September 2006: <<< back to Downloads
In this issue:
Welcome to the very first in my prime newsletter. And how opportune it is. The Government’s Age Discrimination legislation is about to come into force from October 1st; there are significant new pension arrangements coming in, and on the wider stage, we have a huge demographic shift towards an older population with people living longer and hoping to do that in reasonable comfort and good health. And, perhaps more important, we have millions of mature people who refuse to think of themselves as 'old', 'past it' or 'over the hill' when as research shows, these days 'old age' doesn't start until well into your seventies (and not even then, for many people!)
We established in my prime because we believe that there are a number of converging issues relating to the 45 to 70 year old generation which increasingly need to be addressed. This is a complex and developing scenario. and a global problem affecting many countries in a similar fashion.
We know that many mature people may feel they have no need for in my prime - perhaps they are the lucky ones who have good pension provisions, a stable relationship, good health and a clear sense of who they are, where they are going and how to get there. Unfortunately, this is far from the case for many people in this age group who may - often without admitting it to others - be wrestling with a multitude of different issues and challenges.
Whichever group you fall into, all we ask is that you help spread the word about in my prime</ through forwarding this newsletter to others or clicking onto our website and entering their email address in our 'email a friend' box.
As Mahatma Gandhi said, 'be the change that you want to see in the world' - and that means
encouraging significant numbers of people to make the philosophical change from thinking 'old' to 'in my prime'
Making a living and having a life are not the same thing … a job title doesn’t even come close to answering the question, ‘What do you do?’ – Robert Fulghum
Today, the 50 – 70 age group represents a huge, increasing, and increasingly vociferous generation - a group of some 13 million people in the UK alone which is growing significantly year on year. Practical and attitudinal change which reflects the emergence of this new ‘in between’ generation (i.e. in between middle and old age) is therefore long overdue. The forthcoming Age Discrimination regulations will provide a legislative framework but will not of themselves bring about cultural change.
These days more than ever, to live in reasonable comfort and to be fully occupied and stimulated requires adequate financial resources and meaningful things to do. No country is able to fully finance this extra life expectancy, particularly with fewer younger people supporting the economy, and the economy itself is in need of adequate numbers of skilled workers. In addition to the income it generates, work itself brings with it satisfaction, self-esteem and social interaction. What is required is an inclusive environment and positive attitudes on all fronts.
What are needed are new attitudes towards work and, in particular towards older workers. Employers must be willing to be flexible in their treatment of employees, particularly in their later years so that there can be a smooth and seamless transition between employment and retirement. This involves planning, communication and sensitivity.
It is in the interests of everyone. Employers will be able to get the best from a loyal, skilled workforce, employees will be able to live to a ripe old age healthy, happy and financially secure, and the state will be able to finance the healthcare and pension framework necessary.
Annual income twenty pounds, annual expenditure nineteen nineteen six, result happiness.
Annual expenditure twenty pounds ought and six, result misery
- Charles Dickens
Despite the very complex regulatory framework surrounding every aspect of the subject, conceptually saving for our retirement is very straightforward though never very well articulated. During our working years we need to build up a pot of wealth for later. When that “later” comes, that is when we retire, we will use up that pot to live. It’s as simple as that. How comfortably we live in retirement depends upon the size of the pot we have built up, how long we live for and what style of life we choose for ourselves.
There was a time when personal financial planning tended to focus only on our earlier years. This is a time when mortgages and children probably consume most of our thinking. There was the short-lived idea, more of an illusion than reality (nostalgia is not what it used to be), that the state would provide adequately for us in our old age and, if we were lucky enough, we might also be in a company pension scheme. And anyway, compared to our years working, our time in retirement was likely to be relatively short.
The problem is that, in kick-starting the welfare state, the government had no store of national wealth built up to pay for it. Therefore, those in employment would have to fund the pensions of existing pensioners on a day by day basis. This was reasonably painless while there was a large working population supporting a smallish number of pensioners for not many years of retired bliss. Things have now changed dramatically, globally. People are living longer which means there are more pensioners needing pensions over a longer time span and, with changing social trends, there is a smaller working population there to support them. The equation no longer holds.
And so there have to be changes. The state pension will not be enough, on its own, to live on. A recent study by AXA confirms this. Individuals can expect to work longer before obtaining a pension and they must make their own provisions for later years if they are to live in reasonable comfort.
And so we come back to our first point. We need to build up a pot that we can use up when we retire. Therein lie three major issues confronting the country at the moment and featuring every day in the press and on TV – pensions, equity release and inheritance tax. Here, at in my prime, we anticipate writing about these regularly and bringing you objective advice and opinion. We have no political axe to grind but we do understand about finance and we do understand about motivation.
