Moving in with my kids (shudder) will hopefully be a last resort and I believe I am correct in assuming they feel the same. So, maybe it would be useful to get a head start and examine other housing options on the menu.

Retirement Communities

Not to be confused with nursing homes! Baby Boomers have a negative attitude about “homes for the aged” and apparently fear being put in one.  Hopefully, the Boomer generation’s desire to avoid entering the old-fashioned version of skilled nursing facilities will serve to propel the industry towards positive change. Some of these “homes” are rushing to update their style and the services offered to residents. One improvement taking place is the consideration of an older person’s wish to return to their own home after hospitalization. The result is a kind of rehabilitation halfway house located on the hospital’s campus. Also, most assisted living facilities are implementing culture changes such as a more inviting, homelike decor, less institutionalized attitudes, and allowing residents the ability to determine their own daily schedules.

These are welcome upgrades to nursing homes but let’s concentrate on healthy aging.

• UBRC- Unfamiliar with that acronym? It stands for University-Based Retirement Communities. Makes sense doesn’t it. You had a good time in college, right? Why not revisit that experience and find out what more a college town has to offer than frats, bars, and all night pizza delivery. Retirees can attend university concerts, art exhibits, and even sit in on classes. Residents might be of the erudite variety and oft times include past faculty members and alumni. Here are some UBRC’s to check out: The Village at Penn State, The Forest at Duke, Lasell Village, and Ithaca Longview.
• Niche retirement communities-These are unique in that the culture of the community is based around the retirees’ hobbies and interests. Explore these options: Burbank Senior Artists Colony, Chiefland Astronomy Village, for aging hippies Rocinante, serving retired letter carriers Nalcrest, amateur aviators flock to Spruce Creek Fly-In, and (oh so pretty)  equestrian lovers The Ridge at Chukker Creek.

Aging-in-Place

The Center for Disease Control has defined aging-in-place as “the ability to live in one’s own home and community safely, independently, and comfortably, regardless of age, income, or ability level.” The spark from this idea has been lighting up architectural firms, disability product companies, home health care agencies and technology start-ups all around the world. Aging Boomers can choose to pay off their home, remodel a bit and live out the rest of their healthy lives in the neighborhood they have grown to love. A whole new area in the residential remodeling industry has been created where having a CAPS (certified aging in place specialist) designation can give companies a competitive edge in helping a home-owner retrofit their home for physical age-related changes and future ailments. Using residential universal design ideas, a Baby Boomer can slowly make changes to living areas, such as kitchen and bath, that will accommodate and aid health limitations and still retain a certain design aesthetic. Once the house is set up for the eventualities of aging, the homeowner can still deal with incapacitating illness by employing medical home care helpers.

Check out these great ideas and products:

• Book:  Unassisted Living: Ageless Homes for Later Life by Wid Chapman & Jeffrey P. Rosenfeld
• Aging-in-Place Ideas for Kitchens
• Aging Safely Baths
• In Canada: Safe Bathing Centre

Other Retirement Living Ideas

• Retirement Recreational Vehicle Parks: Lots of parks cater to the 55+ crowd and one even provides special CARE (continuing assistance for retired escapees) Rainbow’s End RV Park Livingston, TX.
• Cruise Ship Living: Writer Brian Jaeger lists 6 Reasons to Consider Retirement on a Cruise. Among them are socialization, food, and service. He reasons that the cost can be significantly less than some high-end retirement communities. But if you have cashed out with plenty of retirement dough, you might want to own a piece of The World Residences at Sea.
• Living with your kids:  Crack open a bottle of Boone’s Farm and put some records on the stereo because Mom and Pop are moving in!!

Here’s hoping we all find our way home….

Traveling with children can also alter your world view-dramatically. When you hit the child-rearing stage of life, the term “vacation” is revised to mean “kid-friendly”. Disneyland, camping, skiing, lakes, beach trips etc. become part of your job description as parents. Spontaneity during a vacation with kids translates into  “Ok, Johnny is throwing up in the back seat so it looks like I’ll be staying in the car while you guys go see the Grand Canyon.”  You learn to pack the following on family vacations; patience, love of drive-thru fast food, and Dramamine. Memories (good and sometimes not so good) are made on these getaways. However, the biggest bonus is watching your child step out of their comfort zone by engaging with different landscapes, people, and cultures. Consequently, their world view is changed.

