Recently, when a family member passed away unexpectedly, I saw financial chaos up close and personal: his wife couldn't access some accounts, didn't have login or bank information and didn't even know what credit cards or bills he had.
Emergency financial files aren't only for the benefit of others, they can also be an essential aid to financial reconstruction in the event of a natural disasterThe grieving widow could have been spared the hassle and added stress of finding and then gaining access to her late husband's financial accounts if the couple had invested some time to make an emergency financial file.
"An emergency financial file is a critical piece of information that can ease the strain in times of crisis," says Amanda Kaphammer, founder of Sol Spyre, a financial services and wealth management company in Bend, Oregon. "It serves as a central repository for all essential financial information to enable someone to pick up the pieces."
Often Overlooked
You may have thought preparing a will, a revocable living trust or a power of attorney was plenty, but creating an emergency financial folder is the extra step to spare your loved ones from economic chaos in the event something happens to you.
"An emergency financial file is a critical piece of information that can ease the strain in times of crisis."
"While everyone should have one, it's a commonly overlooked item in emergency preparedness planning," says Kaphammer.
What's more, emergency folders are not strictly for the benefit of others but can be an essential aid to financial reconstruction in the event of a natural disaster, says Mark Boehm, MBA, principal at Alpha Wealth, a full-service financial firm in Glen Allen, Virginia.
This file isn't just for families; couples and single adults should consider building them too, advises Danielle Miura, a Certified Financial Planner and founder of Spark Financials, a financial planning service firm for caregivers in Ripon, California.
Creating the File
"Without your critical financial information, your loved ones may not know where your accounts are held and how you want your estate handled," adds Miura. "The difference between having your files organized or not is about more than just the stress. Leaving behind a mess can delay the inheritor's access to funds and cause potentially high legal fees."
Kaphammer says she and her spouse created their emergency financial file in the back of their sentence-a-day notebook. "When we have our periodic family meetings, we give it a once-over to ensure everything is still accurate and forget about it until the next time we discuss our plans for the future," she says.
Here's what a file should contain:
A cover letter. At Ramsey Solutions, a full-service financial counseling and education company based in Franklin, Tennessee, Dave Ramsey calls the file a legacy drawer. It's not an actual drawer; it's more likely online, in a personal computer folder or on paper. He says the cover letter is a simple letter stating the purpose of the file folder. It tells loved ones exactly what they will find in the "drawer."
 It's not an actual drawer; it's more likely online, in a personal computer folder or on paper.
Your will and estate plan. Include the names of the executor and beneficiaries and say who, if anyone, you want to give your power of attorney — that is, permission to act on your behalf.
Financial account information. Ramsey says anything with money in it and your name on it should be listed in the emergency file folder or in your "drawer." That includes account names, numbers, balances, payment dates and login information.
These may include:
Checking and savings accounts.Brokerage, retirement and education accounts.Employee sponsored retirement accounts like 401(k)s and 403(b)s.Liabilities like mortgages, loans, credit cards and lines of credit.Insurance policies like homeowners, auto, disability and life.Other directives such as will, durable and medical power of attorney, trusts, living will and health care directive.Important documents like your Social Security card, birth certificate or deeds or titles.Professionals' names and contact information (medical, financial and insurance agents).Emergency contact information for extended family and friends you want to be notified of your death.All passwords, usernames and PINs.Also Nice to Have
It is helpful to include a monthly budget so your family knows the inner workings of the finances. Make a note of any automated payments and the accounts they're tied to. Also helpful are tax returns from previous years. They are like having an insurance policy in case you're audited (and yes, that can happen after you die).
"You may also wish to include letters to those you love, known as 'legacy letters,' to pass on any parting wishes or worldly wisdom."
You may also want to add funeral instructions. "Your loved ones shouldn't have to guess what you would have chosen," says Ramsey. Be specific. Do you want to be buried or cremated? Is there a funeral home you prefer? What do you want to include in your service—specific songs, speakers, anything loved ones should know?
"You may also wish to include letters to those you love, known as 'legacy letters,' to pass on any parting wishes or worldly wisdom," says Kaphammer.
Where to Store Your Folder
While you may think that a safety deposit box is your best bet, Kaphammer cautions against it. "When a person passes on, the bank restricts access to a safety deposit box until they receive documents from the estate, including a death certificate and proof of who the estate executor is."
A better spot to keep this file is somewhere fireproof and hidden but accessible, such as a fireproof home safe or file box. You can also give a copy to your attorney or financial advisor.
Keep the file's existence on a need-to-know basis. This should include your spouse or partner, an appointed Power of Attorney, or an executor of your will. "You could also leave a sealed note indicating the whereabouts of your emergency financial folder with your attorney or financial professional with instructions to release it to your spouse, power of attorney(s), or executor(s) in the event of a crisis," Kaphammer says.
"My personal master passphrase [for the financial file] is known to my immediate family members (spouse and one of my children) as well as a brother in another state who I trust implicitly," says Boehm.
Update the File Annually
Updating an emergency financial file is a final but equally essential part of having one. The care and feeding of your emergency file should include:
Reviewing the contents.Replacing old documents with new ones.Updating passwords and usernames.Adding additional information or accounts.Ramsey also suggests setting a reminder on your phone to revisit your legacy drawer or folder at least annually.
"In the event of your death or an emergency, you want your loved ones to be able to access their safety net quickly so they can avoid being in limbo — financially or emotionally," says Ramsey.