The most obvious way to save for our retirement is through a pension scheme and there is much going on this field at the moment. We tuck money away over a long period of time, with the aid of tax benefits and, possibly, employers’ contributions and we draw on this, probably by way of an annuity, when we retire. It does quite clearly involve having the desire and the cash flow to make the sacrifices now for the benefit of later.
Another way of accumulating wealth is through property, particularly our own house or flat, and many people are relying on this to see them through, bolstered by the increases in house prices that we have seen recently. But the wealth contained in our property value is not cash. To turn this into something that we can live on means either moving and trading down or releasing some of the equity. And so there is a growing interest in the topic of “equity release” and a growing number of schemes to help us. Not all of them are good but, likewise, they are not as evil as some have painted them. In fact, releasing equity from property is a rational financial decision and should be treated as such.
A third way to accumulate wealth might be to save outside of a pension scheme, through shares or bonds or deposit accounts, with or without the aid of an ISA.
Now we come to the fraught subject of Inheritance Tax. The government has to raise taxes somehow and in my prime is certainly not going to take a stance on the morality of inherited wealth. However, there is an issue about its effect on people’s motivation to save. The government is beginning to realise that to encourage people to save means that saving has to be a fair bet. If we have to make sacrifices and save hard for many years towards a pension and then we drop dead before getting a reasonable payback we are unlikely to make the commitment in the first place, and so just take our chances. As a result there are, rather begrudgingly, the signs of a shift in government thinking towards redressing the balance in this area.
The same is not true, however, with regards to Inheritance Tax. Many individuals are now being brought into the tax net by virtue of the value of their properties. But this is only the underpinning. On top of that will be the rest of a person’s savings. If 40% is going to be whisked away because of an illness or a road accident or one of the other vagaries of life, why save? Let us spend now and fall back on the state if we have to. This, we see as an area where thinking has to change.
In conclusion. We have no sales pitch in these high profile issues confronting in my primers and many younger people but, through our site, our newsletters and our seminars, we hope to cut a swathe through the uncertainty and confusion which exists almost everywhere.
The greatest discovery of my generation is that a human being can alter his life by altering his attitudes of mind. - William James
Research shows that we age as quickly as we let ourselves. If we constantly think ‘past it’, ‘slow down’, ‘don’t bother’, the ageing process will be breathing down our necks, eager to relegate us to the ‘elderly’ bin. For those of us currently in the 50 to 70 age range, this should be an unthinkable option. Today, perhaps for the first time, we represent a group who are truly in our prime – a new generation sitting between the middle aged and the elderly – a group who have a real and magnificent opportunity for renewed growth and ongoing self-fulfilment.
Research shows that today, people don’t see themselves as old until they are past seventy. And why should we? It’s our generation which comprises those people who were – and remain – the source of many of today’s most iconic socio-cultural developments (rock music, fashion, art, etc). Is Mick Jagger slowing down? Bill Clinton? Judy Dench? Of course not. And neither are they playing the ‘good for their age’ card. They’re still as great as they ever were, in fact, arguably greater than ever.
These and millions of other people worldwide, are individuals who consider themselves in their prime and are far from happy at the thought of now being considered elderly by society at large simply because they are over 50. Research and empirical evidence show that the majority of people in this age group still see themselves as youthful, want to keep developing and contributing and want, increasingly, to be fulfilled and have fun.
However the media – particularly advertisements targeted at this group - portray ‘over 50s’ as either suave, silver-haired models whose trim figures and 'ageless' leisure attire are neatly complemented by their bulging purses and wallets; or pitifully cheerful (but potentially confused) people who need comfy slippers and incontinence pants and wear swimming costumes in their walk-in showers and baths.
How insulting!
But, like most discrimination, when you analyse where it comes from, it isn’t everyone else’s fault. How many of us who ought to be in our prime just seem to have given up? Sadly, millions. These are people who used to be slim, gorgeous and proud of what they looked like. They used to bother about what people thought and put effort into appearing attractive, interesting and amenable. They used to listen and learn and try hard to experience new adventures. So what’s gone wrong?
Quite simply, far too many of us have stopped trying and collapsed into post middle-age. We’ve stopped putting sufficient effort into making ourselves look the best we can; we have long since given up on keeping ourselves as fit and healthy as we should, we’ve ceased making the effort to learn new things and appear interesting; we no longer bother to listen to others; and worst of all, we’ve stopped believing in ourselves and our ability to be attractive, fascinating and charismatic.
In short, far too many of us have become boring, predictable, under-achievers. Is it any wonder then, that society at large just dumps us in the ‘going downhill fast’ bin and doesn’t really take us seriously?