As I have finally begun the post-post-postpartum stage of life, I find myself a bit jealous of the collegiate career I passed up. Not only for the knowledge I would have acquired back then, but because I have no true alumni connection. I do realize that saves me from being badgered during dinner by annual phon-a-thons-which can be a  good thing. But when my husband and our kids (who all went 4 years to college) receive alumni magazines in the mail, I read them cover to cover. Isn’t that weird? Besides noting the enduring camaraderie  among the alums who send in updates, I also read about the interesting tour packages offered by alumni associations. Most are educationally focused and some (like Northwestern University) may provide a faculty member to host the trip and offer enrichment lectures. Groups of old college friends sometimes go together and send in accounts of the wonderfully planned excursions these trips entailed. I examine the destinations and itineraries and make a mental note that one day my husband and I should sign up and go. The irony is certainly not lost on me that I have come full circle from my younger days. Now, I am MORE than willing to trade spontaneous, fly-by-the-seat-of-my-pants travel for educationally-focused, college-associated, air/meals/hotel accommodations-included travel. I just want to show up and enjoy the fruits of travel research done by somebody else!

So, in light of this future fantasy of mine, I checked with a few colleges travel operators to see if you really HAVE to be an alumni to join the tour. Guess what? Your money is good without a diploma!! That being said, I absolutely believe in supporting the annual fund-raising efforts of colleges and universities. Even giving $5 to your graduating class when they call can help with their participation statistics. And remember just how much you enjoyed your 4 years of Higher Education. So, like the Beach Boys encourage us in their song–”Be True to Your School.”

Here are some of my favorite vicarious Alma Maters and links to their travel sites:

 University of North Texas

University of Texas-Austin

University of Missouri-Columbia

Cornell University

University of Colorado-Boulder

University of Pennsylvania

Louisiana State University

Another outdated signifier in the Boomer world is the word Grandma (maybe grandpa too, but I only know about female celebrities). If Blythe Danner and Goldie Hawn don’t want to be called grandma then maybe I don’t either. The term conjures up a photo I have of my grandma at just about the age I am now-but she looks so much older. She is grey-haired with no makeup, wearing a “housedress” and orthopedic shoes as she stands beside her stovetop………cooking. Much as I adored my grandma and have fond memories of time spent in that kitchen, I cannot relate to anything in either her appearance or her lifestyle (uh…cooking).

But is the “hope I die before I get old”  (again ladies and gentlemen-The Who) mantra just giving fuel to those who market to Baby Boomers? Not that there’s anything wrong with that. Figuring out what aging Boomers want and then passing information on to companies to produce those tangibles can be a good thing in terms of enhancing our quality of life. My grandma’s generation became almost invisible as they aged. The expectation was that older adults did things like sit quietly in a rocking chair, knit, play pinochle or tell stories about “the old country”.  Boomers are different. We will not go gentle into that good night. This generation is so fortunate to have choices about how we conduct our older adult life. Maybe we use anti-aging products, choose to have a second career, take Viagra or give up the house buy an RV and hit the road. None of these options seems to connote a typical “senior citizen”.

Before I knew about Susanna Starr‘s book entitled “Fifty and Beyond: New Beginnings in Health and Well-Being“, I thought the acronym for Fifty And Beyond (FAB) might be a nice shorthand term for aging Baby Boomers. After the British Invasion of 1962, “fab” (British slang for fabulous) crept into our vernacular as well. I think I first heard Patty (or Cathy?) call something “simply fab” on the The Patty Duke Show. Anyway, my programmer and I liked it enough to name the search feature on Snabbo–”Fab Finder”.

“Fab” is just one idea for updating “senior citizen”. Send me yours and I will post them on the Snabbo Home Page as our Featured Group. You can contact me through joining the Snabbo community (now there’s a thought),  send an email to marketing at snabbo dot com or direct message me on Twitter @snabbo.

Below is a bit of dialogue from one of my favorite scenes in the movie “Parenthood”.  For more click here.

Julie: [door slams as Tod leaves after having a fight with Julie] If he thinks I’m having his baby now, he’s crazy!
Helen: [shocked] Baby?
George Bowman: Your daughter’s having a baby?
Helen: [even more shocked] A baby?
George Bowman: You’re going to be a grandma?
Helen: [laughs incredulously] No, no, no, no. I’m too young to be a grandmother. Grandmothers are old. They bake, and they sew, and they tell you stories about the Depression.
[shouts]
Helen: I was at Woodstock, for Christ’s sake! I peed in a field! I hung on to The Who’s helicopter as it flew away!
[gestures wildly]
George Bowman: I was at Woodstock.
Helen: [shouts] Oh yeah? I thought you looked familiar!

