Your Money

Retirement spending rarely follows a straight line.

Traditional planning often assumes your spending rises with inflation every year for the rest of your life. But research suggests most retirees follow a different pattern. Spending tends to be higher during the active “go-go” years, then gradually declines as travel, large purchases, and other discretionary expenses become less frequent.

That pattern appears even among affluent retirees who have the resources to keep spending more. In other words, the decline is often a choice, not simply a financial necessity.

The wild card is health. Some retirees remain independent with relatively modest healthcare expenses throughout their later years. Others can go from independence to needing significant help surprisingly quickly, followed by years of home care, assisted living, or skilled nursing. Those cases help explain why average spending can turn upward again late in life.

That is why a retirement plan should not simply assume you can keep spending at full speed until your lifestyle naturally slows. There always needs to be a contingency for the possibility that health changes before spending does.

At PWM, we can model those risks separately. Lifestyle spending may reasonably decline with age, while a dedicated reserve for healthcare and care needs remains in the plan. That can create room to spend more confidently during the years when you are most able to enjoy it, without depending on everything going perfectly later.

Retiree Spending Doesn't Rise in Lockstep With Inflation
by Dinah Wisenberg Brin

Your Life

Moving into assisted living can mean giving up a lot of familiar routines. For one 82-year-old resident, happy hour was one tradition worth keeping.

After learning her Minnesota community could not serve residents a glass of wine without navigating liquor licensing rules, she took the issue to lawmakers. The result was a new law allowing senior communities to serve alcohol at organized social events without a traditional liquor license.

The bigger point is not the cocktail. It is the reminder that aging does not have to mean surrendering every ordinary pleasure, tradition, or bit of independence that makes life feel like your own.

Grandma takes action to bring happy hour to her nursing home and wins
by Heather Wake

Complexity Simplified

Before you pour rice-rinse water down the drain, it may have one more use.

That cloudy water contains small amounts of starch, minerals, and nutrients left behind by the rice. Used occasionally, plain, unsalted rinse water can feed soil microorganisms and provide plants with a mild nutrient boost.

There is a limit to the upcycling, though. Too much organic material, especially in consistently damp indoor pots, can encourage mold and create conditions fungus gnats enjoy.

So think of it as an occasional second use for something you were already going to discard, not a replacement for ordinary watering or fertilizer.

Does Rice Water Really Help Plants Grow? Here’s What the Science Says
by Leanne Potts

Trivia