Why You Need an Emergency Financial File

Jennifer Nelson

There's good news and weird news when it comes to age-friendly jobs in America.
Older workers generally prefer jobs with greater autonomy, more moderate physical activity, flexible schedules, shorter commutes and the opportunity to telecommute. The good news, according to a recent research paper, "The Rise of Age-Friendly Jobs," by three noted economists, is that between 1990 and 2020, roughly three-quarters of U.S. occupations increased their age-friendliness. Specifically, employment in what these economists call "above-average age-friendly occupations" rose by 49 million over that 30-year period.
A Head-Scratching Finding
"I thought there'd be an increase in the number of age-friendly jobs, but I was staggered at how big the increase was," says Andrew Scott, a London Business School economics professor who wrote the paper with MIT's Daron Acemoglu and Nicolaj Søndergaard Mühlbach of the McKinsey consulting firm.
"Non-college grads, and particularly male non-grads, are losing out."
Now for the weird part: You'd expect that older workers — age 50 and older — would be the big beneficiaries of the rise in age-friendly jobs, but they aren't. Despite a 33.1 million rise in people employed in the most age-friendly occupations from 1990 to 2020, only 15.2 million were workers over 50.
The paper's researchers found that age-friendly jobs have disproportionately gone to younger women and college graduates of all ages.
"Non-college grads, and particularly male non-grads, are losing out. They tend to work in the least age-friendly jobs," says Scott, co-author of "The 100-Year Life" and "The New Long Life."
What's going on here?
Definition of 'Age-Friendly' Jobs
To answer that, it helps to know what the three economists say makes a job "age-friendly."
To create their Age-Friendliness Index, they matched nine job attributes (schedule flexibility, telecommuting, physical demands, the pace of work, autonomy, paid time off, working in teams, job training and meaningful work) with data from the U.S. Department of Labor's O*NET program, the nation's primary source of occupational information.
The Index calculated the age-friendliness of jobs based on earlier studies showing that older workers generally prefer jobs with greater autonomy, more moderate physical activity, flexible schedules, shorter commutes and the opportunity to telecommute. In one study, older workers said they'd be willing to accept a 20% cut in pay in exchange for flexible work.
You can probably see where this is all going.
Age-Friendly or Worker-Friendly?
Age-friendly jobs are actually worker-friendly jobs. The most age-friendly jobs in 2020, researchers found, included HR managers, insurance salespeople, receptionists and reservations agents.
Some "age-friendly" job factors are especially attractive to women. "Scheduling flexibility has, I think, a great benefit for people who are also the primary caregivers of their children or their older parents," says Debra Sabatini Hennelly, founder and president of the workplace consulting firm Resiliti.
Hennelly, an advocate for older workers, recently co-wrote a Harvard Business Review article titled "Bridging Generational Divides in Your Workplace" with Bradley Schurman, author of "The Super Age."
How to Be Age-Friendly
In the article, Hennelly and Schurman said businesses let too many older workers go during the pandemic due to "early retirements, a caustic mix of ageism and cost-cutting measures."
One takeaway from Scott's age-friendly-jobs paper: There's a significant difference between age-friendly jobs and age-friendly employers.
Employers are increasingly offering age-friendly jobs to attract and keep workers of all ages. But being an age-friendly employer means being willing to hire, train and retain people over 50; to encourage a multigenerational workforce; and to avoid ageist policies and practices.
Scott was cheered by rapid growth in age-friendly occupations but told me he believes much more work is needed to cultivate age-friendly employers.
"We've seen an evolution in the space toward more age-friendly jobs, but not a great success in firms switching to become age-friendly employers," he says.
There's a significant difference between age-friendly jobs and age-friendly employers.
Tips for Older Job Seekers
Scott and Hennelly shared two pieces of advice to job hunters over 50 due to the growth of age-friendly jobs but the inadequate number of age-friendly employers:
1. Research whether an employer or industry you're considering truly is age friendly. Research whether it practices age discrimination in job hiring and retention. "Is there an occupation that has less age discrimination?" says Scott.Hennelly suggests a surprising way to unearth this kind of information: look at employers' ESG reports online. ESG stands for Environmental, Social and Governance; these types of reports were formerly called corporate social responsibility or sustainability reports."The S in ESG is all about how you treat your workforce, right?" asks Hennelly. "There are ESG reports now that specifically call out age inclusivity."But Hennelly notes, you're more likely to find U.K. and European companies noting their age inclusivity in their ESG reports than U.S. companies. You can find these reports through an online search.Also, review AARP's list of 1,000+ employers that have taken its "age-friendly pledge" and the hundreds in the Age-Friendly Institute's "Certified Age-Friendly Employer Program."
2. When interviewing for a job, be proactive about the advantages you'd bring to the employer as an older worker. "The number one business argument I would make is that you can help address the employer's turnover problem," says Hennelly. Note that if you get the job, you plan to stay a long time."Mature workers are less likely to change jobs compared to younger workers," according to a recent OECD report, "Retaining Talent at All Ages."Hennelly says hiring older workers with wisdom and experience lets younger workers learn from them and avoid mistakes the 50+ workers have seen — or even made — in the past.If the hiring manager assumes you are "overqualified" or that you will demand too much pay, "head that off," she advises. "Just say, 'I'll bet you're wondering why someone with my level of expertise would be interested in this job.'"
Why You Might Work for Less
In their Harvard Business Review article, Hennelly and Schurman urge employers to "recognize and encourage younger managers who don't write off older candidates as 'overqualified' or question why they would apply for a role that seems to be 'beneath' them."
If you're willing to work for less money than your last job — perhaps in exchange for less management responsibility — say so, advises Hennelly.
Hiring more older workers who are willing to accept less pay helps employers rein in labor costs, Scott says. In the big picture, he adds, reduced pressure to raise employee wages can lead to lower inflation nationally.


Why Aren’t Older Workers Getting Those Age-Friendly Jobs?

Richard Eisenberg

Traditional financial advice like the kind you got from your parents is often true but even experienced investors might rely on maxims that are outdated and no longer serving your financial well-being.
In fact, quite the opposite, as sticking to adages like "cash is king" (money is more valuable than other investments like stocks and bonds) and "all debt is bad" may be financial relics that you can stand to update.
Here are 5 money thoughts that you can ditch to keep a young financial mind:
1. Pay Your Mortgage Off Early 
One rule that may have become obsolete is paying down your mortgage faster than usual. With mortgage interest rates low, there's a good argument that putting that money elsewhere and earning a higher return over time may be a better bet than paying down your mortgage early. "Trying to decide between eliminating debt and investing for the future can be a difficult decision," says Jason Laux, retirement advisor at Synergy Group, a retirement planning firm in White Oak, Penn.
"Saving and investing for retirement is going to offer you a better return over time." 
"But mortgage debt isn't always a bad thing. If you put off saving for retirement in order to pay off your mortgage early, you may end up house rich but cash poor," says Laux. 
Instead, prioritize your personal finances. Use any extra money to max out contributions to your 401(k) or IRA. "Saving and investing for retirement is going to offer you a better return over time," Laux says.
2. Cash is King 
Over the long run, holding significant amounts of cash ensures that you'll suffer significant lost opportunities, explains Robert R. Johnson, professor of finance at Heider College of Business, Creighton University, and the co-author of "The Tools and Techniques of Investment Planning, Strategic Value Investing and Investment Banking for Dummies."
He explains that when it comes to building wealth, you can either sleep well or eat well. If you invest conservatively, you sleep well because of little volatility. But it doesn't allow you to eat well because your account won't grow large enough to keep you well-fed. 
According to data compiled by Ibbotson Associates, large capitalization stocks (think S&P 500) returned 10.3% compounded annually from 1926 through 2020.
Over that same time, long-term government bonds returned 5.5% annually and T-bills returned 3.3% annually. To put it in perspective, $1.00 invested in the S&P 500 at the start of 1926 would have grown to $10,945 (with all dividends reinvested). That same dollar invested in T-bills would have grown to $21.71. "The surest way to build wealth over long-time horizons is to invest in a diversified portfolio of common stocks," says Johnson.
3. You Must Have a Financial Advisor
Twenty years ago, if you had disposable income, you gave it to a financial advisor, who invested your money into safe, boring vehicles earning roughly 7% – 10% per year, explains Stefan von Imhof, CEO of alts.co, one of the world's largest alternative investing communities. "Today, retail investors are increasingly shunning financial advisors, and managing investments themselves."
Imhof explains that a decade ago, 57% of households with $500K+ in net worth and a prime earner under 45-year-old had an investing style considered "mostly self-directed." By 2019, that number has shot up to 70%.
"New generations are self-educating and taking on higher levels of risk to get higher returns," says Imhof. They look to invest in alternatives, which usually aren't an option with mainstream advisors," he says. Today, managing your portfolio on your own or with light guidance from an occasional financial check-up with a professional may be the preferred way to go.
4. Contribute 10-15% Toward Retirement 
"Sure, this advice will work for someone who plans on working until their mid to late 60s," says Ty Jones, a personal finance and retirement blogger who blogs at AskTheSavingsGuy, a Financial Independence Retire Early (FIRE) advocacy blog, "but if you want to retire in your 50s, you'll need to save much more aggressively."
By saving 25% of your income, a 30-year-old with no retirement savings could reach their retirement goal by age 55 instead of age 63, which is what it would be if they were to contribute only 15% per year based on the 4% rule and assuming an 8% return. Bumping up your 10% percent retirement savings to 20 or 25% can ensure both a more robust retirement portfolio and allow for earlier retirement, explains Jones.
5. Stick to the 4% Retirement Rule 
This rule says you can spend 4% of your retirement funds annually and not run out of money. Johnson says, research, most notably by Wade Pfau of The American College of Financial Services, shows that while historically that rule of thumb worked in the United States, the current environment of low bond returns increases the likelihood that retirees may well run out of money if that rule is applied going forward.


