Feature Article of Monday, 10 September 2012

Columnist: Abugri, George Sydney

Source: Sydney Abugri Writing and Editing Services

Health experts are unanimous in their warning that whatever is not used atrophies or wastes away and dies slowly and that this is particularly the case with the human body.

If you want to keep physically fit and healthy, regular exercise is the answer. This basic law of health if broken or violated, leads to sickness emphasizes Dr. Edward Narh of the Narh-Bita Hospital in Tema.

Most members of keep fit clubs and patrons of gymnasiums confirm that they are usually clear-minded and alert after exercising. This, Dr. Narh explains, is because exercise makes the heart and brain work better as they receive adequate supplies of oxygen.

Since joining a keep fit club, I eat better, sleep better and no longer suffer frequently from colds, fever and bodily pains as I used to, concedes a female bank official in her fifties who belongs to a fitness club in Accra.

Unfortunately, informal surveys suggest that many Ghanaians in vocations and professions which do not require any physical have not engaged in physical exercise for many years.

As a result, according to the Ministry of Health, about 60 per cent of adult deaths in Ghana are attributable to heart-related and other non-communicable diseases resulting from sedentary life styles.

The good news is that a fitness craze appears to now be in vogue in many parts of Ghana and large numbers of people are joining keep fit clubs and enrolling with gymnasiums for regular exercise.

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Health: Ghana’s new era of gyms and keep fit clubs.

For a notion once synonymous with the"golden years," the idea of retirement today conjures up at least as much anxiety as pleasant anticipation for many of the baby boomersfast approaching it.The financial crisis took a hefty toll on both their 401(k)s and their confidence, with a host of articles warning about the unpreparedness of the next generation of retirees.

And it's not just a perception issue.Elevated unemploymentanda housing market still well off its highscombine withinflationary health-care costs and stubbornly low yields to paint a difficult picture for retirement, just about any way you slice it.

This week, Morningstareditors and strategists, including our director of personal finance ChristineBenz, as well as notable outside expertswill tackle the issues head-on,with a practicallook at controlling retirement expenses, anticipatingnew spending patterns, playing catch-up, and prepping a portfolio for drawdown mode. We'll cap off the week with a live Q&A where you can pose your own retirement-related questions to our expert panel.

Though the retirement landscape is challenging,we believe investors can gain some comfort and control by assessing their current situation and crafting a sensible plan to maximize their saving and investing efforts.This week, we aim to stack the deck in your favor. Be sure to bookmark this page and return each day, asnew reportsare posted. And don't forget to tune in Friday for our live Q&A webcast; we look forward to hearing from you!

Monday, Sept. 10: How Much Do You Need in Retirement? Digging Into the 80% Rule for Income Replacement in Retirement Consider these swing factors to create a customized income-replacement rate.

Will Your Income Needs Trend Down as You Age? The data may say yes, but there are some important considerations to bear in mind.

What Unexpected Expenses Crop Up in Retirement? Dental care, as well as skyrocketing health-insurance premiums and property taxes, top readers' lists of unwelcome in-retirement costs.

Don't Discount Inflation When Planning for Retirement As seniors' spending patterns change, so too does their exposure to rising prices.

Related Reports from Morningstar's Archives:

Tuesday, Sept. 11: Are You on Track?

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Morningstar's Retirement Readiness Week

For years, the financial-services industry has drilled the "80% rule" into pre-retirees' heads, suggesting that they'll need to replace 80% of their pre-retirement income when they retire.

Other variations on setting an income-replacement ratio--simply the retiree's gross income from all sources in retirement divided by his or her pre-retirement income--come in around the same ballpark. For example, T. Rowe Price has proposed 75% as a good threshold for planning purposes. As the firm's senior financial planner Christine Fahlund discusses in this video, retirees will no longer have the "expense" of saving a portion of their income for retirement. And that factor is not insignificant: According to T. Rowe's recommendation, 15% of pre-retirees' income should be saved for retirement.

Nor will retirees have to pay FICA taxes for Social Security and Medicare, which amount to another 7.65% of incomes. (The Social Security component of FICA has been temporarily reduced to 4.2% through the end of 2012, but it is set to go back up to 6.2% at the beginning of 2013; the Medicare component of FICA is another 1.45% of income.) That assertion is corroborated by Aon Consulting's Replacement Rate Study, which concludes that in 2008, a 78% income replacement rate would allow a 65-year-old with $60,000 pre-retirement income to retire in 2008 with the same standard of living he or she had while working. In that scenario, reduced taxes during retirement account for much of the difference between the amount of pre- and post-retirement income required to keep the standard of living stable.

