Elder-Care Costs Deplete Savings of a Generation

December 30, 2006
Elder-Care Costs Deplete Savings of a Generation
By Jane Gross

To care for her ailing 97-year-old father over the past three years, Elizabeth Rodriguez, a vice president at the Federal Reserve Bank in New York, has borrowed against her 401(k) retirement plan, sold her house on Staten Island and depleted nearly 20 years of savings. Click here to read entire article.

"Courage doesn't roar, sometimes, courage is the quiet voice at the end of the day saying, 'I will try tomorrow"

Jeri Rowe, of the News-Record, writes about courage, the kind of courage that's alive and well at Greensboro's Sanctuary House. It's a story about ordinary heroism that will warm your heart, renew your faith in humankind, and maybe make you want to invest in something bigger than yourself. It's about God delighting in the least of these, and those who partner with them in their journeys, and the sacredness of life, no matter how small or insignificant that life might seem. I am learning that the poor have so much to teach us.

Click Rowe: The helping hand of Bobby to read the column...be sure to see the photo collection.

"People love greatness, people love the story of his bravery," Dr. Dean Richardson, D.V.M.

After 8 Months, Setback Ends Barbaro’s Battle
By JOE DRAPE
Published: January 30, 2007
The Kentucky Derby winner was euthanized, ending an extraordinary effort to save his life after a leg injury. Click to read the complete article.

“She has served the good Lord, she has served the church, she has served us. What better legacy can she leave?”

In Connecticut, World’s Oldest Woman Dies at 114
By JENNIFER MEDINA
Published: January 30, 2007
Born to former slaves in North Carolina, Emma Faust Tillman briefly held the title of the oldest person in the world. Click to read full article.

Where's the willingness to embrace responsibility?

Business / Your Money
For Top Executives, a Need to Be Aware of the Nearest Exit
By PHYLLIS KORKKI
Published: January 14, 2007
Being a chief executive has many perks, but job security is not one of them.

Are executive gluts one indication of cheap industries or industries where managements have displaced responsibility? If you have an opinion I'd like to know.

Delay Denied on Tax Accounting Rule

Delay Denied on Tax Accounting Rule
By DOW JONES/ASSOCIATED PRESS
Published: January 18, 2007
The rule would have required companies to take a more stringent approach to reporting uncertain tax positions on their financial statements, and offers an expanded view of Gretchen Morgenson's January 14, 2007 article, A Tax Secret Emerges from the Murk.

Money operates above and below the waterline

Money is just a tool, though probably the most adaptable tool ever known to man. But unlike tools, money operates both above and below “the waterline.”

Above the waterline, we exchange money, its most basic level, for food, clothing, shelter and the many other things we enjoy in life; education, health care, vacation, sports camps, and the myriad of other things we take for granted.

Below the waterline money operates at an emotional level. There, money has the potential to break relationships, ruin marriages, control children, provide a false sense of worth or power. It also has the potential to build a marriage, provide for the needs of others, start a business, build a school, reclaim a neighborhood, or drill a well, just so folks can have clean drinking water.

Ask almost any middle aged American male how much money he needs to retire. Most will tell you quickly and easily, even if they haven't prepared a financial plan. They know what they need to have, financially speaking, by the time they retire from work, to support them for the rest of their days. But somehow, and it almost always happens like this, when they get close to having "the number" something goes off inside, they step back, and shotput their "number" way down the field, off they go in search of a bigger number than the one they thought would work.

Why? I wish I knew. I'm sure there are many reasons, not the least of which is if you don't enjoy what you have now, how could you be happier with more?

And so on some level, discontentment with what we have causes us to believe more will lead us to better life.

Vocation

Have you ever thought about the kind of work you do? Life is too short to work at something you don't enjoy, if you have a choice. Here's something I've found really helpful about vocation:

Frederich Buechner says Vocation – comes from the Latin vocare, to call, and means the work a person is called to by God. Buechner says there are all different kinds of voices calling you to all different kinds of work, and the problem is to find out which is the voice of God rather than Society, say, or the Superego, or Self-Interest. By and large a good rule for finding out is this: the kind of work God usually calls you to is the kind of work (a) that you need most to do and (b) that the world most needs to have done. If you really get a kick out of your work, you’ve presumably met requirement (a), but if your work is writing cigarette ads, the chances are you’ve missed requirement (b). On the other hand, if your work is being a doctor in a leper colony, you have probably met requirement (b), but if most of the time you’re bored or depressed by it, the chances are you have not only bypassed (a), but probably aren’t helping your patients much either. Neither the hair shirt nor the soft berth will do. The place God calls you to is the place where your deep gladness and the world’s deep hunger meet. From: Wishful Thinking, A Theological ABC, by Frederick Buechner