5 Money Thoughts That Might Be Aging You

The first rule of investing wisely is diversification. Hold a portfolio of stocks and bonds, financial advisors say, because if stocks go down, your bonds will come to the rescue and vice versa. Well, not this year.
Alternative investments include cryptocurrencies, gold and other commodities, income-producing real estate, private debt securities and private equity funds.In 2022, stocks and bonds have generally been pummeled. The Standard & Poor's 500 index (a basket of the 500 biggest U.S. stocks) is down more than 20%. And 10-year Treasuries (the benchmark for intermediate-term bonds) have lost more than 15% of value due to soaring interest rates; when interest rates go up, bond prices go down.
'The Year We've Been Scared Of'
"This is the year we've been scared of, and now we're having it," Anastasia Amoroso, chief investment strategist for the global financial firm iCapital, said at a recent Morningstar conference.
The dog days for the stock and bond markets are leading some investors to put money into what are known as alternative investments, hoping that they will produce decent returns.
At least 15 new alternative-investment products will be available in the next nine months, Steffen Paul, founder of the Moonfare investing platform, recently told the Financial Times. And a NASDAQ study predicted the alternative investment market could reach $17.2 trillion by 2025.
Should you take the plunge?
What Are Alternative Investments?
"There's a whole big category of these other investments that wear the label 'alternatives,'" said Pam Krueger, founder of the financial advisor vetting service Wealthramp on the latest episode of the "Friends Talk Money" podcast. (Full disclosure: I'm a co-host of the podcast along with the personal finance syndicated columnist and author Terry Savage.)
Alternative investments include cryptocurrencies, gold and other commodities, income-producing real estate, private debt securities and private equity funds.
Some can be bought only by "accredited investors," which the Securities and Exchange Commission defines as people with at least $200,000 in income ($300,000 for married couples) in each of the past two years or a net worth of more than $1 million, excluding their homes. And some "alts" require minimum investments of $75,000 or more, though lately there's been a push to lower minimums and open more alternative investments to the general public.
The Search for Returns
"With stocks and bonds having been on a downward trajectory here for a while, people are asking: 'Can I please have something in my portfolio that isn't dropping? That I'll be able to look at and actually have a smile on my face when I look at the actual results?'" Erik Olson, a financial advisor at Arete Wealth Management in Chicago, said recently.
"With stocks and bonds having been on a downward trajectory here for a while, people are asking: 'Can I please have something in my portfolio that isn't dropping?'"
In a recent survey of financial advisers by CAIS, an investment firm, over three-fourths of respondents said they felt the traditional portfolio of 60% in stocks and 40% in bonds is "ineffective or less effective" in today's economic climate.
Trouble is, many alternative investments have had lousy returns in 2022, too.
From January through early September, the price of gold declined about 7%. "Gold is supposed to offset inflation, but gold has done nothing" lately, said Savage. Real estate investment trusts (REITS) which buy apartments and commercial buildings have lost roughly 15% of their value.
And the price of Bitcoin — the biggest cryptocurrency by market capitalization — has dropped by nearly 60%. "Crypto is an alternative that's going down with the whole [stock] market," said Savage.
Looking Long-Term
But it's important to view investing as a long-term proposition, money pros often say. That's why growing numbers of them now recommend keeping a small portion of your investment holdings in alternatives.
"It makes much more sense to say: 'I'm going to make tiny bets on a number of things. One or possibly two percent of your investment portfolio is probably a good number," said Olson. That way, if the investment sours, you'll only lose 1 or 2%  of your portfolio. "That's probably not going to derail your overall financial future," he said.
Olson added that he's heard some investors say they're putting their entire life savings into an alternative investment. "That is a formula for disaster," he said.
Questions to Ask Before Investing
Savage is generally not a fan of alternative investments. "You have to ask yourself: 'Who's selling this to me? What are the real costs? And how are you going to get out when you want to sell?'" she said.
She calls them "the roach motel of investments" — easy to get into and almost impossible to get out. That's because there's no publicly traded market for many of them.
On the flip side, managers of privately traded alternative investments have more freedom to focus on long-term results because they needn't focus on daily and quarterly results, as CEOs of publicly traded stocks are.
Knowing the Risks and Drawbacks
There is no getting around that alternative investments are riskier than traditional stocks, bonds, mutual funds and exchange-traded funds, though.
"Just because you can access alternatives doesn't mean you should."
"They're not subject to the same level of regulatory scrutiny and oversight that publicly traded investments are," said Krueger. So, it can be hard to know much about who's behind them, how they operate and how well (or poorly) they've performed.
"Just because you can access alternatives doesn't mean you should," said Krueger. Her advice: if you want to dip into alternative investments, first discuss the idea with a fiduciary financial advisor who represents your best interests and won't pocket a commission from the companies whose products he recommends.
Beware of steep expenses, too. A writer on the Motley Fool investing site said 90% of private REITS, for example, charge "unreasonable commissions and fees" that go up to 12%.
The Fraud Factor
Caution is the watchword when it comes to alternative investments.
The Securities and Exchange Commission charged one real estate and alternative investments company with fraudulently raising $13.5 million from more than 100 investors "in Ponzi-like fashion" promising to pay them returns of generally 10% a year.
Cryptocurrency scam losses totaled $700 million in the first half of 2022 and precious metals fraud cases have risen by 84% since 2019, according to the North American Securities Administrators Association (NASAA).
Arbitration panels of the Financial Industry Regulatory Authority received more than 400 investor complaints against REITs last year, The Wall Street Journal reported. Most of the complaints involved nontraded REITs — a popular alternative investment that's not bought and sold on public exchanges, so does not need to comply with exchange rules about disclosing financial information.
NASAA has said it plans to crack down on nontraded REITS. It's considering prohibiting people from putting more than 10% of their liquid net worth in a nontraded REIT.
Alternatives to Alternatives
There may be alternatives to alternative investments worth considering.
Savage thinks people now looking for safe havens for their money with reasonable returns take advantage of short-dated Treasury bills and notes. They've been paying 4% or so.
Rising rates have also led some banks to offer 3% to 3.5% on 1- to 5-year certificates of deposit. In addition, there are income-producing stocks currently yielding roughly 5%.


Is Now the Time to Buy Alternative Investments?

