Chrysler Group needs swift and clever moves to avoid fur­ther losses. The com­pany knows exactly that one wrong move could trig­ger the worst to its detri­ment. It could lose its good­will. It could lose its Ger­man suit­ors. It could even lose every­thing it has.

So many things have been com­pro­mised. The automak­ers announced Wednes­day that it will cut 13,000 jobs and dras­ti­cally down­size pro­duc­tion in an eleventh-hour effort to secure its future with the Ger­man automaker Daim­ler­Chrysler AG.

The turn­around plan came with a warn­ing that Daim­ler­Chrysler is explor­ing all strate­gic options for the strug­gling Amer­i­can divi­sion. Said warn­ing includes a poten­tial sale. Chrysler lost $1.5 bil­lion in 2006. Amid declin­ing mar­ket share and sales, the automaker is under pres­sure to cope and yield prof­its by 2008. With more losses pre­dicted to come this year, Chrysler is said to have con­tracted a tur­bu­lent “mar­riage made in heaven” with the for­mer Daimler-Benz AG.

“Sooner or later (Daim­ler) has to decide whether to fully inte­grate Chrysler or sep­a­rate alto­gether,” said John Cas­esa of the invest­ment firm Cas­esa Shapiro Group. But Daim­ler­Chrysler CEO Dieter Zetsche was reluc­tant to make a long-term com­mit­ment to Chrysler despite its plan to reduce its work­force, close one assem­bly plant in the United States and cut shifts at two others.

In a news con­fer­ence at Chrysler head­quar­ters in Auburn Hills, Zetsche extolled the “recov­ery and trans­for­ma­tion” plan but said all options for the U.S. divi­sion remain on the table. “We do not exclude any option in order to find the best pos­si­ble solu­tion for both the Chrysler Group and Daim­ler­Chrysler,” Zetsche said.

Indi­vid­u­als close to Daim­ler­Chrysler said Zetsche and other mem­bers of the board of man­age­ment agreed in recent days to reit­er­ate pub­licly that all options remain open. Said rev­e­la­tion left Chrysler’s future in qualm. It has also trig­gered assump­tion about poten­tial part­ners or buy­ers. The sit­u­a­tion also pushed DaimlerChrysler’s stock up $5.33 or 8 per­cent to $69.78 in New York, the high­est in seven years.

“Man­age­ment is still unclear on pur­pose? about Chrysler’s future,” said Pierre-Yves Quemener, an auto ana­lyst with Paris bro­ker­age firm Kepler Equi­ties. “It seems to us that Zetsche’s com­mit­ment to (Chrysler) could grow weaker quar­ter after quarter.”

United Auto Work­ers blasted DaimlerChrysler’s man­age­ment for its plan to cut jobs. UAW Pres­i­dent Ron Get­telfin­ger called the cut­backs “dev­as­tat­ing news for thou­sands of work­ers” and said Daim­ler­Chrysler “can­not cut its way to prof­itabil­ity.” Get­telfin­ger, a mem­ber of DaimlerChrysler’s super­vi­sory board added, “We will do every­thing in our power to hold the com­pany to its com­mit­ment to grow the busi­ness by devel­op­ing new prod­ucts with Mercedes-Benz that are appeal­ing to consumers.”

Zetsche said Mer­cedes and Chrysler will con­tinue to coop­er­ate on joint projects for vehi­cles under devel­op­ment. He said coop­er­a­tion increased in the past months and would con­tinue. Sources said the two divi­sions are work­ing together on future small cars and SUVs. In addi­tion, a new V-6 engine, dubbed “Phoenix,” will power Mer­cedes, Chrysler, Dodge and Jeep vehi­cles. Active Brakes Direct and other auto parts are upgraded to accom­mo­date its power and performance.

Dur­ing the press brief­ing with ana­lysts, Zetsche was asked repeat­edly about Chrysler’s fate, only to repeat­edly refuse to dis­cuss what “options” were being con­sid­ered. “We can­not pro­vide you with any more details at this time,” he said.

