Generation X group did not have the helicopter parents like the millennials,” explains Taylor. “And today, they have had to deal with many economic circumstances that makes them less optimistic than the baby boomers and the millennials….Taking care of their children, their aging parents, paying off their student debt, their children’s student debt. So, economically, they’re having a very stressful life.”

Still, Taylor points out, the overwhelming optimism that millennials have may be in part due to age. But, he says, only time will tell.

“Generation X is interesting because it’s the first generation where there is less social mobility. No longer are people thinking things will get better. There is less optimism, “ says Taylor.

There’s a good reason for that.

“In the last 15 years, growth has flatlined in the U.S.,” Taylor says. “From the 1940s to the 1970s, the standard of living kept increasing. But now people aren’t sure whether or not they will do better than their parents.”

Elliott says it’s too early to say whether wealth loss is a new pattern among generations (baby boomers do have more debt than their parents). But that it’s certainly something to keep an eye on.

“When it comes to wealth building and income,” she says, “Generation X is a group to look at to start seeing the larger changes that are happening in the economy.”

As for a silver lining, Taylor says this savvy and skeptical group does not care what others think of them. He also says that older households are much better off in terms of retirement. “And over time,” he says. “They are getting help, with more people looking after grandkids and giving other resources… and ultimately, that wealth [from their parents] will filter down.”

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We are hiring Generation X in 50 US states, call 408-854-1883 . Be an agency owner in the area of financial service. No capital or experience needed. Email your resume and availability to motherhealth@gmail.com

Frugal Habits
Hinchliffe: There’s lots of things that I wanted but not a lot of things that I needed. If you bought a used car, it did the same thing for you [as a new car] and you saved yourself quite a bit over a period of time. Another thing we used to do is vacations, we would go with friends rather than buy a big place and go by ourselves. We would go with other couples and split the bill and that helped out a lot. 

Nordman: My wife and I have a lot of frugal habits that I think tended to make us big savers. We planted a lot of the yard with fruit trees, and so we have fruit year-round. We get crops all year here in Hawaii, and so we can grow some of our own fruit. And we also compost and use things around the house. By buying from Craigslist and Goodwill you’re effectively recycling possessions that other people don’t want anymore, and you’re getting them for yourself at a much cheaper price than if you bought them new. 

Advice
Hinchliffe: My advice to someone young today is to stay on course with their investing aims. It’s like a boat. You set a course. You go from one spot to another. If you get off course, needless to say you don’t know where you’re going to end up. If you have a good plan and you follow it, I think that you’ll find that you’ll succeed and your investing will definitely pay you a huge dividend.

Nordman: Track your spending for a couple of months and see where your money goes. Don’t try to cut back, don’t try to change anything just track your expenses and see where you’re spending your money. Then you will figure out where you want to cut back, and you won’t feel like you’re depriving yourself or making yourself miserable.

What formula works best? Should you include annuities in the mix?  Yes annuities should be included in the mix since some annuities with NLG/LSW has a total return after ten years of 9% with guaranteed of 2.5% depending on company quarterly data.

If most people are comfortable putting money in savings accounts where they get less than 1% Taxable, they will get much better advantage getting S&P500 rate that is Tax Deferred!

And as we age, we wanted no market risk, tax-free, long term investment and also a savings plan that we can tap into during emergency and for any health threats such as cancer, stroke or disability using the Index Universal Life policy with full living benefits (terminal, critical, chronic illness riders added at no cost with NLG/LSW).

Still some of us would love real estate, stocks, bonds, and other ways of investments.

We can diversify and allocate our assets in a way that returns are higher, safe, tax free or deferred, allocated into exempt assets to be qualified for MediCal and be protected under residence trusts.

We should use our money with low returns first such as the CD or better yet reallocate this idle money, money with low returns to indexed annuities or index UL with returns from 8-13%. Contact Connie.

Call Connie Dello Buono 408-854-1883 motherhealth@gmail.com CA Life Lic 0G60621 to reallocate idle money and have a higher return for your lifetime tax free retirement savings/income.

