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December 1... my birthday... I am 62.
I was born in 1947. There were dinosaurs still around.
Where did the time go? Where ARE all of those years? How did we all get to be so old so fast?
It was just yesterday that I was up on stage for the high school plays (Curious Savage and Tall Story).
And it seemed just a short while ago that I was in Washington DC during the Kent State anti-war demonstration, getting tear gassed... and arrested.
And it seems like yesterday that I was in the back seat of my Plymouth Valiant trying to get to second base with Rhonda Schwartz... (I made a great slide, but was called OUT!)
How long ago was Woodstock? Wasn't it just last week that we all saw 2001: A Space Odyssey stoned out of our minds? Last night I saw Ed Sullivan introduce the "BEATles." All In The Family shocked us, the Smothers Brothers rocked us, and Laugh In socked (it to) us.
And how long ago was it when we lived through that terrible weekend of JFK's murder? Can you still hear the drums?
Do you remember my old firend Bobby? And Martin? Dion sang it straight... "It seems the good... they die young."
And did you see the production of Hair? Were they REALLY naked on stage or did they have body-socks on? Or what about Jesus Christ Superstar? I know you were at The Graduate, right after reading the Harred Experiment and Sterile Cookoo. No, you also didn't understand Zen and the Art of Motorcycle Maintenance. But you could "grok" Stranger, and you understood Future Shock.
How many tokes over the line did you get? Anywhere near Umaguma or The Dark Side of the Moon? (And what did Atom Heart Mother mean? Strawberry Alarm Clock? Huh? Hisssp, hissp..."Yeah, this is some good stuff, man")
I sat there and watched while Broadway Joe proved that it "was in the bag" right after Mickey and Roger played baseball tag, with Stan the Man and Willie on the bench... takin' a drag.
Yeah, yeah, yeah, we all hated Yoko, and mourned John. And the day the music died was the day disco was born (and we still don't forgive the Bee Gees or Travolta.)
And when Neil said "One small step.." we were glued to the TV news, alternating between the shots of the body-bags piling up in The Nam, and LBJ saying he was bugging out.
And don't we all still hear the cheer of "Four More Years" which soon became a chant of "Ten to Twenty?"
Yes, "I'll be BACK" he said, but WE never left... we said "Hell no we won't go," but some did... just names on a wall now.
We've been there for all of it. We said we would "change the world.." but the only thing that changed... was us.
Yet all in all, so far, we've done OK. We have not blown up the planet, we've not had a world-wide famine or plague. And we've created a wave of technological innovation unparalleled in human history. Things are better because of our generation. Not everything, but a lot of things.
I can say with assurance that so far we have not become our parents, although I suspect our children might differ with that assessment.
If nothing else (and maybe there IS nothing else) the one thing our generation has done is "think different." We have not been tied to "old ways" of thinking, doing, or acting. And we have not become dottering old fools... the stereotypical "older generation" that our parents saw in their parents. Mentally we are still young, we are still hip, and we have not "lost it."
Look at what we do. We work hard. We think. We question. We change careers, We start businesses. We invent new things. Most importantly we TAKE RISKS. We're not afraid of failing, and when we do fail, we get right back up and try something else. We don't go "back to the farm" to simply live out our lives in quiet desperation....(or as a quiet desperado... sorry Linda.)
On Dec 1, I'm 62 years old. Big deal. As the song goes "I was so much older then, I'm younger than that now."
Never in my life have I felt more alive. Never have I had so much energy. Never have I had so many creative and inspirational ideas. Never in my life have I felt that I had the wisdom... no... not experience or information... but WISDOM... to achieve new heights. I'm more alive now than I've ever been.
Old? Old my a--. I (still) read everything, I still talk to everyone, and I still know how much I don't know about what I don't know.
Old? Get a clue. I'm just starting out. Everything before has been a rehearsal. The real show is about ready to start. I'm on stage and the curtain is just about to go up on opening night.
So my message to you is to forget about the years... dry up your tears... have a couple of beers... and ignore all your fears.
This I have learned. Things don't happen. You make them happen. And you make them happen by not listening to others, but by listening to yourself, by eliminating your fears, and by plain old hard work.
Learn this, if nothing else: The journey is the reward!
When you leave this world, you will only have one more thing than when you came into it.... your memories. So write the book, compose the song, inscribe the poem, paint the picture, build the boat, raise the barn... do whatever it is that you want to do... and start the journey that will be YOUR OWN reward.
