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On the heels of Tinder’s plans to go more casual , Facebook is today expanding access to its own dating service, Facebook Dating. First launched two months ago in Colombia for testing purposes, the social network is today rolling out Facebook Dating to Canada and Thailand. The company is also adding a few new features to coincide with the launch, including the ability to re-review people you passed on and take a break by putting the service on pause, among other things. If that latter feature sounds familiar, it’s because it’s also something dating app Bumble recently announced, as well. Bumble in September  launched a Snooze button for its own app, which addressed the problem many online daters have – the need for a detox from dating apps for a bit. Sometimes that’s due to frustration or just being busy; while other times it’s because they’ve matched with someone and want to give them a chance. Facebook says you can still message people you already matched while on pause. Meanwhile,...

Over the past few months I have received several requests to share some of my wife's thoughts about retirement. This post was written about almost 5 years ago but not much that is important has changed,except we have been retired for that much longer. I have left it the way she answered the questions in January 2013. I will plan on a full update sometime in the coming months. Over the past 30 months of writing for  Satisfying Retirement   there have been lots of posts that have included information about my wife, Betty, and our journey together. Probably two or three dozen e-mails over that time have asked to hear more from her and what she thinks about the retirement from her perspective. So, I took the bait and posed some questions for her to answer. Wow! Her insight and responses were so interesting and important that I am turning this into a two part post. This time, you can read her answers to the first four questions. Next week I'll have par...

I will admit that I am not terribly interested in my family's history. I come from a small family, not a lot of nieces and nephews, aunts, or uncles. I'm not excited about tracing my family tree back through many generations. Even when we lived in Salt Lake City, home of the nation's largest genealogical research library, I wasn't moved.  My wife is more involved than I. Her family is large, with lots of branches on her family tree. A few notebooks are crammed with the kinds of details that serious seekers of family history love. At one point, I remember a distant relative did visit us to share letters, birth certificates, and other official-looking pieces of paper with Betty. She joined one of the on-line sites to help her with her explorations. While the interest is still there, her family searches have been relegated to a back burner for now. In doing a little research for this post, I ran across Genealogy In Time Magazine. One of its articles presented answers as t...

A few weeks ago I asked you to think about some of your preconceptions in a few areas  to decide if any needed to be changed or adjusted. One of the best features of retirement is the ability to reshape how you approach your life. We have the time and freedom to do so. I promised to give each area from the original list the same consideration and report on my thoughts about attitudes that have changed, and those where I struggle. here are my responses to some of them. Aging Getting older doesn't really bother me. There is nothing I can do about it anyway. I do dislike intensely the erosion of my physical self. I do what I can to minimize the problems. But, to complain how unfair it is and insist my 68 year old body be the same as my 38 or 48 year old body is a waste of energy.  I think society's view of older people is improving. Maybe it is because there are so many of us! I hope the stereotype of the grumpy old man or woman can be relegated to the history books.  I don'...

  A reader posed an interesting, and important question to me a few weeks ago. She is wondering about retired couples whose desires aren't always in alignment. What can be done if one half of a couple wants to go in one direction, while the other person doesn't. She cited travel as a good example of this type of conflict. One person really has his or her heart set on seeing the world, or at least someplace farther away than the local shopping mall. The other is a homebody and resists travel requests. Why? Health issues, financial worries, fear of uncertainty,....there are all sorts of reasons why travel is a turnoff for someone.  This type of disagreement is important to resolve. Travel may be one obvious point of contention, but  probably not the only one. In a post a few weeks ago, I wrote that loosening the purse strings is difficult for many of us. Downsizing or moving to someplace with a different climate, eliminating or adding possessions,  redoing th...

Being human, we tend to look for simple solutions to complex problems. We accept "common wisdom" rather than do the hard work necessary to find answers for ourselves.  What follows are five myths about retirement: beliefs that are comforting and sound logical, except, they are not true. Ask yourself how many you have fallen for, how many affected your retirement planning and lifestyle. 1)  It will all work itself out This has to be the most dangerous of the untruths we tell ourselves. With the typical 50-something American having less than $100,000 set aside for retirement, the next 30 years of your life will not magically work itself out.  No matter how generous a pension might be, or how much Social Security is likely to pay you each month, you are not going to have a satisfying retirement on a savings account that produces less than $300 a month of additional income.  Think of your retirement as a complex machine with lots of moving parts, and ...

My recent computer hacking problems have forced me to think about what I could live without. and what would diminish my life's satisfaction. Some things are essential to me, some to my happiness and sense of satisfaction. Others are a part of of daily life but I could certainly function without them. This list is by no means complete, but it might be a thought starter for you, too.   It would be very difficult  or very unpleasant to live without: My wife and family Could I physically survive without them? Yes. Would it turn my world upside down and remove a large share of what I feel makes my life meaningful? Absolutely. If things ever begin to unravel I want to have those most dear to me by my side.  Freedoms If I had been born someplace other than The United States or another country in the developed world my sense of what constitutes key freedoms would probably be very different. But, being born to a middle class family in 1949 in Ame...