These savings come without even redeeming a single Groupon, let alone taking bigger-ticket measures to reduce costs in retirement. Indeed, others spend substantially less than 75% or 80% of their working incomes during retirement, as many retired readers noted in this Discuss forum thread. Yes, there may be the often-discussed reductions in commuting costs, lunches out, and clothes that come along with quitting work. But retirees can also reduce their in-retirement income needs by making bigger-ticket changes such as downsizing or paying off their homes. And as Laurence Kotlikoff and Scott Burns assert in this blog post, retirees are also likely to be off the hook for child-related expenses like college tuition that they might have had while they were working. Moreover, retirees who were saving much more than the 15% pre-retirement savings rate that underpins the 80% rule also may be able to get by on much less than they did while they were working, simply because they're not saving as much, if anything.

Does that mean the 80% rule is just a plot by the financial-services industry to get people to sock more away than they actually need to, thereby increasing the assets on which they can charge fees? Not necessarily. After all, health-care costs have the potential to swing substantially higher during retirement than they were when a person was younger, so a conservative retiree might use a rate even higher than 80% for planning purposes. People with lower incomes before retirement should, by and large, also employ a higher income-replacement rate than higher-income workers. At the same time, very high-income earners will want to plan for a replacement rate that's well above 80%, for reasons Ill outline in a moment.

The fact is, any "rule of thumb," like the 80% rule for income-replacement, is a blunt instrument--a reasonable starting point, but one that can be refined with consideration of your personal circumstances. A useful starting point, especially if you're getting close to retirement, is to prepare an in-retirement budget. Here are some of the key swing factors to bear in mind when deciding how to set your own income-replacement rate.

Level of Pre-Retirement IncomeThe Aon study showed that a retiree earning $90,000 prior to retirement would need to replace 78% of his or her pre-retirement income during retirement to maintain a steady standard of living, while one who retired with a $20,000 salary would need to replace 94%. A retiree with a working salary between those two poles--$50,000--would need an 80% replacement rate to maintain his or her standard of living.

Why the big variation? For starters, less-affluent workers don't typically save at the same level as wealthier ones while working, given that living expenses consume a big share of the former group's budgets during the working years. They also pay less in taxes as a percentage of their incomes than their wealthier peers while working, so tax savings will provide less of a benefit to them in retirement than it will for wealthier retirees. Another factor driving higher replacement rates for less affluent retirees is that they're not likely to have as much leeway to bring their living costs down during retirement as their more affluent peers, because spending on basic needs is a bigger share of their budgets than discretionary items such as dining out and travel. Meanwhile, less-affluent retirees' health-care costs may be every bit as high as their wealthier counterparts. Thus, although it may seem counterintuitive, it's wise to nudge your replacement rate above 80% if your income falls toward the lower end of the levels described above, and perhaps slightly below it if your pre-retirement income is at or above $90,000.

At the same time, it's worth noting that those with very high pre-retirement incomes--$150,000 and above--may need higher income-replacement rates than those with pre-retirement incomes of $60,000 or $90,000. Taxes are the reason, because a greater share of their in-retirement income will come from taxable sources of income such as traditional IRAs and 401(k)s.

Savings HabitsYour pre-retirement savings habits should also figure into the assumptions you use. The Aon study assumed an average rate of savings--about 5% for those earning $60,000 and about 6% for those earning $90,000, according to the Bureau of Labor Statistics' Consumer Expenditure Survey data employed in the Aon study. If you were making $90,000 when you retired but saved less than 6% of your salary, you'd want to use a higher replacement rate for planning purposes than would otherwise be typical for your income band. Meanwhile, a $60,000 earner who was saving 25% of his or her salary while working could obviously get by with an income-replacement rate of 75% or even less.

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Digging Into the 80% Rule for Income Replacement in Retirement

When should people start saving for retirement?

Although the economy is still showing unsteady legs, an individual can plan for retirement. Whether you can contribute money to a savings account now or create a plan for when you can start contributing, any step toward a future retirement goal is better than doing nothing.

When determining the total amount needed to retire, professor LaRoe suggests using a financial planner. If you do not have one, start searching for one immediately. The sooner you start planning for retirement, the more you can begin making your future retirement plans.

If you can't afford a financial planner, there are many ways to stash away even $50 per month to get you into the routine of compiling your nest egg. Automatic payday bank transfers into an account earmarked for retirement is one technique individuals use. This can help ensure you begin your journey to a stable, long-term retirement.

Some individuals use investment plans and put their money into 401(k) accounts or individual retirement accounts while others are still not able to do so. The first step can be the hardest, but don't give up.

We would like to thank Ross LaRoe, associate professor of economics at Denison University, for his insight.