ABCs of Poop
Bowel movements are the end result of your body taking the nutrients it needs from the food you eat and eliminating what’s left.
“Bowel movements are important for your health because they are the body’s natural way of excreting waste from the body,” says Eric Esrailian, MD, section head in general gastroenterology at the David Geffen School of Medicine at UCLA.
When it comes to frequency, color, shape, and size, a general rule of thumb is that normal bowel movements are defined as what’s comfortable for you. But being knowledgeable about your digestive process can help you identify when normal goes awry.
Frequency: “There is no normal when it comes to frequency of bowel movements, only averages” says Bernard Aserkoff, MD, a doctor in the GI Unit at Massachusetts General Hospital in Boston.
It’s average to go once or twice a day, he says, but many people go more, and some go less — maybe every other day, and or as infrequently as once or twice a week. As long as you feel comfortable, you don’t need to give your BMs much thought.
Color: “Bowel movements are generally brown in color because of bile, which is produced in the liver and important to the digestion process,” Aserkoff tells WebMD.
The food you eat typically takes three days from the time you eat it until it finishes its journey in your toilet, Aserkoff says. If it takes a shorter time, the result may be greener stool because green is one of the first colors in the rainbow of the digestive process.
Color can be a red flag when it’s a drastic change, Aserkoff says.
“If stool is black, it can mean that you are bleeding internally, possibly as a result of an ulcer or cancer,” he says. Stool that is black due to bleeding is also “sticky” (tarry) and smells bad. However, black stools are common when taking a vitamin that contains iron or medications that contain bismuth subsalicylate.
Stool that is light in color — like grey clay — can also mean trouble if it’s a change from what you normally see. Although it doesn’t happen often, very light-colored stool can indicate a block in the flow of bile or liver disease.
Size and shape: “We used to believe that size was indicative of a problem if the stool was ‘pencil-thin,’” Aserkoff says. “But recent research indicates that this is actually not true.”
Size and shape are irrelevant, Aserkoff says, if what’s coming out is normal for you.
Odor: Bowel movements usually smell. But is it normal if your trips to the bathroom mean that the rest of the family has to avoid that part of the house for an hour or two?
The answer is yes. It’s normal, and probably a good sign that your gut is abundant with bacteria that is working hard to keep you healthy.
Your intestines are swarming with trillions upon trillions of bacteria that enhance digestive and metabolic processes. They are also the reason why poop smells — a direct result of the bacterial activity in your GI tract. So although it’s no bed of roses, it is normal for your bowel movements to stink.
Poop Problems
So what happens when your poop process gets out of whack? The first sign that your intestines aren’t up to par is a shift from your normal GI routine, and as a result, discomfort below the waist.
Constipation and Diarrhea
Constipation is a concern when you normally have a bowel movement once or twice a day, and that changes — maybe you haven’t gone in three days, or more. However long it’s been, you now feel gassy, bloated, and generally uncomfortable. When you try to go, you have to push and strain, and what comes out is a whole lot of nothin’.
Constipation can have many causes. It might be that you’ve had a shift in your diet, such as a drop in fiber intake, or maybe because you’re not drinking enough water each day, or because your physical activity level has decreased, slowing your metabolic processes down, including digestion. Certain medications (such as narcotic pain medicines and iron supplements) can also cause constipation problems.
Although constipation causes one set of problems, diarrhea can also mean digestive disaster. Whether it’s caused by a meal that just didn’t sit right, or a harmful bacterium or virus, it’s categorized by loose stool, and another hallmark of GI trouble — discomfort.
“Diarrhea can be caused by any number of factors,” Aserkoff says. “But the problem with diarrhea, in addition to the obvious, is that it can cause other health problems, like dehydration, if you’re living with it for more than two or three days.”
Generally, you recoup from a bout of diarrhea or constipation in a day or two, Aserkoff says. If not, it’s probably worth a trip to the doctor for further GI troubleshooting.
Blood in the Stool
“One of the most significant warning signs when it comes to bowel movements is blood in the stool,” Esrailian says.
Blood in your stool could be a symptom of something as significant as cancer and warrants a call to your doctor right away — even if you think it could be hemorrhoids, or tiny tears in the anal tissue, as a result of constipation and straining, he says. If you’re over 50, or if you have a family history of colorectal cancer, a colonoscopy is probably in order.
Other warning signs to watch for when your bowel movements have taken a turn for the worse are fever, abdominal pain, or dehydration — any one of which could be tied to GI trouble, such as a virus, appendicitis, or food poisoning.
Tricks to keeping your poop on track are simple ones: a healthy diet high in fiber, lots of water, and regular exercise.
“Generally, 20-25 grams of dietary fiber per day is recommended, and for many people, you get this much in a healthy diet,” Esrailian says. “If you are having infrequent bowel movements and are experiencing discomfort, then the first easy way to correct it is to increase dietary fiber through food, supplement, or both.”
High-fiber powerhouse foods are whole-grain cereals and breads, fresh vegetables and fruit, and nuts. Usually, a day or two of a fiber-focused diet will put your trips to the bathroom back on track.
Proper hydration is also key for your colon, ensuring you have enough fluid in your body to move stool through the digestive track and out the other end on a regular basis, Esrailian says.
Exercise is also beneficial for your bowels. It helps improve GI “motility,” he says, and can often alleviate constipation by improving your metabolic and digestive processes.
Overall, normal is a pretty easy mark to make when it comes to your bowel movements, both experts say, and aside from the warning signs they offered, what goes in one end usually comes out the other with minimal problems along the way.

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Connie’s comments: Many seniors in a care home or nursing home facility are constipated due to their health conditions, medications and past lifestyles (poor nutrition, lack of exercise and other contributing factors). Those with some serious health conditions have smelly poop. Those who are always constipation have vascular problems, AD and other chronic health issues.

Your task is not to seek for love, but merely to seek and find all the barriers.

65 yrs old and need to plan money withdrawals from annuities, Index UL and other plans.

Investment risks by Chuck Jaffe.

I suggest a risk free investment, tax free and safe with Index Universal Life policy, growing up to 13%. Email for details motherhealth@gmail.com or call at 408-854-1883. The story below gives all types of risks and their definition.

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“What I really want to know, is where do you think I should invest now?”