Grandma & Me

My mother’s experience is nothing new to researchers who investigate aging and technology as well as the learning process unique to older adults.  The notion behind older adult learning theory is that immediate relevance and problem-solving are the biggest motivators for acquiring knowledge in an unfamiliar area.  It took a while but many senior citizens finally gave in and joined Facebook because communicating with their grandchildren was a very relevant priority in their lives. In fact, some of those grandkids had more patience than their parents and took the time to show their grandparents how to set up a profile page.  Who would have thought that helping Granny post her “status” would replace baking chocolate chip cookies as an inter-generational bonding activity? My favorite adult child teaching their parents how to navigate the tech world is Tech Savvy Daughter. Her family outgrew the need for her computer skills so now she kindly helps the rest of us! More senior centers and other areas where older adults gather have also gotten on board in terms of providing both computers and computer education programs. Companies like SeniorNet and Senior Surf are two that come to mind.

The need to problem-solve is an additional motivator for learning in later years. Knowing how to search the Internet for information in such areas as healthcare, travel arrangements and particularly Medicare questions is so important for seniors who want to remain independent. The issue of retaining independence as we age will certainly be enhanced by rapid technological advances in home monitoring and health devices. Products like Apple Interactive Care, Life Alert (“Help! I’ve fallen and I can’t get up”) and Philips Medication Dispensing Service have provided seniors living alone and their children at least some peace of mind.

But luckily (at least for now), my mother is very content using her iPod for pure entertainment. Rockin’ out to Frank Sinatra while she slings Angry Birds at those annoying little pigs.

However, I believe trying to overcome these obstacles in pursuit of knowledge are well worth the effort.  Research studies purport that continuing education beyond retirement age can positively impact quality of life in older persons. Also, given the current fast-moving digital age we live in, even learning minimal technology skills could be beneficial to connecting the retiree to an ever transient social community of family and friends.

It may sound as if I have known about lifelong learning initiatives and the mental health “perks” associated with it for some time. In truth, I have only recently become aware of this global trend. When I launched Snabbo in 2009, I tried to dream up ways to get the word out about a new online social network geared to Baby  Boomers. I reasoned that colleges and universities might be teaching computer skills to older adults. As I began an Internet search, I was amazed to discover lifelong learning programs that were available literally around the world. Upon closer examination of  what courses were being offered, I noticed classes with titles such as  “How to Use Facebook” or “Get your face on Facebook”. The thought occurred to me that if colleges were teaching Facebook to older adults then maybe they would include Snabbo in the curriculum as an example of a “niche” social network.  Rather than compose an email to send to the program directors of these institutions, I chose to make personal phone calls explaining my idea. I spoke to some amazingly dedicated individuals who have seen firsthand what a wonderful difference expanding knowledge in later life can make. I heard stories of lonely widows/widowers whose once a week class attendance gave them access to much-needed social interaction as well as new friends. People who may have been viewed as “old dogs” were actually learning new tricks. Some programs offered reduced tuition, scholarships, and rides to class. In the end, I became obsessed with finding out about each program and called program directors all over the world. SERIOUSLY. Some followed through and added Snabbo to their curriculum when they taught social network classes. But I was the one who actually learned something.

One problem I see is that lifelong learning opportunities don’t appear to get enough strong PR in some communities. Finding money in the budget for advertising is probably a huge issue for these programs. Therefore, any credible “free press” they can get must be appreciated.  I applaud Mr. Bernard’s blog post for directing attention to this topic. He includes some wonderful links to lifelong learning programs and other relevant websites.

Here are some links from my VERY long list. Feel free to contact me if you would like access to any more locations.

Osher Lifelong Learning Institute

SeniorNet

Plus50 Community Colleges: Ageless Learning

Encore Careers

Road Scholar

We researched other Baby Boomer websites and other niche social networks. We tried to cull what we liked and didn’t like from them all. Jake is an extremely talented programmer and he was able to develop any new ideas we decided to implement for the site.

As I have mentioned before in my earlier blogs, all meetings with Jake were basically ”virtual”. Either we met on the phone while looking at the development site for Snabbo or we discussed points via email. For me, it was a very unusual way to start a business, conduct business or just discuss important business matters. I bring this point up again only because I find it relevant to Baby Boomers who are thinking of re-joining the workforce. You might want to take a course or two on how to conduct searches on the internet and how to most effectively use email and all forms of social media.

Anyway, back to Snabbo.