Read more here:
Retirement planning: Start saving now

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The Personal Touch In Iraq

For its part, al Qaeda boasted of carrying out 131 attacks during Ramadan (July 21 through August 18). Islamic radicals consider it particularly pious to kill enemies of Islam during the holy month of Ramada. In this case the terrorists were careful to point out that most of the 131 attacks were directed at the security forces and members of pro-government militias. Iraq is now a democracy and al Qaeda considers democracy anti-Islamic.

The recent sharp decline is the result of several other factors. First, the Sunni terrorist groups could not sustain the level of violence they began in January (when 225 victims died). Second, pressure from the government (in reaction to public anger) produced more tips from citizens, more neighborhood self-defense groups and more effective performance by the police. Third, some Sunni Islamic terrorists (mainly foreigners) have gone to fight in Syria, where the Sunni majority is rebelling against the Shia minority dictatorship. The feeling is that, at the very least, Sunni terror groups will have sanctuary in Syria once the Shia government is overthrown. That would enable to the Sunni terrorists to use Syria as a base for continued attacks on the majority Shia government of Iraq.

Finally, the Sunni terrorists have cut back on their bombing attacks and switched to more assassination operations against police and military commanders. This is an effort to get the security forces to back off on their efforts to wipe out Sunni terror groups. This sort of thing requires less manpower and can often be contracted out to professional assassins (of which there were always a lot of in Iraq). The Sunni terrorists are aware that their attacks on Shia civilians are unpopular with many Sunnis, because in the past this kind of violence led to a major campaign by Shia terrorist groups (who have been quiet lately) against Sunni civilians.

The assassination campaign is one of the main reasons the police leadership is so poor and corrupt. When you are spending most of your time just trying to stay alive, job performance suffers. And it's not just Islamic terrorists coming after you, there are also gangsters looking for some cooperation, or trying to get you to switch loyalty from another gangster. This is why curbing corruption is so important, as it is the source of most problems in the country.

Read more from the original source:
The Personal Touch In Iraq

Gallery: Neighborhood watch groups' success linked to being good neighbors

One leader is a 79-year-old Panamanian immigrant and stroke survivor.

The other is 63 years old and blind - the victim of a gunshot wound to the head 40 years ago on the streets of Los Angeles.

Despite the personal challenges they have faced, Mearily Clark and Ruben Hernandez have both taken on additional tough circumstances in crime-ridden areas to become the linchpins for two of the most successful neighborhood watch programs in the San Gabriel Valley.

"When I moved here in 1985, it was horrible," said Clark, a resident of Kings Villages apartments in Northwest Pasadena. "There was `No Neck' and those guys. You couldn't walk here at night, sweetheart. Now, it's cleaned up."

When Ruben Hernandez moved to the North Whittier area 25 years ago to be closer to his wife's family, he said to himself, "This is a nice neighborhood, but it belongs to the criminals."

So, after handing out lots of fliers and overcoming people's doubts about following a blind man, he formed a neighborhood watch group.

It started with meetings of just three or four people. "Then it grew and grew," he said.

Now, the area is 95 percent graffiti free, gang free and crime is low,

More than 30 San Gabriel Valley communities last month celebrated National Night Out, an annual block party and community building event celebrated by neighborhood watch groups intended to send "a message to criminals letting them know that neighborhoods are organized and fighting back," according to the National Night Out organizing group.

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Neighborhood watch groups' success linked to being good neighbors

Click photo to enlarge

Jennifer Han.

Jennifer Han travels the way of the gentle warrior -- loving daughter and sister, mother hen to everyone she meets, a magnetic, pied-piper-of-a smiling personality.

But her passion bubbles constantly to the surface. Han, a six-time national amateur champion, is now 8-1-1 as a professional boxer. She loves the sport. She lives the sport.

Her smile, her infectious enthusiasm pulls you in ... whether she is talking about her recent trip to Russia as an assistant coach for the U.S. Junior Olympic boys team or her last fight, the one in Fort Worth where she had to gain 10 pounds in four days just so she could have a fight.

"I was so honored to be chosen as a coach for the boys team," said the 29-year-old Han, a graduate of

Han helped coach the 15-16 year-old boys through two-and-a-half weeks in Russia, fighting two teams from Russia, one from Germany and one from Ireland.

"It was a great experience," Han said. "Of course, I've already been through the whole, 'Why is a girl coaching boys' thing.' I've done that most of my life (at her father's martial arts studio). I've been through all that. And the boys were great."

One older assistant coach had a problem with a young woman coaching boys

Chuckling, Han said, "I think about half the boys had a crush on me. But they were nice and polite and they really responded to me as a coach."

See more here:
El Pasoan Jennifer Han's passion for boxing leads to wins, coaching

A QUEENSLAND obesity researcher has said adolescent girls need to improve their fitness and diet if they are to avoid health issues when they decide to start a family.