But even as Zetsche and LaSorda penned the recov­ery plan, the auto­mo­tive world still expects the pos­si­bil­ity of a divorce between Chrysler and Daim­ler. “[They] can’t seem to suc­ceed simul­ta­ne­ously. This is really a blind date that isn’t going to turn into a mar­riage,” said Sean McAlin­den of the Cen­ter for Auto­mo­tive Research in Ann Arbor.

“God’s the kind of guy you can trust,” was my friend John’s advice on a par­tic­u­larly bleak autumn morn­ing. At the time, I prob­a­bly gave him one of those oh-please-do-you-think-this-is-going-to-help-me-pay-my-bills looks. Sure, he could trust the Uni­verse. He had a beau­ti­ful wife and a great fam­ily. He lived in a glo­ri­ous home and took exotic vaca­tions. He drove a BMW— with a car seat. He did not roll his gro­cery cart down the aisle bypass­ing the arti­chokes because they were too expensive.

I looked at him with his picture-book-perfect life and my upper lip curled. I scanned my own life and felt like I was fac­ing off against the Green Bay Pack­ers wear­ing high heels and a dress. And I didn’t see any solu­tion in sight. Those dang credit card bills were pum­mel­ing me so hard I was see­ing double.

How could I even think of trust­ing in divin­ity? I had recently dis­cov­ered that my hus­band was wildly unfaith­ful. On top of that, I had lost my busi­ness. I was liv­ing in some­one else’s pool house, dri­ving a beat up bor­rowed car with a shred­ded roof because I was far too broke to afford even the small­est car pay­ment, and sur­viv­ing on peanut but­ter to pay off Mr. Mastercard.

Sure John could trust the Big Guy upstairs. His life worked. Mine sucked. His GPS was func­tion­ing; mine was obvi­ously on the fritz. The Higher Power assigned to him had coached him all the way to the Super Bowl. Mine had left me sit­ting on the bench.

Oh, It’s Easy for You to Say

Being a pretty sen­si­tive guy, John picked up on my inner rant. He saw through the “crash and burn” of my cir­cum­stances and focused on all the good in my life. He reminded me, first and fore­most, of my health and the wealth of peo­ple in my life who gen­uinely cared about me—like John him­self and his wife, Gra­cie, for instance. I was for­tu­nate to have such close friends dur­ing a tough time. Plus my ex-husband’s mom was actu­ally loan­ing me a car. Oh, and yes, I had a small but lovely roof over my head. Don’t you hate it when peo­ple cut your com­plain­ing in half? I sure did.

I would look back on this time in my life and count it as a bless­ing, John assured me. A bless­ing! I looked at him like he was smok­ing crack. But he wouldn’t give up. I had the chance to be a phoenix, he said— that ancient myth­i­cal bird that rose from the ashes of its own funeral pyre, mirac­u­lously born anew. He and Gra­cie knew that in the midst of my

chal­lenge was an oppor­tu­nity for me to become a big­ger and bet­ter per­son. Big­ger and bet­ter per­son? Ha!

But from John’s view­point, my pre­car­i­ous sit­u­a­tion was a noble quest. I had unwit­tingly put myself in the flames. Now the deci­sion was mine: I could roll around in the soot of feel­ing sorry for myself, or I could start mak­ing choices to become a more mag­nif­i­cent being. When he reminded me that Spirit saw my good­ness even if all I saw were the charred remains of what I had called my life, he struck a pow­er­ful, deep chord.

I thought of Cin­derella and the ashes. As a lit­tle girl I always wanted to rush through the begin­ning when she was cov­ered in cin­ders and wear­ing rags, and get to the part where she wore pretty clothes and got her Prince Charm­ing. Even as a kid I was a sucker for a good tiara and a great dress. I sighed a deep breath and fig­ured it was time to dust the ashes off and go find my ball gown.

John was right. If I had a shovel to dig myself out of my mess, the Uni­verse had a back­hoe (that’s one honk­ing big dig­ging machine). Regard­less of what it looked like, maybe a Higher Power was sup­port­ing me. Trust­ing Spirit, how­ever, was as for­eign to me as foot­ball. I grew up play­ing with Barbie’s, for good­ness sake.