I could have given him the usual answer — that I’m not a financial adviser and that I don’t pick investments for people — but instead I answered his question this way:

“That may be what you want to know, but what you need to know first is ‘What’s your greatest financial fear?’”

Mike, a pilot, immediately answered that he’s worried about another layoff. Chris, to his right, is scared of the market having a repeat of the meltdowns he saw in 2000 and 2008. Bob said he worries about outliving his money or needing long-term care.

And so it went for a few minutes, each guy coming up with a few legitimate things to fear, or nodding in agreement with the concerns cited by someone else, as the worries ran from current socio-economic events to providing for a special-needs child, to fear of missing out on the market’s gains, to not being able to pay to put the kids through college and more.

Finally, Mike said, “Maybe you just say that what I fear the most is losing money or mismanaging money.”

The problem with all of these concerns is that even if you work to solve your biggest fear, you may still feel vulnerable to other worries.

If losing money in the market is your biggest fear and you go to all cash in response, you assuage the big worry, but over time you will have a growing scare that your money isn’t keeping pace with inflation or, perhaps, that you will outlive your nest egg.

Moreover, if you take that kind of all-or-nothing position, having everything in cash could leave you afraid that if the market doesn’t have a comeuppance soon, you’ve lost real opportunities to grow your savings.

While an individual’s financial fears morph and evolve, risks don’t. Certain dangers may be more or less present based on current events and conditions, but the underlying risks don’t change.

As a result, it’s important for investors to see how their worries align with the various types of risk.

Market risk, or “principal risk” is the chance that a downturn (or a bad investment) chews up your money. It’s there for both stocks and bonds — when interest rates rise, bondholders will see the market value of their paper shrink — and for most people it’s the big bugaboo.

Inflation or purchasing-power risk for most people is the “risk of avoiding risk” — the opposite end of the spectrum from market risk — the possibility that you are too conservative and your money can’t grow fast enough to keep pace with inflation.

Interest-rate risk generally revolves around how rates will change. If you seek a long-term “risk-free return” by putting your money in a bank certificate of deposit, you face the chance that interest rates rise and your assets are stuck at what has become a below-average rate of return.

Shortfall risk is about you, personally, more than the market; it’s the chance that you won’t have enough money to make your goals. You can face shortfall risk by being either too conservative or too aggressive; if you don’t believe your portfolio can deliver enough, the best way to address this risk is to save more.

Special-situation risk involves your life as well, whether it’s the special-needs case, planning for college, saving for a big event like a wedding or something else. Most parents get to a point when paying for college is a key concern — a worry that distracts them from saving more for their own retirement — but those circumstances eventually pass.

A close cousin is timing risk, another highly personal factor that hinges on your time horizon. While experts agree that the chance that stocks will make money over the next two decades is high, the prospects for the next two years are murky; if you need your money in two years, you have a worry about timing.

Liquidity risk affects everything from junk bonds to foreign stocks. On a broad scale, it can be the chance that investments in a particular country suffer during some sort of credit crisis, or the potential for a thinly-traded stock to crater or for its shares to be difficult to redeem in a crisis. It also occurs in investment products like non-traded REITs, where the investment cannot be sold at its perceived value if the money is needed on a moment’s notice.

Political risk is the prospect that government decisions will damage the value of your investments. Whether it’s the safety of Social Security, the impacts of a policy like Obamacare and how it might affect stocks in your portfolio, tax-law changes or more, this is the chance that broad policy decisions hit home.

Societal risk is ultra-big picture, looking at world events. This is what might happen in the event of terrorist attacks, war or catastrophe.

Diversification, of course, involves taking on some or all of these risks, so that no concern comes up and ruins you.

But that’s also why you can figure out where to invest “now” by considering your biggest financial worry and playing to that particular type of risk.

Depending on circumstances and your nerves, the best move might be staying in cash and building emergency savings, or it could be exploring micro-cap stocks or emerging markets bonds.

In short, the answer for every guy in that conversation could be different, as it could be if you, your friends, family and co-workers tried to determine “where it’s best to invest now.”

When you want to know where to invest “next,” re-evaluate your situation and, again, adjust based on your concerns at that point.

It may mean that whatever you do now won’t be the choice that makes the most profit or that generates the hottest return, but it does mean that your actions should increase your ability to sleep at night. And that’s a win — no matter what the market does next.

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About Money Management Coach and Financial Agency Owner
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We provide unlimited field training and support in the bay area and 50 US states. You can work at flexible hours and there is unlimited earning potential for builders and trainers.
We provide a supportive team environment which allows everyone the opportunity to grow professionally and we inspire everyone to succeed and build their business successfully. We are an Equal Opportunity Business.
Position: Financial Service Representative
Generate sales of retirement planning with college, savings and long term care insurance plan, an all in one product that is risk free, tax free and with access to funds from $100k to $1.5M when cancer, stroke or disability occurs. As a financial marketing service professional, you will own your business, avail of unlimited field training and support to learn the many marketing strategies that is given to you. There is no cold calling. You become an agency manager at your own pace.
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To Apply: Please send your resume to motherhealth@gmail.com or call 408-854-1883