You probably heard: Meghan McCain is leaving ABC 's "The View" after nearly four years. Among her reasons for quitting is that COVID-19 "has changed the world for all of us," she told The Guardian. "It's changed the way I'm looking at my life, the way I'm living my life, the way I want my life to look like."
Few of us have the net worth or name recognition of Meghan McCain, who's 36. Yet her sentiment resonates among many who've worked throughout the pandemic, often tethered to their computers at home.
Record numbers of workers are part of what's been dubbed "The Big Quit" or "The Great Resignation," as economies emerge from the pandemic. If a recent Microsoft survey is even close to the mark, 41% of the global workforce plan on saying goodbye to their employer and colleagues this year. 
"In a world where workers don't have a lot of power, quitting is the one bargaining chip they have."
Many of the quitters are, and will be, people 50+. Some for greener pastures at other employers or ventures they're starting; others for retirement.
The flurry of emailed farewells and virtual goodbye gatherings around the United States lately reflect worker confidence that the U.S. economy's rebound is strong enough that they're willing to take a risk and leave their jobs.
Demand for Workers Means Options for Some
Their timing is savvy considering how strong the demand is for workers.
Companies are fighting for talent, and that's the definition of a good market for anyone looking to voluntarily change jobs. Generally speaking, household finances seem unusually supportive for funding a job search, too. Economists estimate Americans accumulated an excess of $2 trillion in savings during the pandemic, though they are quick to add that many are struggling.
Seasoned workers with retirement savings plans have done well lately since the markets have been strong and 401(k) contributions have remained relatively steady. Home values also rose sharply during the pandemic in many places, and older Americans tend to be homeowners.
"In a world where workers don't have a lot of power, quitting is the one bargaining chip they have," says Geoffrey Sanzenbacher, research economist at the Center for Retirement Research at Boston College. And, he added, many older workers "have something they've wanted to do for a while" — which could be starting a business, following a passion or retiring.
Something else is at work, though.
For the past two decades, the combination of stagnant wages and job insecurity deterred many people from quitting while older workers had the added concern of age discrimination.
The 'Life Is Short' Phenomenon at Work
But the social isolation endured by so many during the pandemic and the trauma following the murder of George Floyd by a former Minneapolis police officer pushed many to rethink and reimagine what they were doing with their lives and at work.
"With so much change upending people over the past year, employees are reevaluating priorities, home bases and their entire lives," according to the Microsoft report. "So, whether it's due to fewer networking or career advancement opportunities, a new calling, pent-up demand or a host of pandemic-related struggles, more people are considering their next move."
Among those considering their next move are Nancy Collamer's clients. A retirement coach based in Pennsylvania and a popular Next Avenue contributor, Collamer has been hearing from people looking for help figuring out their next chapter.
One motivated long-time volunteer lost her husband (not from COVID-19) during the pandemic. The combination of his death and the coronavirus cloud have convinced the woman that life is fleeting and things can change on a dime. She's now driven to find a more purposeful path with her volunteer work.
A client of Collamer's in the financial services industry realized during the pandemic how much he enjoyed being with his family. He now dreads traveling for work and is looking to make a job change, possibly a career change.
"A common thread is that the pandemic gave them the time to pause and think about what they wanted to do with their lives," says Collamer.
Job Changes and Longer Work Lives
To be sure, money isn't an obstacle with her clients. Nevertheless, for anyone able to take the leap there's intriguing evidence that voluntary job changes among late-career workers lengthen their work lives.
Take research by Sanzenbacher, Steven Sass and Christopher Gillis at the Center for Retirement Research. They looked into voluntary job changes by workers ages 51 to 61 from 1992 to 2012 and followed them to age 65. They discovered that a voluntarily job change was associated with a 9.1% increase in the likelihood of remaining in the labor force until 65.
The effect held for different socioeconomic groups. For those with at least some college, the increase was 10.9% and for those with high school or less, 7.5%.
"If you're leaving an employer for more pay or because you like it better, both are good," says Sanzenbacher.
The rise in risk-taking reflected in what's known as the "quit rate" has also been showing up in new business creation numbers.
University of Maryland economist John Haltiwanger noted in a recent paper that the pace of new business applications since mid-2020 was the highest on record (although the series only goes back to 2004).
He adds that things are much different from the economic trauma so many felt a dozen years ago when entrepreneurship declined during the Great Recession.
The Kauffman Foundation, which studies entrepreneurship, also has seen a sharp increase in start-up activity in 2020. A majority of new entrepreneurs, Kauffman says, were 45 and older.
To be sure, the pandemic has meant the number of new entrepreneurs finding it necessary to start a business just to pay their bills reached its highest level over the past 25 years at least.
New Businesses: For Passions and to Pay the Bills
"Individuals starting a business as an opportunity, rather than a necessity, went down for everyone," says Robert Fairlie, an economist at University of California, Santa Cruz.
"The data shows that older entrepreneurs have assets and the knowledge base to succeed."
Nevertheless, you don't take the risk of launching a business unless you believe there's an opportunity to make a go of it — a reasonable bet these days for midlife entrepreneurs.
"The data shows that older entrepreneurs have assets and the knowledge base to succeed," says Susan Weinstock, vice president of financial resilience programming at AARP. "I think we will be seeing many more small businesses being founded by older workers."
Despite several challenges, the U.S. economic rebound is on track to be among the strongest and quickest in history. If that's the case, the time to think about making a late-career shift or starting your own business is now.
As former Treasury Secretary Larry Summers once wrote, a good economy is when "firms are chasing workers rather than workers chasing jobs." That's certainly the case today.
Collamer says when deciding on your next avenue, it helps to think through two key questions: "Who or what energizes you? And who or what drains you?"
Now is a good point in this column to pause and reflect on what's going on with America's job market and what experienced workers are facing.
Coming out of the pandemic, the rise in voluntary quits and the embrace of second-life entrepreneurship is mostly positive. Other parts of the job market, however, are disturbing.
Over half of job seekers 55 and older were long-term unemployed in June, meaning they'd been looking for work for at least six months. The longer someone is unemployed, the harder it is to get another job — and that's before taking age discrimination into effect.
Uncertainly also swirls around the sharp increase in retirees last year.
According to Pew Research Center, 3.2 million more boomers retired in the third quarter of 2020 compared to 2019, and many of them not by choice. The COVID-19 economy hit older workers living on low and unstable incomes much harder than their high-earning peers.
"There are a lot of confounding factors in what is going on here now that the economy is opening up and people are going back to work," says Weinstock.
Many questions about the state of older workers won't be known for at least another year, if not more. But for those who are able to reimagine their lives, the economic recovery is an opportune time to seek the purpose they discovered in isolation.