Perhaps you feel that this is an individual challenge that really doesn’t have much impact on society as a whole. You’re comfortable in your circle of family and friends so why should it matter? Well, unfortunately it has a huge impact in many areas, particularly when we come to consider the position of older people in the workplace.
With pensions problems, the breakdown of the traditional ‘married for life’ scenario, and people finding themselves trapped in the sandwich between supporting dependent children and ageing parents, individuals are finding that they both want and need to work well past what used to be considered ‘retirement’ age. Even if money isn’t an issue, 20 or 30 years is an awfully long time to be pottering about doing nothing.
However, employers generally aren’t keen on taking on mature workers. They see them as ‘expensive’, ‘demanding’. ‘inflexible’, ‘unattractive to customers’, ‘difficult to assimilate into a modern workplace culture’. Yet why should this be when as a group we have arguably the highest standards of knowledge, skills, experience, emotional intelligence, and customer relations savvy of any other group? Very probably it’s because too many people for too long have been content to rest on their laurels, milking the system and feeling they were owed a living because they were older, and possibly had a longer service record than others. It’s an attitude which now is souring the perceptions of HR Managers and employers worldwide.
These days ‘old’ attitudes won’t wash. If we want to be taken seriously and to continue to make a major contribution, we have to show we are accommodating, adaptable, eager to learn and develop, and prepared to fit in with new systems as well as being willing to take orders from younger people. We need to recognise and play to our strengths and by so doing, will gradually help society at large see and understand what a huge, powerful and largely unrecognised resource we actually are.
As post war ‘baby boomers’, we are trailblazers. We were the first teenagers and now we are the first generation who can be easily identified as in my primers. Of course, we want to change things for the generation coming behind us who will probably need to have even longer working lives than we have endured. But more than that, for now, let’s be selfish. Let’s regain our pride and regain some ground and respect for ourselves too. We are truly in our prime.
A little learning is a dangerous thing but a lot of ignorance is just as bad. - Bob Edwards
September is the time of year when although the nights are closing in, everything else - work,
education, entertainment - springs into life again after the summer.
It's certainly the time when, with autumn and winter imminent, in my primers ought to be thinking about taking up a new interest to fill in those long evenings and wet weekends.
Whether it’s pilates, philosophy or pie-making, these days finding a course is easy with numerous websites to direct you to classes, workshops and even on-line learning.
A particularly good site is The Learning Directory -
www.learndirect-advice.co.uk/coursemanager
Food is an important part of a balanced diet.- Fran Leibowitz
More and more people in Britain are eating out and not just on special occasions. Official figures from the Office of National Statistics show a relentless rise in the amount being spent on eating outside the home. One of the major improvements we are seeing is in the quality of the food to be found in pubs. Pubs often provide a more relaxed and casual atmosphere than a restaurant or hotel but have long had an image of poor quality and reheated food, piled high with chips. However, things are changing.
Although there is a lot of hype and pretension in the emergence of "Gastro pubs", behind the posturing we are seeing a growing number of places to eat which we think are ideal for in my primers. We're not saying that they're necessarily for everyday refuelling but as bit of a treat or a business lunch they can provide healthy, well-prepared meals, made with fresh ingredients, to be eaten in a warm and relaxed atmosphere.
So how do you find them?
One of the problems of being 50 plus is that your children find it more and more difficult to buy you suitable Christmas presents. Last year they all homed in on the same theme, books on "good pubs for eating in". Now I carry them around in the car with me all the time. There are two I can particularly recommend - they're not infallible but we have used them all over the country with notable success. They are:
Michelin “Eating out in pubs – good food in informal surroundings” (list price £14.99).
AA “The Pub Guide” (list price £14.99).
"Every morning in Africa, a gazelle wakes up. It knows that it must run faster than the fastest lion or it will be killed. Every morning a lion wakes up. It knows that it must outrun the slowest gazelle or it will starve to death. The moral of this; it doesn't matter whether you are a lion or a gazelle....when the sun comes up you'd better be running.” - African proverb
Screw it, let's do it
Richard Branson, Virgin Books Ltd, 2006
Like him or loathe him, Branson is justifiably a global icon and this latest book is not only refreshingly inexpensive (£2.99!) but a highly motivating, quick read with interesting insights into the risks and realities of how the great Virgin empire developed.
Good news for in my primers, is that like the rest of us, Branson sees age as no reason to slow down:
"People say I should relax. I could retire. I ask, 'what would I do?' They say, 'Paint watercolours. Play golf. Have fun.' But I am already having fun. My work is fun. Fun is at the core of the way I do business. It has been the key to it all from the start. I see no reason to change it."