I recently commented to a friend that, having reach the milestone age of 65, and without asking, I find myself knee deep in medical tests and checks. I am happy to comply but, having kept my distance from the doctor’s surgery for the last three decades, I now feel that I should qualify for a […]
In a bid to embrace change (or is it accept the inevitable!) I am in the process of giving up my landlines, bidding farewell to the two strands of copper that first arrived in the house almost 100 years ago and replacing them with a single glass tube – not much thicker than a human […]
A key theme emerging from EML’s research into living longer is the importance, over time, of maintaining a balance across different aspects of life. At different times we inevitably get dragged in one direction or another – and that’s fine; the important thing is to restore the balance when the opportunity presents. Many people get […]
The day after one client ‘retired’ he took all his business suits to the charity shop. For him they were a uniform and this marked a clear ‘transition’ – the end of his ‘first career’ and a first step forward to what comes next. Another took over a decade to discard the last business suit […]
Traditionally, once you stop working, you enter ‘old age’ – and from there, there is no return! All that is changing and these days ‘old age’ subdividing into ‘old age’ (the point your first career stops) and ‘frail old age’ (when ‘whatever is going to get you’ starts to emerge). Old age is the world’s […]
I have noticed an increasing number of ads for on-line betting websites -and that worries me. Their level of cynicism is breath-taking. ‘Our app has built in ‘pauses’ to ensure you ‘take a break’ and ‘our app allows you to pre-set your spending limit’ alongside pictures of happy smiling users laughing together and celebrating their […]
When Bismark created the world’s first state pension scheme in the 1880s he never expected to pay out – it was simply a creative (and seemingly popular) tax raising exercise. Life expectancy in Germany at the time was 48, so 65 was selected for benefit payments to start, thus ensuring there were few, if any, […]
When something comes along that sends an established market into turmoil it is usually described as a ‘disruptive technology’. Recently I have spotted at least two such changes. When EML started I saw a friend had a home office printer/copier/scanner which looked ideal – and so it proved, but with one big drawback. The unit […]
When reviewing your possessions – try this. Ask your close family what they would do with ‘your stuff’ if you were hit by the proverbial bus? Most likely their response will fall into one of a number of categories: – Items of value to be sold (house, car etc) – Items of personal value but […]
When the chancellor found a hole in his balance sheet he took the easy option and turned to taxing the dead. Inheritance tax thresholds have already been frozen for over a decade – progressively dragging more people into the net and increasing the tax raised. However Covid needed a faster solution so the chancellor looked […]