Older Workers and 'The Big Quit'

Chris Farrell

The advent of major economic change is sometimes obvious, like the 1973 OPEC oil shock. More often, change accumulates with little fanfare until it’s recognized that something big has happened. The legendary financier Leon Levy called these incremental upheavals that lead to major change “taps on the shoulder.”
Recent taps suggest that the decade-long policy stagnation over financing long-term care in America is coming to an end. But it isn’t happening in Washington. Look to the states. That’s where action is beginning to help family caregivers and their loved ones pay for the often-exorbitant costs of home care, nursing homes and assisted living facilities.
“A lot of us in the field have felt like Don Quixote tilting at windmills,” says Marc Cohen, professor of gerontology at the University of Massachusetts Boston and co-director of the LeadingAge LTSS Center@UMass Boston. “All of a sudden, things started happening.”
It’s overdue, according to the American public.
Support for Government Help With Long-Term Care Costs
A 2018 survey by the Associated Press-NORC Center for Public Affairs Research showed support for a government-administered long-term care insurance program similar to Medicare soared from 51% in 2013 to 70% last year.
The aging of boomers is a strong reason why political action to address long-term care is on the rise. Resources required to provide even the current level of inadequate long-term care services are projected to triple by 2030, partly because of the rapid growth in the 85 and older population.
Medicare covers few long-term care costs (although private Medicare Advantage plans are starting to offer some services). The federal/state Medicaid program, the nation’s public long-term care option, requires impoverishment to qualify. And the private long-term care insurance market has shrunk dramatically. Meantime, home health care workers are leaving the field for higher paying and less demanding jobs.
What's Happening in the States
Among the friendly long-term care shoulder taps being felt across the nation:
Washington State legislators passed the first universal public long-term care insurance benefit on April 26. It will be the most comprehensive long-term care program in the nation. ices and support, ranging from personal care aides to wheelchair ramps. Washington Governor and Democratic presidential candidate Jay Inslee has said he’ll sign the legislation into law.California, Michigan, Illinois and Minnesota are considering public and private options to help families better meet caregiving expenses.Hawaii in 2017 passed a cash benefit long-term care program that pays family caregivers $70 a day for 365 days. And although this Kupuna Caregivers Program had been under threat of budget cuts, it recently got a funding bump and is now expected to reach more people.Long-Term Care Rumblings in Washington, D.C.
There’s also been some rumbling in the Capitol.
Rep. Frank Pallone, Jr. (D-N.J.) has proposed the Medicare Long-Term Care Services and Supports Act. It would establish a public long-term care benefit within Medicare with a daily cash benefit of about $100 after a two-year waiting period.
The House Medicare For All bill introduced by Rep. Pramila Jayapal (D-Wash.) and Rep. Debbie Dingell (D-Mich.) includes paying for home-based, community-based and nursing home care.
And presidential candidate Sen. Bernie Sanders (I-Vt.) has expanded his Medicare for All blueprint to include long-term care support and services.
What Isn't Happening for Long-Term Care Costs
To be sure, not everything is positive on the long-term care financing front.
Last year, Maine voters rejected a referendum calling for a long-term care public benefit funded through a surtax on high-income households. Even though Maine has a greater share of older residents than any other state, almost 63% of the vote said: No thanks.
And the Trump administration shows no interest in expanding the social safety net to further assist with long-term care costs. The bitter political divide in Washington, D.C. means it’s a safe bet little progress will be made with any federal long-term care proposals until after the 2020 election (at the earliest).
What the Future Holds
But long-term care experts are optimistic that action on the state level will pick up, especially following the Washington State vote.
At the American Society on Aging’s 2019 Aging in America Conference in New Orleans last month, Lynn Friss Feinberg, senior strategic policy adviser for the AARP Public Policy Institute, reflected on the significance of Washington state’s initiative. “Once one state does it, other states will follow,” she said.
State experiments may ultimately nudge Congress toward embracing practical federal solutions.
“I do believe that getting political action on the state level gives a tremendous boost on the national level,” says Judith Feder, professor of public policy at Georgetown University and a member of the 2013 Commission on Long-Term Care. “Members of Congress like to see something real.”
States to Watch: Washington, Michigan, Minnesota, California
Here’s how the Washington State Long-Term Care Trust Act will work: Starting in 2025, it will provide up to $36,500 (indexed for inflation) to pay for a broad range of services. Employees will pay a monthly payroll tax of 58 cents for every $100 earned (that’s about $18 a month for the average per capita income in the state, according to The Intercept.) The benefit will be available to anyone who pays into the program for three out of the last six years or pays the tax for at least 10 years. Residents will be eligible once they need help with three of six basic activities of daily living, such as feeding, bathing, and dressing and grooming.
Other states are stirring.
Michigan is conducting a needs assessment and an actuarial analysis on long-term care. Minnesota has been working on two private financing options targeted at middle-income families.
But the state to watch closely is California.
The California Aging and Disability Alliance is gathering information that could lead to a ballot initiative for a public long-term care financing program. California’s new Governor Gavin Newsom called for action in his 2019 State of the State address.
“It’s time for a new Master Plan on Aging,” he said. “It must address: person-centered care, the patchwork of public services, social isolation, bed-locked seniors in need of transportation, the nursing shortage, and demand for In-Home Supportive Services that far outpaces its capacity.”
Hopefully, promises like this will get translated into legislation fast. Family caregivers and their elders in California and elsewhere deserve nothing less.


For Help With Long-Term Care Costs, Look to the States


	 

	 

	For many consumers, a deterrent to buying a traditional, stand-alone long-term care policy has been the fact that premiums are forfeited if care isn’t needed. To be sure, the same goes for auto insurance and homeowner’s insurance, and consumers seem pretty much resigned to that fact.

	(MORE: 5 Ways to Avoid High Retirement Health Costs)

	 

	But a long-term care purchase taps into fears that many don’t want to confront, experts say. “People can imagine their house burning down or an auto accident, but no one wants to envision going into a nursing home,” said Joe Heider, regional managing principal with Rehmann Financial in Cleveland, Ohio, who sells life insurance policies with long-term care riders to his clients.

	A typical combination policy will pay out a benefit if long-term care is needed and a death benefit to a designated beneficiary if it is not, or if care expenses don’t exhaust the value of the policy. People are attracted to this flexibility and like the fact that they’ll get some money back no matter what happens, Heider said.

	 

	In fact, some stand-alone long-term care insurance policies offer their own answer to the unneeded-coverage problem: a return-of-premium feature. This isn’t a death benefit — it’s simply a return of paid premiums, less any claims paid, to a policyholder or his or her heirs. But this option can add more than 50 percent to premium costs versus a use-it-or-lose-it policy, and it hasn’t caught on with insurance sellers or consumers, according to Jesse Slome, executive director of the American Association for Long-Term Care Insurance.

	 

	A Have-It-Both-Ways Combination

	 

	Combination policies typically require a bigger upfront payment than traditional long-term care policies. Combination policies usually require a lump-sum premium payment, or one spread out in a few installments, in contrast to the continuing annual or monthly premiums for stand-alone, long-term care policies.

	 

	In one illustration offered by Lincoln Financial Group for the company’s MoneyGuard Reserve Plus combination policy, a healthy 60-year-old nonsmoker pays his $100,000 premium in three annual installments of $33,333. If he needs long-term care benefits, the man can receive a maximum monthly benefit of $5,787 for a maximum of six years. (Relatively few older people need such care for longer than six years.)

	 

	If he doesn’t need care, his designated beneficiary will get $138,896 in tax-free “death benefits.” If he uses just some of his care benefits, that amount would be subtracted from his death benefits. A third option would be a full return of premium, or $100,000 paid back at any time after Year 5, provided all planned premiums are paid.

	 

	On the other hand, a 60-year-old male purchasing roughly equivalent coverage via a traditional long-term care insurance policy would pay $2,100 per year, according to the American Association for Long-Term Care Insurance. And while that’s no small financial commitment, it looks relatively modest next to the big upfront payment typical of a combination policy.