I wish I knew. More to the point, I wish it would stop. As the recent shooting at the baseball practice in Washington demonstrates, things seem to be escalating in a very dangerous way.  An article in Psychology Today said,  "T here seems to be more and more rude, demeaning, insulting, and aggressive language and behavior in our society."   That sums up what most of us experience on a too-regular basis. The question then becomes, why? Civility is defined as courtesy in behavior or speech. I'm pretty sure we all know it when we experience it. From holding a door for a stranger to helping someone reach a box of cereal on the top shelf, from disagreeing without disrespect  to making a fresh pot of coffee after taking the last cup, civility makes life more pleasant and satisfying. So why does civility seem to be in decline, maybe even dying from disuse?  I can offer a few possibilities. Your (civil) additions to my list are encouraged! 1) Social media Facebook and T...

What if you eventually want to retire, just not now? You are not there yet. Maybe it is a savings and money issue. Maybe you enjoy your job and the stimulation it gives you. Maybe your responsibilities with your family must be front and center for now. Maybe retirement scares you a bit. That just makes you normal. For whatever reason, you want to remain in the workforce, but would like some suggestions on how to prepare for the day when you are ready. Here are some important concerns: A) Make Your Financial Projections:  Get a paper and pencil, spreadsheet program on your computer, or anything that will help you with the following: What is  your projected income  from now until you retire. Obviously, this is a guess. Your job might disappear tomorrow. But, based on your past situation, you should be able to make an educated guess of what you expect to make from now until you do retire.  What do you expect to receive from  Social Security?  Avoid the "i...

The faint click of tiny nails, the rapid patter of small feet, woke me up. It was probably the middle of the night, though with no bedside clock there was no way to know. I recognized the sound, a field mouse most likely, running in the attic over my head. The sound no longer scared me, in fact it was kind of comforting since I heard it most every night. It reaffirmed I was in a favorite place for our family vacation: my grandparents' summer place, a rural farmhouse, out buildings, and  36 acres of fields and trees  north of Pittsburgh, a few miles from  the small town of Butler. Hearing nothing more, both the mouse and I relaxed back to sleep. My dad would work the day before we left on our annual trip, then drive all night to arrive the next morning in this magical place. While mom sat next to him during the long, dark, drive to keep him awake, the three boys were in the "back-back," the rear of the station wagon, sleeping on blankets and pillows. An occasional stop at ...

A week or so ago, 5 Skills Every Grandparent Needs listed two of the most important qualities you need if you are blessed with grandkids.  I made the point that how we raised our own kids is not always the best model for dealing with our child's child. A different skill set is often needed.  Here is  part two  of that post, with the three additional attributes I suggest you have at your disposal. As always, I know this list isn't complete.  If you are raising a grandchild, the five skills noted in this and the earlier post need to be expanded one hundred fold. You are a parent who also must bring some of the unconditional love of a grandparent to the child's life.  Or, you may live hundreds or thousands of miles away, making each visit that much more precious.  I know from my own experiences that these five traits are vital. As always. y ou are encouraged to add something you have found to be very important in the life of a child. 1) Create Memories. ...

There are an estimated 70 million Americans who claim the title of "grandparent." For those of us lucky enough to have our lives blessed with grandkids, skills that are needed may seem rather obvious. After all, we raised at least one child to have a grandchild (basic biology). So, what skills might we have missed in the Grandparents Handbook? It is not so much that certain skills are missing, but how they are used. The way we raised our own kids is not always the best model for dealing with our child's child. I have picked five that have the ability to make this experience a joy instead of a trial.  Of course, there are probably another dozen (or more) skills that could be added to the list, but I had to draw the line somewhere! This is part one of the "skills" post. To keep things from getting too long-winded, here are the first two skills. I believe these to be the most important. In a week I'll round out the project with the final three skills.   1) Yo...

Most of us are junkies for this. We thrive on at least one fix a day to stay happy. We have had this need since we were toddlers.  We are junkies for it. We like being told good things about who we are. We need the strokes.  We need to be told someone else cares, or noticed us. This force is the power of affirmation . Receiving it from others feels good. It validates much of what we do. The word, a ffirmation, means to state that something is true. In this context it means to praise someone for something. It tells you someone else noticed something positive they want to bring to your attention.  Affirmation fulfills our basic need to feel relevant, useful, and needed. So, if this is a deep seated need we all have then why is it too rare in most of our lives, most of the time? Good question.  I've given this topic some extra thought since my small group from our church had a lively discussion on the subject. All of us admitted we are quick to receive complim...