So, Jake and I would try to thoroughly talk through and refine each feature of Snabbo before we went on to the next level of development. I must say here that I was chomping at the bit to get the website finished and launched. But Jake was influential in persuading me to slow down and take the necessary time and thought to create a product that was sophisticated and elegant in its functionality. I feel we did that with Snabbo. It was very tempting to rush through the process and get a website publically launched as soon as possible. Other programmers had offered that “carrot” to me as part of their development quote. In the end, I believe I would have sacrificed a lot of design techniques and features that, by developing the website thoughtfully with Jake, I feel we now have on Snabbo.

The final product works like this. Members upload one photograph of themselves taken any time during the 1940’s through the 1980’s to serve as their identifying “Member Profile” picture. The concept is that Snabbo enables the Baby Boomer generation to behave as if we had both the internet and social networking sites when we were young. On Snabbo, we can have a ‘face book’ experience–only with the same ‘face’ we had in our heyday.

Finding friends on Snabbo is easier than on other social networking sites since members list all the names they have been known as during their lifetime. For example, you may have been known as Margaret Smith in elementary school, Maggie Smith in high school, Tootsie Smith in college and finally Meg Eldringhoff when you got married. Members are also able to list (with corresponding years) towns they grew up in, schools they attended, companies they have worked for and organizations they have joined, including the military. The more information members provide about their past, the more likely someone can reconnect with them. So, if a person only remembers that in 1959 they went to a party where they met a girl whose name was Jane and she lived in Toledo, Ohio where she went to Mercy College School of Nursing-if she is a member of Snabbo-It’s a BINGO!

As a bonus, and unique to Snabbo, the website automatically creates a move by move, place by place chronological personal history that the member invariably finds interesting and reflective. Ultimately, Snabbo members have the opportunity to become a community that builds an extensive, searchable database of their peers, thus opening abundant reconnection possibilities.

In addition, Snabbo features a slick and easy photo tool. Members can create, manage and share eye-catching albums. Snabbo also provides opportunities to form or join groups with shared interests and the freedom to document their thoughts, opinions and feelings on a blog. Private messages between members can also be exchanged within the site. All under the aegis of strict privacy controls….and it’s free.

Snabbo is as mature-user friendly as we could make it. We tried to keep in mind that our target demographic may or may not be Internet savvy. A significant number of baby boomers have not yet been exposed to social networking and we wanted Snabbo to be a successful first time user-experience for them.

Even Snabbo’s advertising model caters to the desire to reminisce. Throughout the site, members will encounter nostalgic-focused products that relate to this inimitable generation.

Since there are so many items to attend to when you are a novice in starting a website, I have decided to neatly bullet point as many as I recall:

• Write a business plan. It is boring and tedious, but the task itself helps you focus on what you want your business to look like. In the end, you may never need to show it to anyone, nevertheless, it will prove to be a useful exercise.
• Register for a trademark as soon as possible. The process takes FOREVER and you want to have your logo secure when you launch if possible.You can either hire a trademark attorney. I recommend John Cone of Hitchcock Evert in Dallas Texas. You can also do it yourself www.uspto.gov/teas, but it is very confusing and time consuming. There are a number of costs involved and in the end you don’t know if you did it correctly and may need a lawyer anyway to fix it!
• Purchase all domains that you can think of with similar spellings to your website. Your programmer can then point the DNS to all those domains. Then, if anyone makes a mistake in the spelling of your web address they are correctly directed to your website.
• Do research on web hosting services. Your programmer can probably help you make that decision. Make sure they will offer you a refund if you are unhappy with their performance.
• Apply for accreditation with the Better Business Bureau. Look into obtaining a certified privacy seal confirmation from TRUSTe.com. Both of these companies charge yearly fees, so you should weigh the options about user confidence in your website versus money out the wallet.
• Incorporate your business. A good Certified Public Accountant can assist you. I recommend Dale H. Quenzer in Dallas, Texas. If you choose to incorporate you will need to keep up with your shareholder meeting notes.
• Have a Non Disclosure Agreement available. You can cherry pick from templates on the internet and make your own. You just need to have people you tell about your idea sign this agreement. Hopefully, it keeps everyone honest.

Even though I had gotten comfortable with working “virtually” with Marianne, I liked the idea that the grad student was located in Dallas. We met and settled on an agreeable price to both of us. He began work on the programming of the site. This was June. I got back to Jake Carlson and told him that I was going to be working with the grad student, but if that didn’t work out I would get back in touch.