-Al
Glancing through the headlines, it might seem like an epidemic. No, we're not talking swine flu; we're talking investment scams. Consider just a few recent headlines:
- Denver duo bilks seniors in green scheme
- Former life insurance agent denies scamming $2 million from seniors
- Ex-Morgan Stanley rep barred for defrauding 97-year-old's charity
These cases serve as a reminder to make sure that you don't become a fool, separated needlessly from your hard-earned money. So what can you do? Consumer advocacy groups and regulators say there's much you can do.
How many invitations do you get for a "free" dinner or lunch at a realy nice restaurant? If you are of a certain age and in a certain zip code or fit other demographics, you should be getting about three a month. At free-lunch seminars, attendees are promised a free meal in return for listening to what is generally a product sales pitch.
Most are OK... but a lot of them aren't!
A promoter promising high returns with little or no risk? That's the biggest red-flag warning for possible investment fraud, says the AARP who have a "free-lunch monitor" program.
For instance, in a case of its kind, the SEC charged four individuals and two companies involved in perpetrating a $30 million Ponzi scheme in which they persuaded more than 300 investors nationwide to participate in purported "green" investment opportunities.
The SEC alleged that elderly investors or those approaching retirement age were told to finance such 'green' initiatives of a Pennsylvania-based company for a supposed 'carbon negative' housing community in rural Tennessee and a 'biochar' charcoal substitute made from organic waste.
According to the SEC, the promoters convinced investors attending seminars to liquidate their traditional investments such as retirement plans, insurance policies, and home equity to instead invest in the company.
The alleged scam artists promised returns ranging from 17 percent to "hundreds of percent" annually. The actual returns were, sadly, closer to zero. Yes, the firm was promoting an investment that had no revenue whatsoever. And more sadly still, it was easy to be taken by this deal. The free-lunch seminars were heavily advertised on TV, and even featured a well-known sports celebrity.
To be sure, not all free-lunch seminars are bad. But regulators and advocacy groups say you should never attend a free-lunch seminar without making sure you know exactly what you're getting into. The results of one recent study make it clear why.
Almost 6 million Americans age 55 and older have attended a free lunch or dinner seminar in the past three years, according to "Protecting Older Investors: 2009 Free Lunch Seminar Report," a survey just released by AARP and the North American Securities Administrators Association.
And many seminars were nothing but venues to acquire clients, slaughterhouses for lambs if you will. To wit: 39 percent of those responding to the AARP/NASAA survey said they were solicited to buy financial products, 50 percent said they were asked to provide information about their finances, and 46 percent said the seminar presenter tried to make a follow-up appointment at their home. Nothing wrong here, so far.
Most troubling, however, is this: Six in 10 of these seminars reflect weak supervisory practices by firms and nearly one in four (23 percent) of the advisers holding these seminars recommended investments that didn't appear suitable for the client.
I won't go so far as to say you should never attend a free-lunch seminar, but I do say you should attend with a checklist in hand, a checklist that gives you the power to decipher fraudulent educational presentations.
In response to the growing number of free-lunch seminars offering information about investment opportunities, AARP in collaboration with NASAA launched in October 2008 the Free Lunch Monitor Program.
Investigating the people doing the pitching and the products being pitched are the two most important things you can do to protect yourself from scams.
Don't invest without doing the above two things!
Indeed, you should investigate the licenses, credentials, and qualifications of the people and firms conducting the seminars. That's not as easy it sounds. People and firms are likely to be registered or licensed with multiple authorities, which makes it all the harder to do the required due diligence. For instance, a promoter might be an insurance agent (state regulated), a broker (Financial Industry Regulatory Authority), a registered investment adviser (SEC or state securities division), and a ChFC or some other designation regulated by yet another type of organization.
Of course, you need to investigate the products being pitched. Is it registered with the appropriate authorities? Again, this might not be the easiest of tasks. A variable annuity, for instance, is typically registered with federal and state authorities. But you wouldn't know that unless you knew that!
To be sure, doing these two things is hard work. But doing them could make all the difference between protecting your nest egg and having it cracked.
Enter the "trusted advisor." Contact the finanial people you know or those who are referred to you by "trusted" friends and colleagues, and ask them about whatever it is you are not sure about. If you are interested in some kind of investment or people "pitching" you... that you have questions about, CALL ME. If I don't know the answer or if I'm not licensed to give the answer, I'll be happy to run it past a whole host of financial resource-pepole whom I know to be honest and trustworthy.
At the end of the day, it would be nice if I didn't have to write such missives to my clients. It would be nice if unsuspecting seniors could trust the people to whom they give their life savings. In the meantime, this sort of warning will have to do.
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