In the med­ical com­mu­nity it is widely known, maybe even uni­ver­sally accepted, that gov­er­nor Janet Napitolino’s mis­sion is to make Elec­tronic Health Records (EHR) com­mon in Ari­zona by 2010. While EHR is one step of many to reduce health­care deliv­ery costs and improve oper­a­tional effi­cien­cies, it’s not with­out enor­mous chal­lenges to providers (med­ical prac­ti­tion­ers) and staff. The ambi­tious imper­a­tive is an invest­ment in soft­ware, equip­ment and net­work band­width, staff time to con­vert paper to dig­i­tal records, train­ing and so on. 

Providers should crit­i­cally exam­ine rel­e­vant sources to get­ting started on the EHR path. First is turn­ing to prod­uct cer­ti­fi­ca­tion. The Cer­ti­fi­ca­tion Com­mis­sion for Health­care Infor­ma­tion Tech­nol­ogy (CCHIT) is charged with cer­ti­fy­ing ven­dor prod­ucts on three points—Functionality, Inter­op­er­abil­ity and Secu­rity. This cer­ti­fi­ca­tion enables physi­cians to eval­u­ate a few out of many ven­dors. Sec­ond is to gain intel­li­gence about var­i­ous sys­tems by using the Inter­net and exam­in­ing prod­ucts on web sites. The other get-started approach is to seek the sup­port of a qual­ity Infor­ma­tion Tech­nol­ogy ser­vice provider already expe­ri­enced in EHR sys­tems. Also, if nec­es­sary, broad­en­ing the bank­ing rela­tion­ship to include a line of credit based on a provider’s FICO score. While there are more key steps, the all impor­tant ones are the com­mit­ment to change and the sup­port of the physi­cians and staff to ensure change is permanent. 

Offices Get­ting On Board

It is cer­tainly note­wor­thy to men­tion that Ari­zona has a hand full of med­ical prac­tices that are mak­ing head­way on improv­ing their prac­tice through the proper use of advance tech­nol­ogy and can be viewed as pio­neers in this arena. One local com­pany, Scottsdale-based, LifeScape Med­ical Asso­ciates con­tin­ues to opti­mize the advances in tech­nol­ogy. Dr.Wilder, med­ical provider, invested sub­stan­tial life sav­ings sev­eral years ago. The ben­e­fits of mov­ing to an EHR sys­tem and using wire­less voice com­mu­ni­ca­tion devices to sim­plify interof­fice com­mu­ni­ca­tions out weighed expenses, explains Lifescape owner, Dr. Susan Wilder. 

Equip­ping Med­ical Office Build­ings (MOB’s) with “cost-effective, smart band­width” by using ven­dors such as Time Warner Tele­com, a savvy tech­nol­ogy user, such as LifeScape Med­ical Asso­ciates will make good use of faster, more eco­nom­i­cal band­width (T1’s, cable or fiber optics) to enable trans­mis­sion of small to large files to radi­ol­o­gists, lab­o­ra­tory firms, vaults for off­site data back up and restore, or billing com­pa­nies, etc. With the Gov­er­nor push­ing dig­i­tal records by 2010, a more cost-effective trans­port solu­tion must be a require­ment, not a necessity.

Shift­ing Forces

Fur­ther, the tele­com indus­try is mov­ing swiftly and con­fi­dently with Voice over Inter­net Pro­to­col (VoIP) which enables tele­phone calls to use a broad­band Inter­net con­nec­tion. And in the same breath, Ses­sion Inter­net Pro­to­col (SIP trunk­ing) is gain­ing momen­tum in the tele­com arena, which is an appli­ca­tion enabling improved station-to-station com­mu­ni­ca­tions and lower tele­com costs. SIP trunk­ing works on DSL, cable, and T1 trans­ports, and the com­bi­na­tion of VoIP and SIP will go a long way in stream­lin­ing communications.

In addi­tion to these advances in the tele­com com­mu­nity, the tra­di­tional busi­ness phone sys­tem is being replaced with soft­ware based IP PBX sys­tems at an unprece­dented rate. The advances include hosted ser­vices, which offer med­ical prac­tices sub­stan­tial cost sav­ings over premise-based PBX’s. The deci­sion to go hosted is a choice based on con­sid­er­a­tions such as bal­ance sheets, cash out­lay, favor­able tax treat­ment, and tech­no­log­i­cal obso­les­cence, just to name a few.

