- Even if you have your health and your wealth – are you prepared for retirement? Often taken for granted are issues such as how will you age independently and maintain a home on your own, do you live in an age-ready community where there interesting things to do and ways to get there as well as have you maintained in a network friends that will make old age fun and healthy. In a recent WSJ MarketWatch article I ask three questions that financial advisors should pose if they really want to engage their clients and the rest of us should ask to reveal if we have really thought about living well in older age.

The numbers are not clear, but the topic of baby boomer downsizing from larger home to smaller housing options features prominently in the real estate business news. The leading edge of boomers are now between 57 and 67 years old. With their lifestyles changing, many are rethinking where they want to live in retirement. But before excitement about a new lifestyle in older age overtakes you, answer the questions I pose on WSJ/MarketWatch RetireMentors

Cancer deaths in the US are down 20% since they peaked in 1991, a new American Cancer Association study reports. Some types of cancer are becoming more like manageable, chronic conditions that doctors and patients keep at bay for years, even decades. That is, for an increasing number of people, cancer is becoming something less to die of than to live with. Cancer, of course, isn’t the only chronic condition that tends to appear with age – other common culprits include heart disease and diabetes. And although life expectancies are on the rise, conditions like these change the equation: we’re not only living longer, but also living sicker. Read more on Disruptive Demographics

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Beginning January 2013 I will be contributing to Wall Street Journal MarketWatch’s Retirement Mentors with observations and insights into the ‘what we will be doing in retirement’ alongside discussions of how much it might cost. My first piece addresses transportation planning in retirement. Mobility is an assumption of quality retirement, but poor health, an isolated home and a dearth of mobility options can make retirement a prison sentence rather than life’s reward. Here are five tips to make sure you can keep moving in retirement. (click here)

My MIT AgeLab colleagues and I presented at the US Conference of Mayors annual meeting in Washington, DC. We discussed and demonstrated the challenges that an aging society presents to today’s cities. Several US Mayors put on AgeLab’s Age Gain Now Empathy System or AGNES to feel the friction and frustration that many older adults managing chronic conditions experience using transit, accessing public facilities or simply walking down the sidewalk.

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Invited to deliver the keynote lecture for the Institute of Medicine National Academies Forum on Aging, Disability & Independence in Washington, DC. Coughlin’s talk “Technology & Independent Living: Can We Move Ideas in the Laboratory into Innovations in the Living Room?” identified current barriers to technology deployment and adoption by older adults and the disabled. I advocated a systems approach to product/service development that integrates adoption and delivery to users and caregivers alike is necessary if we are to see many of today’s technologies make a difference in the lives of older people tomorrow. To view video (click here)

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