Life’s race is almost over. It’s time to take your victory lap and start preparing for whatever comes next. Completing the following four tasks can help you meet any last obligations to your loved ones, ensure your final days are spent as you want, and reconcile your dreams with the realities of your life. Whatever you have done, or left undone, is past and now is the time to finally realize the wisdom of John Viscount Morley who said, “The great business of life is to be, to do, to do without, and to depart.”
1. Estate Planning
After a life accumulating assets, you want to make sure that they go to the people you love and trust when you pass. If your estate is valued at $5.25 million or less (indexed for inflation), your heirs are likely not subject to federal or state taxes. However, some states may impose a tax even if there is no federal liability (additional complications arise if the surviving spouse is a non-citizen). Executors of estates larger than that threshold must file Form 706 within nine months of the decedent’s death or receive an extension from the IRS.
Baby boomers are the first generation of a new retirement era with the burden of saving the bulk of their retirement income and making those savings last 20 to 30 years. This responsibility is due to the decline in company pensions which shifted saving and investment responsibilities to employees, as well as an increase in life expectancy after attaining adulthood (almost 20% since 1950). The challenge of investing has been particularly difficult in the last five years; a study by Thornburg Investment Management calculated the annual “real return” for many classes of investment during the period as being negative.
The possibility of a future investment environment where inflation remains low and interest rates rise (the opposite of the 1960s to 1980s) producing slower economic growth, projected healthcare expenses not covered by insurance, and the uncertainty of program changes in Social Security and Medicare will result in people continuing to work as long as possible, accelerating their savings in their later years, and seeking maximum returns in their portfolios.
According to Chris Brightman, head of investment management at Research Affiliates, “Baby Boomers are going to work longer than they originally expected. They’re going to have to save more than they planned. And they’re going to have to consume more modestly in retirement.”
Your Investment Options for Retirement
There are literally hundreds, if not thousands, of different investment vehicles available. The following list describes the most popular choices, while some investments (such as gold and collectibles) are not listed because, according to Warren Buffett, they are difficult to analyze, lack any productive use, and their future price depends solely on the hope that the next buyer will pay more for the item than the owner paid.
The purpose of communication is to convey information from one person to another. Through the choice of written and spoken words, ideas, concepts, emotions, thoughts, and opinions are exchanged. Unfortunately, miscommunication is common – the listener or reader fails to understand what is said or written. Dale Carnegie, author of “How to Make Friends and Influence People,” said, “90 percent of all management problems are caused by miscommunication.”
When you consider the tensions between men and women, young and old, friends, and family members, it seems that most people are guilty of poor communication. But it’s possible to develop effective communication skills by learning how to speak and write simply and clearly, using plain language that’s easily understood by most people.
Common Miscommunications
“If you have time, try to mow the lawn this afternoon,” said the father as he walked out the door to go to his office. His teenage son, head down, concentrating on breakfast, grunts in reply, “Uh-huh.” To the father’s dismay, the yard remained untouched when he returned home. The son, when confronted by his angry father, excused his lack of action with the explanation, “You said ‘if I had time,’ and I was at the mall all day.”
This scene is repeated every day in thousands of homes across the country. The father was guilty of not saying what he really meant: His intent was to instruct his son to cut the grass that afternoon, even if that meant he had to rearrange his schedule or miss another activity. In an effort to avoid seeming controlling, the father added the false condition “if you have time,” expecting his son to interpret the underlying meaning of his statement. His son naturally focused on the conditional “if you have time,” rather than the direction ”mow the lawn.” As a consequence, both parties felt unfairly treated by the other.
Similar misunderstandings arise at work, in schools, on the playground, and at home. Whether in speaking or writing, misunderstandings arise due to poor word choice and the failure to realize that communication includes two equally critical components: the speaker and the listener, or the writer and the reader. As the NBA Hall of Fame coach of the Boston Celtics Red Auerbach said, “It’s not what you tell them…it’s what they hear.”
In 1937, Johnson O’Connor, then the director of the Human Engineering Laboratory of the Stevens Institute of Technology, performed a detailed study of vocabulary use and familiarity with research subjects, ranging from high school and grammar school pupils, to professors and businessmen. He determined that the largest vocabularies are possessed by “major executives,” and the size of one’s vocabulary correlates to his salary. Johnson also concluded that a large vocabulary was an “important concomitant of success and financial prosperity.”
In the years since, other research have confirmed additional benefits of larger vocabularies: Higher high school achievement, higher reading achievement, even higher IQs. Educator and writer E.D. Hirsch, Jr. asserts that there is no better index to accumulated knowledge and general competence than the size of a person’s vocabulary: “Simply put, knowing more words makes you smarter.” Therefore, a sizable vocabulary is a great asset for your children to achieve success in the 21st century.
The Value of Vocabulary
Words are important because they allow you to convert thoughts with precision and concision and share them with others. Nathaniel Hawthorne, an 18th Century American novelist and author of the classic ”The Scarlet Letter,” may have expressed the power of words best: “Words…so innocent and powerless as they are, as standing in a dictionary, how potent for good and evil they become, in the hands of one who know how to combine them.”
The combination of words – skillfully used – have empowered, entranced, and enthralled us in the hands of orators and writers throughout history. Verses of religious texts, Lincoln’s memorialization of the dead in his Gettysburg Address, and Franklin D. Roosevelt’s message to a nation deep in the throes of economic depression, unemployment, and uncertainty (“The only thing we have to fear is fear itself”) are just several of many memorable phrases and passages that will be eternal.
Words are essential to imagination, the ability to form new images and sensations that are not experienced through the physical senses. Words convey emotions, memories, concepts, and facts, and are the basis by which humans communicate. Being able to say what you mean in words that others understand without confusion is essential to understanding. As Mark Twain said, “The difference between the right word and the almost right word is the difference between lightning and a lightning bug.”
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Life’s race is almost over. It’s time to take your victory lap and start preparing for whatever comes next. Completing the following four tasks can help you meet any last obligations to your loved ones, ensure your final days are spent as you want, and reconcile your dreams with the realities of your life. Whatever you have done, or left undone, is past and now is the time to finally realize the wisdom of John Viscount Morley who said, “The great business of life is to be, to do, to do without, and to depart.”