These advances require suf­fi­cient band­width when con­verg­ing voice and data on the same trans­port. Fur­ther, installing such a sys­tem as the main PBX in an MOB would fur­ther accel­er­ate the mod­ern­iza­tion of a med­ical prac­tice. Tele­sphere, for exam­ple, pro­vides tele­com ser­vices to the Phoenix Build­ing Own­ers and Man­agers Asso­ci­a­tion (BOMA), which sig­nif­i­cantly reduces BOMA’s over­head costs.

A large per­cent­age of Ari­zona med­ical prac­tices are likely to oper­ate Elec­tronic Health­care Record sys­tems by 2010. The vision is for prac­tice man­age­ment and EHR ven­dors to rev­o­lu­tion­ize infor­ma­tion tech­nol­ogy; for patients to expe­ri­ence office pro­cess­ing and com­mu­ni­ca­tion effi­cien­cies; and for the med­ical office build­ing indus­try to con­tribute to the intel­li­gent health­care tech­nol­ogy imperative.

LIFE BEGINS AFTER RETIREMENT

INTRODUCTION:

“Retire­ment has been a dis­cov­ery of beauty for me. I never had the time before to notice the beauty of my grand kids, my wife, the tree out­side my very own front door. And,  the beauty of time itself.” — Hart­man Jule

“Retire­ment itself is the best gift. No gold watch could ever top it.” — Abi­gail Charleson

“The trou­ble with retire­ment is that you never get a day off.” — Abe Lemons

“Retired is being twice tired, I’ve thought
First tired of work­ing,
Then tired of not.”- Richard Armour

The above adage of the famous peo­ple present us a very dis­parate views about retire­ment. Every peo­ple in all walks of like know that retire­ment is inevitable and it has become a part and par­cel of ones life. Life is meant to be “lived” and not just passed. This phase of life can be made fun and worth liv­ing to explore the unexplored.

LATENT THOUGHTS

There may be times in our life when we wanted to learn to play ten­nis or wanted to write a book on our ordeals and learn­ing, or wanted to learn yoga or sim­ply pur­sue our long cher­ished pas­sions. But our wishes were never ful­filled, because we were too busy at work or fam­ily. To put it in other This is the right time to explore our hid­den tal­ents and ful­fill your deep­est desires.

Of course one feels very high and happy to shoul­der all the respon­si­bil­ity. Cer­tainly it gives utmost sat­is­fac­tion to our inner soul. But  today in this hec­tic world whether we like it or not all of us are engaged in a mad rat race cat­a­pulted  towards  inflated tar­gets and unreach­able des­ti­na­tion .Dur­ing this mind­less expe­di­tion we do  tend to miss so many things which might look insignif­i­cant but carry sig­nif­i­cant value. When we hurry through each moment being so obsessed with get­ting to the check point , we miss out on the rich­ness that could be ours.

Here retire­ment comes us the bonanza when we take time to live, to expe­ri­ence where we are. We begin to accept that there are so much to enjoy, to share. The ter­rain of life is filled with won­der­ful and astound­ing details which we failed to notice ear­lier. On the other hand we  need not regret too much about this for the fact that it is won­der­fully exhil­a­rat­ing when life is mov­ing quickly and the veloc­ity becomes our only expe­ri­ence when there is so much in par­al­lel to relish.

If we try to de-segment the life and begin to look at each seg­ments one by one, we can real­ize that each seg­ment has its own essence, charm , mean­ing, qual­ity, pros and cons. We will then rec­og­nize  how each seg­ment are inter­linked, their super­im­pos­ing effects on each other. So once this under­stand­ing in our life is estab­lished then retire­ment will be stage of unwinding.

Money plays a para­mount role in deter­min­ing the hap­pi­ness of anyone’s life post Retire­ment .Life can be more bliss­ful if a rea­son­able sav­ing has been done in time to take care of all exi­gen­cies like health issues, chil­dren higher stud­ies, son’s/daughter’s mar­riage, buy­ing a house or other prop­er­ties, social spend­ing and above all to main­tain a fixed bal­ance always for tack­ing day to day expenses.