	 

	Running the Numbers

	 

	For this and other reasons, some advisers argue that hybrid policies don’t offer the best deal for the protection they provide. “Anything they can package together, I can probably put together for cheaper,” said Jeffrey Boyer, wealth adviser with RegentAtlantic Capital in Morristown, N.J.

	 

	Insurance products will typically deduct their costs — for the broker’s commission, the company’s operating and underwriting costs, and other expenses — from the product’s payout, and their marketing materials don’t state an explicit product fee like, say, a variable annuity or mutual fund would.

	So Boyer and his colleague compared the payouts in three hypothetical scenarios of a combination policy versus a stand-alone long-term care policy plus a stand-alone, 30-year term life insurance policy that together offered a very similar benefit to the hybrid policy.

	 

	Their calculations included the assumption of some future rate increases on the stand-alone, long-term care insurance policy, since many policies have had such increases of late. Their hypothetical purchaser was a healthy 60-year-old woman. (Like long-term care insurance, life insurance gets harder to buy as one gets older and, presumably, sicker.)

	 

	In the RegentAtlantic analysis, the hybrid policy offered the best deal in just one scenario: the one in which the purchaser died at age 91 without having needed any long-term care. In the case where the purchaser needed long-term care from age 84 to 89, the stand-alone long-term care policy plus term life insurance offered $348,325 more in total benefits, net of premiums. If the policyholder died at age 65 without using any long-term care benefits, the stand-alone policies would have provided an additional $138,604 in benefits.

	 

	The reason for this differential, Boyer said, is likely the opportunity cost of paying a large upfront premium instead of investing the money in stocks or another growth vehicle (their analysis assumes a 5 percent investment return on money not needed to pay premiums) and the high expenses and commissions built into the hybrid policy.

	 

	Do You Need Life Insurance?

	 

	Families considering their insurance options should start with the question of what risk they’re trying to insure against, said Keith Klovee-Smith, head of life management services for Wells Fargo Private Bank. Many people in their 50s and older have no need for life insurance. Their kids are grown, and they don’t have estates large enough to owe estate taxes that could be covered by an insurance payout.

	 

	For all their differences, both combination and stand-alone, long-term care policies have some similarities that families should keep in mind, experts say.

	Both require prospective buyers to pass medical underwriting. “Basically, you have to be healthy,” said Marvin Feldman, President and CEO of the Life Foundation, a nonprofit organization that educates consumers on insurance.

	 

	And once the long-term care policy is in force, consumers who buy either traditional or combination products must meet standard criteria for needing care to tap their benefits. For example, it wouldn’t be enough for a healthy older person to simply move into an assisted living facility. She would also generally need help with at least two activities of daily living, such as bathing, dressing or eating, and that need must be documented according to the insurer’s precise specifications. 

	Elizabeth O'Brien is a retirement healthcare reporter for MarketWatch.  Contact her at Elizabeth.O'Brien@dowjones.com


Hedging Your Bets on Long-Term Care

Elizabeth O'Brien

At the national Encore.org conference I just attended in Los Angeles, focused on ways people in the second half of life can make the world a better place, I was struck by what I heard at one particular session.
“There has to be a demand in the marketplace. Start with small bets,” said the speaker on a panel. “What is your niche?”
The participants in the room soon broke into small groups to share ideas about funding and sustaining social entrepreneurship startups. The large white papers glued to the walls of the conference room were soon covered with sticky notes. Discussions revolved such topics as crowdfunding campaigns and developing relations with high-net-worth individuals and their wealth managers.
Entrepreneurship Was Big at the Encore Conference
Those kinds of conversations are unremarkable at places like startup gatherings in Minneapolis and accelerators in Nashville, let alone high-tech epicenters such as Silicon Valley and New York City. But this was a nonprofit conference where the 40 or so session participants mostly came from nonprofits determined to learn how to bring their entrepreneurial dream to life or diversify their funding for faster growth.
Encore.org, the San Francisco based social enterprise founded by Marc Freedman two decades ago, is known for promoting practical paths for people in the second half of life. Lately, though, the group has been dedicated to starting a social movement aimed at older adults mentoring younger generations. The tone of the conference was set by the title of Freedman’s new book with a tongue-in-cheek name: How to Live Forever: The Enduring Power of Connecting the Generations.
The session I attended highlighted a striking shift in America’s entrepreneurial culture: the lines are now blurred between business startups and new social enterprises.
For instance, here’s how Bevan Gray-Rogel — founder and president of Encore Tampa Bay — responded when I asked her about her entrepreneurial experience with her startup which launched in 2013: “It has been a journey of a million pivots and experiments, asking where my customer is, where are the gaps, what is the mission.”
Are those the reflections of a business entrepreneur or a social entrepreneur? Can’t tell the difference, can you?
Business Entrepreneurs Blend With Social Entrepreneurs
My suspicion is that business entrepreneurs and social entrepreneurs in the second half of life are behind much of the current blending. Second-life business entrepreneurs and their social enterprise peers share a common language these days emphasizing innovation, sustainability, digital tools, storytelling, partnerships, earned income and mission.
These days, many people in their 50s and 60s share a strong desire to do something that makes a difference and (hopefully) leaves a legacy. Whether the enterprise is organized as a nonprofit or for-profit turns out to be more about tactics then purpose.
I’ve attended several Encore.org conferences and found that this one ranked high on the aspirational scale.
For one thing, the goal of deliberately working at promoting intergenerational engagement for the common good seems particularly valuable at a time when America’s civil discourse is eroding, and social pessimism is rising.
For another, I came away with a much greater appreciation of how important scrappy startups are to the grassroots movement rethinking and reimagining the second half of life.
Two Inspiring Encore Career Entrepreneurs
“Most of the folks that are part of the encore community are entrepreneurs,” says Henry Rock, 66, the founder and executive director of City Startup Labs in Charlotte, N.C. and a former Encore.org Purpose Prize  Fellow.
Rock is a great example. He had a long career in sales and marketing in the media business before coming up with the idea of teaching entrepreneurship to black male millennials in 2006. The idea sat on the shelf for years until he moved to Charlotte and, in 2014, launched City StartUp Labs. The organization, backed by foundations, corporate philanthropy and sponsors, has since expanded its mission of teaching the basics of entrepreneurship to include young black women. City Startup is also piloting an initiative targeted at offering parolees in Charlotte the opportunity to develop and exercise their entrepreneurial capabilities.
Rock aims to develop strategies and diverse funding sources so the group can stay in business for the long haul. “I am at the place right now, not quite an inflection point, but close to it,” he says.
Then there’s Jeff Tidwell, 59, who is also a social entrepreneur. The high-tech veteran has worked in Silicon Valley and New York for various digital companies. He’s currently Entrepreneur in Residence at Boxador in Venice, Calif., where he has launched a cool for-profit company called Next For Me.
The early-stage business is focused helps people 50 and older find good work and manage their finances well for the new longevity economy. “Profit is part of it. Sustaining the business is part of it,” Tidwell says. “But it is also about the social good.”
As Rock, Tidwell and many others I spoke with at the Encore progress made clear:  Doing well and doing good is no longer an oxymoron, if it ever was.