Griffith Health Institute's Professor Andrew Hills is exploring the relationship between excess fat in teenage girls and the health outcomes of mothers and babies during and after pregnancy.

In the most recent Queensland Child Health Report (2011), it was found that nearly 20% of teenage girls were overweight or obese.

"There has been a significant gap in research when it comes to obesity, with the teenage years being a crucial area," Professor Hills said.

"If young women are overweight or obese they could have significant issues when they wish to start a family in early adulthood."

Professor Hills believes there needs to be a concerted effort to change how we develop healthy children into healthy women.

"The goal needs to be to have healthy teenage girls. Unhealthy practices and patterns tend to cluster and compound on each other as we develop and obesity can be very harmful to developing babies in utero.

"What is worse is that obesity in the mother may pre-program poor health into the metabolism of the baby and then the problem snowballs," he said.

Part of the answer, Professor Hills believes, is in a return to more physical activity in daily life including comprehensive physical education and nutrition programs in high schools to help prevent the obesity problem.

"We have engineered physical activity out of daily life. Fundamental changes need to occur in a number of settings, including school at all levels."

Continue reading here:
A need for teen girls to get physical

Posted on September 10, 2012, Monday

BANDAR SERI BEGAWAN: LANEIGE Brunei Darussalam yesterday embarked on its corporate and social responsibility initiative highlighting health concerns with its slogan Beauty through Healthy Lifestyle at The Mall, Gadong, Borneo Bulletin reported.

The Health Campaign was supported by the Health Promotion Centre (HPC), the Ministry of Health, Embassy of the Republic of Korea in Brunei Darussalam, JPMC Fitness Centre and Susans Fitness Studio.

The aim of organising the Health Campaign was to deliver the message that a balanced daily diet and regular exercise, together with a proper daily skincare regimen are the key to staying smart, beautiful and confident.

At the same time it also aimed to achieve a complete form of what is considered to be a healthy lifestyle, as there is never a one night miracle to stay young and beautiful without putting on the effort from inside out.

According to the Marketing Executive Pat Li, LANEIGE Brunei Darussalam realised that the importance of staying healthy is fundamental for every nation and every generation in the country, in order to have the energy to accomplish their future goals.

LANEIGE emphasised the concept of understanding how the body functions in order to deal with skin issues as skin is the largest organ in our body and it is a barometer of our overall level of health.

One of the highlights of the event was a Healthy Snack Making Contest with a Korean Fusion Food theme that was strongly supported by the Korean Embassy in Brunei Darussalam.

Talking about the contest, Pat Li said there were 34 submissions of recipes, and seven finalists have been chosen based on their recipes on overall healthiness and Korean influence.

At the same time, the Korean Embassy contributed an exquisite set of Korean traditional costume called Hanbok for the grand prize winner Susan Fong Sia Sun, for her dish rendang roast beef with kim chi, mushroom and sesame rice cake.

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LANEIGE Embarks On Health And Beauty Campaign

The oldest Baby Boomers began turning 66 this year the full-retirement age for collecting Social Security benefits but many are claiming their benefits early because of the troubled economy, poor job market and fears about potential changes to the retirement system.

Unfortunately for some retirees, the decision to claim their benefits early could cost them tens of thousands of dollars down the road.

Three out of four eligible area residents start taking Social Security retirement benefits early, even though for some people the decision will permanently reduce their lifetime payments and could cost retirees or their spouses some important income later in life, according to a Middletown Journal/Hamilton JournalNews analysis.

Social Security is the primary source of income for many older Ohioans and delaying benefits until the full retirement age or beyond increases the size of the monthly payments.

Ohioans who are in good health, intend to keep working, expect to live a long time and have spouses may want to delay claiming benefits because oftentimes it turns out to be a better financial decision in the long run, experts said.

For some people its worth taking early, like if you are unhealthy, you become unemployed or your investment returns are low or you really, really need income, said John Bowblis, assistant professor of economics and research fellow with Scripps Gerontology at Miami University. But for the typical person, waiting until 66 is probably going to be a better solution.

Social Security retirement benefits are provided to people who have worked for at least a decade, and the payment amounts are based on workers 35 highest earning years.

People can begin collecting Social Security benefits when they turn 62, but the full retirement age is 65 for people born in 1937 or earlier, and 67 for people born after 1960. Taking benefits before reaching the full retirement age reduces the size of the payments. People who retire at 62 will on average receive a monthly payment about 25 to 30 percent less than if they waited until their full retirement age.

Delayed benefits yield larger payout

Every case is different, but people who start receiving benefits earlier get smaller amounts because they are expected to receive more payments, and people who delay collections receive larger payments because they will receive fewer of them.

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More people taking retirement benefits early