When you are looking down the road to retirement, the images that spring to mind can vary from the pleasant and fun to those of fear of the unknown. The image we get from the front cover of AARP magazine is one we want to envision for ourselves for our golden years. That idea of retiring in luxury to a life of golf, maybe roving the country in an RV or pretty much living on cruise ships is fun to look forward to and let it bring a smile to your face even if retirement is a ways off.
But many people in those years leading up to retirement also have to be of assistance to aging parents and you see the realistic side of the golden years as well. So that changes how you think about retirement and how to prepare for it. On the darker side of thinking ahead to retirement and the years of decline, there is one dread that outweighs all the others pretty much universally. That is the dread of ever having to go to a nursing home.
The concept of the horror of a nursing home has not been helped in our modern times by stories of nursing home abuse and horrible experiences older people have in those institutions. So the idea that we all might end up in such a place can be quite terrifying and create a lot of anxiety about ever retiring and letting someone take over your care that might put you in a nursing home.
Many of the terrors of nursing home life are the result of myth and stories and the media who love to portray nursing homes as torture chambers, But if the fear of a nursing home gets you in the mode to prepare for retirement and start doing your research well in advance, then that is a good fear because it is mobilizing you for doing something good for you and your family.
The good news is that a lot has changed maybe even since you had to deal with nursing homes when your own parents were aging. There are a lot of new formats for where an elderly person might go live once continuing to live alone in their house stops being an option. It is no doubt the surge of elderly people into the system caused by the graying of the baby boomer generation that has fueled a revolution in elderly car. Now there are all kinds of levels of care and the kinds of places you can look forward to spending your golden years in may resemble an apartment complex or resort more than a nursing home.
You can do a lot to reduce your anxiety about retirement by starting now and going to visit some of these retirement apartment complexes, assisted living centers and senior centers. You will be pleasantly surprised at how nice and comfortable the options are out there that you can look forward to taking advantage of in your retirement years.
But there is another important change in how you view retirement that looking into alternatives to nursing homes will bring about as well. That is the area of planning to finance these kinds of retirement options. There are many forms of retirement insurance and you may already have started paying on a policy that would provide care for you in a nursing home or a place where medical care was available in the event you had a medical decline in your golden years.
By getting a good idea what kind of facility you might prefer once it is no longer feasible or desirable for you to keep a full house going, you can anticipate preparing for that move financially as well. You can check on your insurance and if the funding you have set aside for retirement will not help out with assisted living centers, make those changes now so that insurance can accumulate value for you.
The administrators at assisted living centers can help you prepare for your move to their facility. They will be thrilled to meet someone thinking that far in advance about your future needs and because these folks are in the business of helping people like you and I move comfortably into retirement, they can help you know about programs, financing and other ways you can prepare so you are fully ready to go to a wonderful future.
Friday, July 11, 2008
Thursday, July 3, 2008
Helping Your Employees Retire
You know one thing about an employee that takes interest in your company retirement program. That is that he or she is taking a proactive interest in staying with the company long enough to retire. This is not a given for every employee. It used to be in the generation that was in the workplace of the nineteen fifties and sixties that staying with a company for thirty or more years and retiring with full benefits was the norm. That is not the norm any more.
We cannot just blame the job hopping ways of employees for the change of culture away from going for the gold watch and retiring in a company. From the corporate side, so many companies have eliminated retirement packages entirely that there is a strong belief of “do it yourself” retirement in the working population.
A company offers retirement benefits for employees for one purpose. That is to aid with retention. When you have a pool of talented, well trained and energetic employees, that is a corporate resource. So if you can keep those employees all the way through to retirement, that is a real value to any corporate entity.
So if your company does offer these benefits to your employees, its important that you take advantage of them in more ways then just sponsoring them. A retirement package for aging employees sends a message to the employees that the company cares about them and about their families. And this may be true in your company that you have a corporate culture of being involved with your employees at a personal level and maintaining that “we are family” feeling for people who work for you. If that is the case, it makes sense that you would extend that feeling to care for the retirement planning of any employee that you have that shows signs of being a long term value to the company.
You should highlight the company retirement package as early as the interview with your prospective employees. Remember that an interview is about more than you looking for qualified people. It is also about qualify people interviewing you. And that is exactly where the value of a strong retirement package is of greatest value. If a job hunter who is looking for a place to work that they can retire at knows that you have a good plan to help them with their retirement planning, that will draw the brightest and best to your HR department.
Your HR department should not let the retirement issues of employees lie idle for very long at all. The more you help your employees plan for and participate in a retirement program, the happier they will be and the more engaged in their work they will be. Hold regular retirement planning meetings to have employees review their level of participation in the program. This is where you will put in front of the employees your most empathetic HR employees to show genuine interest in the employee’s retirement issues.
Above all be sure to show particular concern and caring for aging employees. And when an employee finally crosses over into retirement, throw a party and go out of your way not only for the company to help the employee transition to retirement but to demonstrate to all employees that the company lives up to its claims to be faithful to employees all the way into retirement. In an economy where so many companies throw people away, your employees will notice that this is not that kind of company. And your faithfulness to retiring employees will result in a rich crop of faithfulness from ongoing employees who stand behind you because you stand behind them from the day they start work in the company all the way through to retirement.
We cannot just blame the job hopping ways of employees for the change of culture away from going for the gold watch and retiring in a company. From the corporate side, so many companies have eliminated retirement packages entirely that there is a strong belief of “do it yourself” retirement in the working population.
A company offers retirement benefits for employees for one purpose. That is to aid with retention. When you have a pool of talented, well trained and energetic employees, that is a corporate resource. So if you can keep those employees all the way through to retirement, that is a real value to any corporate entity.
So if your company does offer these benefits to your employees, its important that you take advantage of them in more ways then just sponsoring them. A retirement package for aging employees sends a message to the employees that the company cares about them and about their families. And this may be true in your company that you have a corporate culture of being involved with your employees at a personal level and maintaining that “we are family” feeling for people who work for you. If that is the case, it makes sense that you would extend that feeling to care for the retirement planning of any employee that you have that shows signs of being a long term value to the company.
You should highlight the company retirement package as early as the interview with your prospective employees. Remember that an interview is about more than you looking for qualified people. It is also about qualify people interviewing you. And that is exactly where the value of a strong retirement package is of greatest value. If a job hunter who is looking for a place to work that they can retire at knows that you have a good plan to help them with their retirement planning, that will draw the brightest and best to your HR department.
Your HR department should not let the retirement issues of employees lie idle for very long at all. The more you help your employees plan for and participate in a retirement program, the happier they will be and the more engaged in their work they will be. Hold regular retirement planning meetings to have employees review their level of participation in the program. This is where you will put in front of the employees your most empathetic HR employees to show genuine interest in the employee’s retirement issues.
Above all be sure to show particular concern and caring for aging employees. And when an employee finally crosses over into retirement, throw a party and go out of your way not only for the company to help the employee transition to retirement but to demonstrate to all employees that the company lives up to its claims to be faithful to employees all the way into retirement. In an economy where so many companies throw people away, your employees will notice that this is not that kind of company. And your faithfulness to retiring employees will result in a rich crop of faithfulness from ongoing employees who stand behind you because you stand behind them from the day they start work in the company all the way through to retirement.
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