The Encore Career Movement Barrels Into Building Businesses

As you prepare for retirement, you undoubtedly think about how much money you have and how much you’ll need. But I bet you don’t give a lot of thought to where your career fits in among your financial assets.
Michael Haubrich, the fee-only Certified Financial Planner who runs the Financial Service Group in Racine, Wis., says that’s a big mistake.
The author of Career Asset Management: Getting Ahead, Staying Ahead and Using Your Head to Maximize Your Career Value, Haubrich believes your career can — and should — be viewed as an asset on par with stocks, bonds and other investments. And, he says, you should manage your career asset to maximize its long-term return. Once you do, he says, you may then be able to lessen your fears about having enough money in retirement.
Haubrich’s novel financial planning practice brings together his clients with career professionals in a kind of triage to avoid a financial or career disaster. The service isn’t cheap: his “relationship fee” starts at $5,400 and is determined by factors such as a client’s net worth and income. “We’re not for everyone,” Haubrich told me, “but we do pro bono work for some people who can’t afford us. We can only onboard 15 new clients a year.”
I recently interviewed Haubrich to ask him about his approach and advice; highlights follow below. (You can learn more about his career asset management idea at Haubrich’s site, Careerassetmanagement.com.)
Next Avenue: How did you first come up with the idea that people should think of their career as a financial asset?
Michael Haubrich: I discovered the opportunity by working with clients about retirement and finding they didn’t have grandiose plans; they looked at retirement as a way to deal with their dysfunctional career.
Thinking of your career as a financial asset requires keeping your career asset engaged longer, and that's true even at a societal level. We can’t afford to have people retire to a complete life of leisure for twenty or thirty years; it just won’t work. We would take a lot of pressure off our financial assets if we kept our career engaged longer, even at a lower level of work.
How is it helpful to think of your career as a financial asset?
Many people think of their career in the context of immediate income. But you need to pull back the lens and look at it as a lifecycle career asset — not just a paycheck in the present, but its future paycheck and how to optimize it so the way you work is sustainable and you don’t burn yourself out.
A lot of people coming to me in their fifties and sixties have been working ungodly hours in abusive environments and they think ‘I’ll stop doing it when I quit. I’ll start living when I quit.’ That’s a flawed way of thinking.
You like to use a real estate metaphor and say that some people see their careers as ‘triple net leases’ and that they need to think of themselves instead as landlords of their careers. What do you mean?
In the old days of lifelong employment, your career was like a triple net lease. In a triple net lease, the landlord has a long-term contract with a tenant and the tenant behaves like they own the property, assuming responsibility for paying the taxes, making improvements, arranging the maintenance and optimizing the property.
With triple-net lease employment, there was a mutual understanding that the employee would remain loyal to the employer and the employer would be responsible for developing and managing your career, giving you whatever you needed to be relevant to the marketplace.
In the new economy, that implied contract is irreconcilably broken. Today, you need to look at your career as a short-term lease and be ready to change the way you position yourself in the market. You have to think about your transferable skills, figure out where the market is moving for the demands for your skills and make sure if there are any gaps in your future demand that you are addressing them to find the highest value tenant for your property — yourself.
Is it too late to do that if you’re in your fifties or sixties?
No. But there is deferred maintenance all over that keeps people from being relevant to the marketplace.
It also depends on your field. If you earn $150,000 but in your field, you could be replaced by a 25-year-old for a third of the price, that’s the reality. Then, what we need to do is acknowledge, ideally while you still have that $150,000 job, how to prepare for a softer landing and not a crash landing.

It’s important that you’re always benchmarking yourself against the ever-changing marketplace. If you don’t, you can wind up taking on the cloak of a victim.
How does someone go about benchmarking?
You can start with online services like Salary.com, to see what people are getting paid for jobs like yours. But I think benchmarking goes hand-in-glove with lifelong learning. If your field has an association, go to its conferences and do an informal survey. Most associations have salary surveys, too.
How does someone improve their value proposition in the marketplace?
I have a client who works at a power plant in Wisconsin. His unique skillset is his expertise as a vibrations expert; he’s the go-to guy in a career that’s been going on for thirty years. He makes about $75,000 to $80,000 and he heard rumblings about layoffs and a restructuring. I asked him if there was certification for vibrations and he said ‘Yes, in the last ten years they came out with it, but I blew it off.’ Now he’s going to get that certification. He’s under no risk of losing his job as far as he knows, but he is taking ownership.
How do encore careers fit into the career asset management idea?
The people who are most relevant to this issue around optimizing careers are ones feeling anxiety — knowing in their gut that they do not have a good plan for retirement. Their level of motivation is greatest in the pre-encore stage of contemplating an encore stage of life. For them, I feel like I’m in an emergency room doing triage.
You sometimes ask clients to do what you call ‘worst case scenario visioning.’ How does that work and why is it helpful?
It allows us to take our fears and explore them, assuming they are real.
I sometimes hear: ‘You don’t know what my boss is like. It’s toxic as hell.’ When we drill into it, I ask: ‘What would you need to make this work?’ And if the person says, ‘It doesn’t matter, if I talk to my boss about this, he’ll fire me,’ I say ‘Assume that happens and now you’re unemployed, what would that look like?’
What’s amazing about that is it disempowers that whole thought process on how terrible it would be if you lost your job. Most of the time, people have some financial resources. It empowers you if you assume the worst outcome and show how you can respond through resilience.
When you work with your financial planning clients on career asset management do you bring in career advisers? How does that work?
It’s a collaborative approach with career coaches or other career development professionals. Sometimes we even work with counselors, depending on how beat up the person is about the psychological and emotional impacts of what’s going on.
With a coach, there’s a series of assessments to benchmark where the client is in relation to their ideal work and fair compensation. The coach may come back and say we can renegotiate with the existing employer for a successful outcome; that’s the simplest. But often, it requires a change in employment. I rely on the coach to tell me what period of time the person may be unemployed or whether he or she needs to be retrained during a career sabbatical. Then I align the person’s finances to support a career transition.
I want to minimize the financial stress when the clients are not collecting a paycheck. If possible, I set aside money in a working capital fund every month.
What’s that and how does it work?
A working capital fund is distinct and separate from an emergency fund; If you’re in a two-year retraining sabbatical and you have monthly income needs from a paycheck of $3,000 after taxes and have the resources, we might put aside $70,000 in reserve, and every month transfer $3,000 of it to your checking account. So it’s framed like getting a paycheck.


