the period of the agreement (important for tax depreciation and asset security) and they may also get additional cash flow for living expenses.

You can see an example of this kind of deal HERE.

Vendor financing is definitely worth considering if you are planning your retirement and want to off-load your investment property.

A special report by the NSW Treasury released with the state budget this Tuesday has provided an insight into state finances in 2050.

A key finding of the report was that impacts already expected by the ageing population have not fully materialised because older workers were staying in the workforce for longer.

Specifically:

The workforce participation rate for men in NSW aged over 65 has lifted from about 10 per cent in 2005 to 15.1 per cent in 2010-11. Treasury says this trend will continue and by 2028 one in five men over 65 will be working.

For women over 65, the participation rate has risen from about 3 per cent in the mid-2000s to above 7 per cent, and is expected to continue to rise to 12.3 per cent by 2050.

You can read more at the Sydney Morning Herald site HERE.

Why is this happening?

My feeling is that people are unable to retire due to the impact of the GFC on their retirement nest eggs and have to stay in the workforce longer until they can top-up their superannuation or their investments recover. Either way, I cannot see this trend changing anytime soon.

What about you? Are you staying in the workforce longer than necessary for financial reasons?

As the average lifespan increases, ageing is not something to take lying down.

Getting older no longer looks the way it used to. Once upon a time, reaching your 60s meant saying goodbye to work, settling down in a cardigan and snuggling up with your grandchildren. Today, it might equally mean running a marathon, starting your own business, or going on a full-scale bender worthy of a 21st birthday party.

Read more: http://www.smh.com.au/entertainment/books/when-60-is-the-new-20-20110825-1jap5.html#ixzz1WBFdr9Qg

When it releases a major report on aged care tomorrow, the government will unleash a debate that, if not handled carefully, could turn into a fresh nightmare for Julia Gillard.

Read more: http://www.smh.com.au/opinion/politics/evergreen-controversy-stirred-by-report-on-the-aged-20110806-1igc0.html#ixzz1UQ0nHMEV

The latest Reserve Bank Bulletin points out the labour force has grown at an average rate of 2.5 per cent a year since 2005. That’s fast – it’s also an extra 1.4 million people. Where have they all come from?

The first source is more people of working age (those 15 and over) choosing to actually participate in the labour force. And the big increase has been among women, plus older workers choosing to delay their retirement.

Great article by Ross Gittins in the Sydney Morning Herald today…

Read more: http://www.smh.com.au/business/immigrants-and-oldies-share-our-growing-work-load-20110708-1h6ht.html#ixzz1RYqKeHYW

The biggest demographic shift of the 21st century is under way. In 1900, life expectancy at birth in the U.S. was 47 years. Now it’s closer to 80, and many of today’s children could live to 100. This gift of longevity represents a big and permanent shift in American life — one that may require a new set of rules.

Social visionary Marc Freedman, founder of the Civic Ventures think tank in San Francisco, recalls his own aha moment three years ago. As a 50-year-old father of two young boys, Freedman booked a hotel room for a family vacation using his AARP discount and requested two cribs. “There are a growing number of us who can be classified as neither-nors,” Freedman, now a father of three, writes in his new book, The Big Shift: Navigating the New Stage Beyond Midlife. “Neither young nor old. Neither ready to retire nor able to afford it.”

New opportunities

The first wave of baby-boomers turn 65 this year and the looming demands of 78 million seniors in the US threaten to swamp Social Security and Medicare. Some warn that the financial stress could cripple the economy and ignite a battle between people with walkers and those pushing baby strollers. But Freedman believes the unprecedented aging of America presents an opportunity to redefine the golden years for boomers and the generations that follow.

A yet-unnamed chapter of life is evolving for people between middle age and old age — much the way that adolescence was first recognized as a distinct developmental stage in the early 20th century. Many of today’s 65-year-olds are vibrant, active and engaged. Rather than retiring to a golf-course community and living off their savings for 20 years or more — an impossible scenario for many in the wake of the Great Recession — some are searching for a second act that combines meaningful work and a paycheck.

Freedman calls this new life phase the “encore years.” A few years ago, he launched a national conversation with his thought-provoking book Encore: Finding Work That Matters in the Second Half of Life. The companion Web site offers advice on switching directions in midlife and inspirational stories of individuals who carved a new path. Recent research sponsored by Civic Ventures suggests that there could be labor shortages by 2018 if boomers retire at traditional ages, particularly in education, health care, government and nonprofit organizations.

In The Big Shift, Freedman offers a recipe for transforming America’s coming midlife crisis into an opportunity for individuals and society. “Never before have so many people had so much experience and the time and capacity to do something significant with it,” he writes. He outlines out-of-the-box ideas, such as “gap years” for grown-ups; new kinds of internships and fellowships for Americans moving beyond middle age; remodeled higher education to help retrain people for these new roles; and new kinds of investment accounts to finance the cost of transitioning to new careers.

Sound like an impossible dream? No, it’s more like practical idealism, based on Freedman’s decade-plus-long mission to link experienced people who are eager to make a difference with nonprofit organizations in need of leadership. He spearheaded the creation of Experience Corps, a national service program for people over 55, and created the Purpose Prize, which annually provides five $100,000 prizes to social innovators in the second half of life.

If the golden-years dream was once freedom from work, the dream of this new wave is the freedom to work, says Freedman. The oldest boomers may be the lab rats in this longevity experiment, but every generation will benefit from new rules and roles for those who are beyond middle age but still too young to be old.

Article by Mary Beth Franklin, senior editor at Kiplinger’s Personal Finance.
Read more: http://www.kiplinger.com/magazine/archives/too-young-to-be-old.html#ixzz1PbDDE2Cd

The recession is having a lingering impact on the baby boomer’s retirement plans. Retirees and those close to retirement lack the time to properly recover from job losses, falling home prices, and investment portfolio losses. Their retirement options are to work longer, save more, or settle for a lower standard of living in retirement. Here is how the recession has impacted the retirement plans of people age 50 and older.

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AGEING is inevitable but with scientific advances we are progressively finding out how people can stay a little younger.

While most people are concerned with their looks as they age, a few are taking the necessary steps to keep their minds sharp and their bodies healthy.

Prince Court Medical Centre consultant physician and geriatrician, healthy ageing specialist Dr Rajbans Singh says our ageing population is on the increase and that the average life span is now 75 to 80 years.

“More and more people are hitting the ages of 75 to 80. If people do not age well, it will be an economic burden on the government. The focus on ageing has changed. It is now more on prevention, wellness, anti-ageing and healthy ageing,” he says, adding that it is imperative to advise the elderly to stay young and healthy. Here is Dr Rajbans’s 10-point checklist for staying young when you are old.

READ MORE…