RETIREMENT  —  PERCEPTION & THE ISSUES TO CONSIDER:

From the good old days to the present elec­tronic age the very thought of retire­ment unnerves all types of peo­ple in var­ied ways.

Below list presents the com­mon rea­sons for the preva­lence of neg­a­tive atti­tude towards retirement.

• 1. Emo­tional Issues-One own self

    –Part­ner issue

                            –Family/Relations

• 2. Unful­filled commitments

• 3. Finan­cial issues

• 4. Health issues

• 5. Soci­etal attitude

EMOTIONAL ISSUES

One own self

At first retire­ment can feel like a hol­i­day and the ini­tial phase is often referred to as the ‘hon­ey­moon’ period. You can sleep in, catch up on read­ing or hob­bies, and spend more time with fam­ily and friends. How­ever, once this ‘hon­ey­moon’ period wears off, you may feel down or depressed .For an aver­age salaried per­son the prime thing would me the Money Fac­tor. Since most of the issues are money bound , money tops the list and  irre­spec­tive of the gen­der this panic marches hap­pily in ones mind when one thinks about fam­ily respon­si­bil­i­ties and other related mat­ter. A feel­ing of inse­cu­rity grad­u­ally gets rooted in the mind of the peo­ple which has its own asso­ci­ated aber­ra­tions. Some even go the extent of seclud­ing them­selves from rest of the fam­ily /society caus­ing agony to their attached ones too. A recent Study shows that high per­cent­age of peo­ple die dur­ing their first year of retire­ment. One of the rea­sons being , psy­cho­log­i­cal trauma. A sense of feel­ing that you’re a worn out indi­vid­ual and should be placed in the cor­ner of the house sit­ting idle most of the time. This can be effec­tively han­dled by engag­ing our­selves in some con­struc­tive activ­ity which pro­foundly helps us to cope up with the nag­ging wor­ries. Some times spend­ing time on hob­bies and inter­est, may not turn out to be as reward­ing and mean­ing­ful as antic­i­pated .Emo­tional issues to con­sider include:

• Our pro­fes­sion forms part of our iden­tity. Some peo­ple can suf­fer a loss of self-worth once they cease to working. 
• Daily sched­ule and activ­i­ties add a ratio­nale to life. If there is noth­ing in par­tic­u­lar to do or look for­ward to on any given day, a per­son is more likely to feel monot­ony and more depressed than a per­son who lives a dynamic mean­ing­ful life. 

• Grand­par­ents may find they are expected to baby sit all the time which is an ardu­ous tax on them.

• Part­ner issues can include dif­fer­ing (and con­flict­ing) ideas on retire­ment lifestyle.

We must make sure that ours is not an idle mind, so there can be no devil’s paradise.

Part­ner issues:

When a per­son retires or in the verge of retire­ment, their bet­ter half need not be on the same lane  which paves way for  innu­mer­able dis­agree­ments and mis­un­der­stand­ings cost­ing the men­tal peace. Some of the com­mon issues include:

• One part­ner has retired or plans to retire, while the other will­ing to con­tinue working. 
• Notions  on retire­ment lifestyle may col­lide; for exam­ple, one part­ner wants to have a hec­tic life sched­ule with much of  travel, hob­bies and vol­un­teer work, while the other long for  a more unper­turbed  daily routine. 
• It can be lit­tle com­plex at first to frame out how much time to spend together. This is specif­i­cally  the case if one part­ner is gre­gar­i­ous and social, while the other is more intro­spec­tive. In this sce­nario, the out­go­ing part­ner may feel dis­re­garded, while the intro­spec­tive part­ner could feel hassled. 
• Some peo­ple may try to do every­thing united as a cou­ple, but lack of per­sonal space can cause stress and scuffle.