As the summer went on, I thought our meetings were productive and that launch of the Snabbo.com website would be by the end of the year. Then on Labor Day, I got a phone call from my programmer. He had just started his Fall Semester of school. He felt that his graduate studies work load would be too much for him to handle along with the programming of Snabbo. He was sincerely apologetic, but believed he should drop out of the project. I cried for two days.

I called Marianne who gave me a friend of hers name who might know someone. I also tried posting on Craigslist.org and got a huge response from programmers who work in India. Their price was right, but I was too worried about quality control and I wanted someone that could be as emotionally-invested in this project as I was.

I called Jake Carlson, again. I had never met him personally since he lived in a different city. I was gun-shy about putting my entire trust in another programmer to finish the project. Jake’s idea was to build Snabbo from scratch instead of cobbling together social network applications that were already available. After a several phone conversations, I began to feel confident about Jake’s grasp of the Snabbo concept and his programming abilities. We signed a contract and he began work at the end of September, 2008.

I contacted Jack by phone and he was amazingly generous with his time and advice. I took copious notes and tried to implement all that he suggested. He said that first I needed a web designer. Jack recommended Marianne Guillen at http://www.array-design.com/. She agreed to help me with the concept and began working on the templates for the website. Communicating by emails and phone calls, we talked through the possibilities of how my concept should look. At first, I was unsure how you could work with someone without ever physically meeting them. But I got used to the “virtual” meetings fairly quickly. After a short time, Marianne had some ideas to show me. Not only does Marianne produce beautiful website designs, she is able to quickly grasp the ideas that the client is trying to communicate. Marianne understood I was a novice-both in starting a website and owning a company. She was a wonderful resource for connecting me with friends of hers to talk to about the joys and pitfalls of being a web startup.

Next on the to-do list: Find a computer programmer.

I finally settled on an acronym- SNABBO-Social Network Allowing Baby Boomers Only.

Once I had purchased the domain name, I became consumed with figuring out what the website would look like and what features it would offer. I looked at as many other social networks I could find online, noting what I liked and didn’t like about each. Most of the ones that tried to appeal to the Baby Boomer demographic seemed to focus on topics that pertained to a middle aged person’s life. I thought that was useful for getting important information out to my age group. But, personally, I preferred to think of myself as younger and hipper, than someone who has embarrassing incontinence issues when they laugh too hard.

I felt that Snabbo should be a haven away from the realities of middle age problems. Aging parents, Viagra, and menopause need to be discussed, but not on my Home Page! I also began to notice something about my friends. Over leisurely dinners (since no one needed to rush back to let the babysitter go home) these friends were now more inclined to reminisce and tell stories from way back in high school and college. Turns out they really did miss their glory days.

Here is what I wanted the website to do for Baby Boomers:

• Allow them to post a photograph from the past as their profile picture. A photo that would let people recognize their old friends even though they might not recognize them now.
• Have a profile registration process that gleaned as much information as possible from the member. This would enable someone to search for another person and find them even if they only remembered the person’s first name and elementary school they attended. In other words, the information in the database would be fine-grained. The more information you added to site, the greater the search result yields. I also hoped that these kinds of detailed searches might allow scattered families to reunite, help genealogy enthusiasts’ flesh out their family trees, and aid any adoptee searching for their biological roots.
• As the sixties rolled through the Boomer Generation, many people of my generation began to experience a desire to “repair the world”. A concept that ancient Hebrews referred to as Tikkun Olam. The ideology of the 60’s and 70’s had once sparked my peers to get cause-conscious. I wanted to embrace that idea again on Snabbo. I wanted members to use the website to make other members aware of any worthy causes, charities, or needy individuals. I wanted to have links to such great organizations as kiva.org, sixdegrees.org, and booksforafrica.org.I hoped that Snabbo might enable the strength of the Baby Boomer population (roughly 78 million in the U.S.) to be a force for good in the world.
•  Join similar interest groups - I wanted Boomers to be able to explore interests and hobbies that they may have put on hold while they were too busy working, raising families, etcetera.
• Lastly, I wanted Snabbo to be easy to use. Researching online use by Baby Boomers, I found that, although the figure was growing, only a small percentage of my peer group was internet savvy, much less a member of any social network website. There were all sorts of things to consider in this area. The font needed to be a bit larger, explanations of how to use the features had to be prominently displayed and no assumptions could be made that the user had ever been exposed to tools that are commonly incorporated in navigating a website.

A big list, I know, but I have big hopes …