The Big Financial Asset You're Ignoring: Your Career

The "herstory" of groundbreaking, feminist, multi-hyphenated artist Judy Chicago spans six decades of boundary-pushing creative activity in a kaleidoscope of media — painting, printmaking, ceramics, quilting, tapestry, embroidery, stained glass, even pigmented smoke and auto body spray-painting. 
Indeed, after college, Chicago went to auto body school to learn to spray paint.  She was the lone woman among 250 men in the class, a symbolic start to a career in which she often uses skills acquired in a male-dominated world and reinvents them to tell women's stories. Spray-painting became one of the hallmarks of her work. 
Judy Chicago, On Fire at Eighty, 2019In an interview by email with Next Avenue, Chicago spoke of her enthusiasm for this technique, saying, "I LOVE to spray-paint. I have sprayed automotive lacquers and enamel; acrylic; fabric paint; and china paint; and more recently, glass paint, which was an incredible challenge and required several years of experimentation."
"Women's art has rarely been seen as a whole, it has a consistent way of sidelining women artists, including me." 
"Herstory" is also the name of the most recent survey of her life's work at the New Museum through March 3rd, the first one ever held in New York City. In 2021, I saw the very first retrospective of her long career at the De Young Museum in San Francisco.  
"Women's art has rarely been seen as a whole," she lamented in her most recent autobiography, "The Flowering," adding that "it has a consistent way of sidelining women artists, including me." 
But with these two bicoastal retrospectives, she's stepped firmly out of the sidelines. The De Young exhibition, she says, "was a revelation to many viewers as it was the first time that they were able to see a broad survey of my oeuvre."
A Well-Deserved Turn in the Spotlight 
The exhibits show off Chicago's work as a dazzling and witty medley of vibrant colors, anatomical shapes, sensual and surreal imagery, political passion and materials manipulated in entirely original ways. Her dedication to women's freedom and her anger at any form of oppression steam off the walls. Like much political art from Picasso's "Guernica" to Faith Ringgold's Sixties' posters to Ai Weiwei's installations, Chicago's work unabashedly and unapologetically makes a statement that women's lives matter.
At 84, and a 5'1" powerhouse, Chicago is having a well-deserved turn in the spotlight. Besides the museum retrospectives, she's currently featured in an ad for Christian Dior, one of the New Museum show's sponsors, rocking cornflower blue sunglasses and smoky purple hair, nails and lipstick. In an alternate lifetime, she could have been the lead singer in a punk band.
A Lifelong Feminist Vision
Chicago has been articulating her feminist vision and pushing the envelope since the 1970s when she founded the first feminist art program at California State University at Fresno. Her goal then and ever since has been to create a women's art movement to match the women's liberation movement and agitate for social justice and political change.  
She explains, "My father taught me that it was my OBLIGATION to make a contribution to a better world, a mandate that has shaped my life and work, that and a deep commitment to equity for everyone who shares this planet — both human and non-human. I pushed myself tirelessly for almost six decades to accomplish this."
Judy ChicagoShe was born Judy Cohen, then became Gerowitz when she married her first husband, Jerry. In 1970 she changed her name to Judy Chicago. The name was a feminist statement and a nod to the "Windy City" accent she retained from her hometown and that city's macho energy.
The shadow of death darkened her early years — her beloved father died when she was just 13, and Jerry Gerowitz died in a fatal car crash early in their marriage. Her second marriage to a fellow artist, Lloyd Hamrol, lasted rockily from 1965 to 1979 as he turned out to be competitive and unfaithful, according to her memoir. In 1985, she made a third, fulfilling and lasting marriage to Donald Woodman, a photographer and fellow free spirit who became a steady source of emotional support and sometime collaboration. They've lived most of their married life in New Mexico. 
Chicago's early confrontation with death intensified her urgency as an artist, as she reflected in our interview. "One could say that grief shaped my outlook on life, as I never imagined that I would live this long, so every minute counted," she said. "I did not think there was any time to waste as I had seen so many people die during my childhood and into early adulthood."
She recalled a pivotal memory from her college days. "In the early 1960s I took a year off from college and spent a year in New York. While I worked every day in my studio, I met a lot of young people with various artistic aspirations who sat around, smoked pot and talked about what they planned to do with their lives, often adding that they had 'plenty of time.' I can remember wondering if they had a guarantee from God promising them 80 years; I certainly didn't. I am totally surprised that I have reached my 80s and am still here."
'The Dinner Party' 
Her pioneering work has focused on every hot button issue in her life, as well as issues in the culture, from environmental disaster to the Holocaust, from birth and creation to mortality.
Observing that most "successful women artists have been childless," she chose not to have children herself. But she engaged with the subject vicariously by attending several births and sending a questionnaire to 100 women about their childbearing experiences; she transformed that reporting into her "Birth Project" series, 1980-85, a combination of painted, woven and vibrantly embroidered images of women in labor that are part of the New Museum show. 
It turned into a participatory art-making project as 150 needle-workers from around the country contributed their skills in needlepoint, beadwork and quilting to create 200 vibrant pieces that Chicago envisioned. The project is a powerful testimony to a seminal female experience that has rarely been depicted in art.
Her most iconic piece pre-dates "The Birth Project." "The Dinner Party," an epic installation shaped like a large triangular dinner table, was first shown in 1979 at the San Francisco MOMA where I was among the 100,000 visitors who saw it during its three-month residency. 
View of “The Dinner Party” (1974-79) by Judy Chicago. Photo courtesy of Through the Flower ArchivesHer reinterpretation of The Last Supper with all women replacing the male disciples, "The Dinner Party" reflects Chicago's diligent study of women's history and her mission to share and salute it. "My historical imperative," she called it.
Thirty-nine place settings, each commemorating a notable woman from history, sit on an embellished runner, embroidered by volunteer needleworkers from around the country. The settings include gold chalices and utensils, and china-painted porcelain plates with raised central designs that are based on women's genitals and butterflies, each setting symbolizing the woman being honored. 
The table rests on a white-tiled, "heritage floor" where another 999 historical women's names are inscribed in gold. Among them are Sacajawea, Sojourner Truth, Virginia Woolf and Georgia O'Keefe. Chicago later regretted that the women she chose were not more inclusive, but for its time, the list was eye-opening.
Dismissed and derided by a male art critic as "vaginas on plates," the controversial show was cancelled by several venues that had originally offered to display it. Nevertheless the public embraced it, especially the half of the public who saw their heritage reflected in it. 
Much to Chicago's dismay, it remained in storage for many years, but in 2007, it was permanently installed at the Brooklyn Museum as the central work in the Elizabeth A. Sackler Center for Feminist Art. Chicago proudly reports that one million people have seen "The Dinner Party" around the country and the world since its inception.
Her Mantra on Creativity 
Despite its centrality to Chicago's body of work, "The Dinner Party" is represented only by line drawings in the New Museum show. More space is given to later works culminating in a somber series called "The End: A Meditation on Death and Extinction" in which the artist confronts her own death and the end of civilization. This project consists of small and intimate black glass pieces etched with haunting images expressing her own anxieties about how she'll die. No surprise that this artist who never imagined she'd live until her 80s is grappling with mortality now.
"I still have a burning desire to make art; exercise is imperative to my well-being; but I make more time for my husband, my beloved cats and myself."
When I asked her if she had a mantra that propelled her long-lasting creativity, she replied, "Don't give up; one never knows what will happen in life if you live long enough (including - for me - the surprise of living so long)." And when I followed up by questioning if she'd made any accommodations to getting older, either in art-making or life, her answer also illuminated the long arc of her career:
"I've slowed down. When I was young I worked between ten and fifteen hours a day in my studio. When I was thirty, I began to exercise, which meant carving out enough time every day to do that as exercise became extremely important to me. It was not until I turned 50 that I even began to understand the meaning of the word 'tired'.
"Now that I'm in my 80s, I have had to modify my expectations of myself so that they are more age appropriate. But other than that, my priorities have not changed; I still have a burning desire to make art; exercise is imperative to my well-being; but I make more time for my husband, my beloved cats and myself."
As a chronicler of Herstory, Chicago deserves to take a well-earned seat among the influential women at "The Dinner Party" she created.


Feminist Artist Judy Chicago Whose History is Herstory

Elizabeth Fishel

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Talking About It: Aging and Mental Health