Family/Relations

ON the other hand , there are instances where the retirees are treated with due respect even by their own kith and kin. This is not a cherry fact. In their twi­light years all these elderly look for­ward to are food, love and peace. But it is very unto­ward  that  there are many instances of emo­tional, phys­i­cal, finan­cial and men­tal abuse older gen­er­a­tion are sub­jected to by their own chil­dren.  They are exhausted , they have more than enough run the race of life, and they require rest to reflect and pre­pare for their final jour­ney.  Every­one goes through this ordeal. No one is bestowed with endur­ing youth­ful and ener­getic life .So what makes these chil­dren for­get this one nat­ural, uni­ver­sal truth? Where has gone their grat­i­tude which is sup­posed to have been intrin­sic in them? How­ever a small relief is that there of course exists chil­dren with innate pre­dis­po­si­tion to be grate­ful to their par­ents .How­ever it is a bru­tal fact that those chil­dren can absolutely not com­pete with the num­ber of adults with glim­mer­ing grat­i­tude whom we see in the world today.  If a sim­ple but vital intro­spec­tion can be made by all these ungrate­ful suc­ces­sors and if efforts are made to make the fam­ily bond thick set then the retire­ment blues can be effort­lessly trounced. After all Co-existence gives   peace in life which every­one craves for .  Shar­ing can fetch ecstasy. Val­ues and morals make a soci­ety cul­tur­ally afflu­ent.  Let us all strive to   improve our soci­ety and halt this mon­strous moral slide that is  leisurely  but surely happening .

 Unful­filled commitments:

 It is an adage that “Life With­out Com­mit­ment  Is A  Life Unful­filled” .But what will be the plight of  the peo­ple with rea­son­able dreams , goals ‚com­mit­ments and  aspi­ra­tion but unfor­tu­nately unable to accom­plish them before their life slows down. The unan­i­mous rai­son d’être what the peo­ple attribute to this is hav­ing too much of com­mit­ments in the pipeline and poor in pri­or­i­tiz­ing. A well crafted invest­ment in our hay days can be the best solu­tion for the unful­filled com­mit­ments like children’s mar­riage. For a long-term investor a short-term mar­ket swings do not have much impli­ca­tions. So early pru­dent sav­ing can result in exu­ber­ant accu­mu­la­tion of fund which can very well be chan­nel­ized to meet all the require­ments post retire­ment. How­ever for peo­ple with min­i­mum sav­ings or no sav­ings due to pre­dom­i­nant  demand from  large fam­ily like sibling’s edu­ca­tion, mar­riage the sole tran­quil­izer can be an help­ing hand from their own chil­dren or relatives .

Finan­cial Issues:

An astute per­son will unques­tion­ably plan well in advance about their finan­cial posi­tion post retire­ment. It is ideal to con­sult a  finan­cial plan­ner, accoun­tant or sim­i­lar to chart out the finan­cial issues of retire­ment as it blan­kets all the other issues. Some of the fac­tors to con­sider include:

• The size of your super­an­nu­a­tion nest egg.
• Other sav­ings and assets. 
• Level of liabilities.
• Whether you have any dependants.
• List of com­mit­ments not met.
• If you are plan­ning to con­tinue work­ing part-time or not. 
• Your eli­gi­bil­ity for pen­sions or part-pensions. 
• Pos­ses­sion of properties.
• Finan­cial options if you or your part­ner fall ill. 
• The kind of retire­ment lifestyle you’re anticipating.

A sys­tem­atic approach to face the retire­ment phase is more rec­om­mended than fac­ing unfore­seen chal­lenges timidly.

Health issues

One of the key issues but the one which is mostly ignored by many peo­ple is the health care. In the olden days one tend to over­look their health related issues even from the early age when they start their jour­ney in tak­ing care the fam­ily. They nor­mally car­ried by the thought of shoul­der­ing the fam­ily respon­si­bil­ity but not a wee bit thought about their own health as they do not want to be self-centered to think about them­selves. Thank­fully this atti­tude has under­gone a sea change now and the prac­tice of hav­ing med­ical insur­ance and other stuffs are on the rise now.  The prac­tice of early-wise sav­ing , even it is iter­a­tive is worth to be stressed again and again that many of the prob­lems can be tack­led with great ease. Obvi­ously the poor savers tend to bury their pain and will be forced to invite their death with agony.

Soci­etal Attitude:

Some peo­ple look for­ward to retire­ment as an extended hol­i­day where they can finally slow down and ‘smell the roses’. Other peo­ple expect to have a busier, more active life than when they were work­ing. When one have such a affir­ma­tive atti­tude towards retire­ment noth­ing can go awry. But even for those upbeat peo­ple, when they encounter a demo­ti­vat­ing expres­sion from their social group by pro­ject­ing night­mar­ish pic­ture about the retire­ment life it tends to infu­ri­ate them and even belit­tle their con­fi­dence. On the other hand, a per­son who always feel pet­ri­fied about retired life ‚these thorny state­ments from the soci­ety will make their life life­less and pale.

ROLE OF PLANNING IN RETIREMENT:

“Good plans shape good deci­sions. That is why good plan­ning helps to make elu­sive dream come true”

Peo­ple who plan an hec­tic life after retire­ment tend to be hap­pier than those who have no prepa­ra­tions. Some tips for good plan­ning  include:

• Opt­ing for Flexi Time work­ing or Interim work­ing espe­cially work­ing moth­ers rather than fully retiring. 
• Vol­un­teer work is a grat­i­fy­ing way to add con­fig­u­ra­tion and more mean­ing to your life, 
• Devote  time and energy into much-loved inter­ests and passions.
• Set­ting a per­sonal stan­dard with a pur­pose and striv­ing to adhere to it.
•  Upgrad­ing one­self with fur­ther edu­ca­tion with options gal­lop­ing  from short part time courses through to uni­ver­sity degrees. It could even be a new launch pad in ones retired life.
• Make sure that you and your part­ner dis­cuss ways to accom­mo­date each other’s wants, needs and expec­ta­tions. Open dis­cus­sions can smoothen the relationships.
• Lone­li­ness is a com­mon source of depres­sion in older peo­ple, To com­bat it one should main­tain and increase their  social networks.

Few  ways  to  stay  active  after  Retirement:

“what is this life with full of care

We have no time to stand and stare:

No time to stand beneath the bows

As long as sheep or goats:”

Life is a cycle with so many phases and retire­ment is the phase to relax and indulge in :

•·         Phys­i­cal activ­ity  to keep us healthy and fit.

•·         To meet friends to relive the nos­tal­gic past and to catch up with the ones we have missed.

•·         Gar­den­ing to freshen our mind and for­tify our body.

•·         To assist Grand­kids in their stud­ies and play with them.

•·         Go on a pil­grim­age trip or just holiday.

•·         Vol­un­teer­ing our ser­vice to an NGO for a noble cause.

• Mak­ing the best use of our skill by tutor­ing the stu­dents which will inflate our wal­lets too.
• Pur­su­ing our long cher­ished passion.

•·         Par­tic­i­pat­ing in reli­gious activ­i­ties.

• Upgrad­ing us by fur­ther stud­ies since age can not deter learning.

SHAME OF US:

In west­ern coun­tries the gov­ern­ment came out with a new pro­posal of intro­duc­ing a direc­tive  that would make it com­pul­sory  for chil­dren to look after their  par­ents.  What an appalling state of affairs?!  The con­fi­dence in the chil­dren has cor­roded and eroded too much that there is a  require­ment of an author­ity to enforce  a law to make sure the chil­dren do their duty. This divulges to what lev­els morals and val­ues have declined. Where is soci­ety head­ing? Shouldn’t this duty be intrin­sic and un-prompted?  Why should some­one mon­i­tor you with a stick and coerce you to take care of your par­ents?   This was not done to the par­ents.  They did their duty of rais­ing up their chil­dren com­mend­ably, so why do chil­dren need perks and pres­sure to look after their parents

SALUTE TO THE RETIREES

Let not age make you yield to its odd­i­ties. Soar and fly. Com­mence your life a new in its own daz­zling col­ors. Retire­ment is the respect given to your years of ser­vice. But if you don’t want to sit and rest why not explore and say “here is life I am back like a Phoenix. Ready to go.” Live the life that you’re worth liv­ing, after all, ‘Age is a state of the mind.’

The elderly must be allowed to depart with respect and their pass­ing should be mourned

Even if a par­ent has failed a lot, some­day you will be a par­ent and have to face your own fail­ures. Why not receive a bless­ing by being grate­ful just for the fact that they were your