PLANNING CONCERNS I recently attended the Financial Planning Association's (formerly the International Association for Financial Planning) Annual Success Conference held in Boston. According to consumer perception polls, Financial Planning (FP) is now regarded as the number one profession in the United States because we have lots of time off and are very wealthy. Just a slight media exaggeration! In reality, most comprehensive financial planners work long hours for less pay than most lawyers and high tech systems engineers, plus we bring ethics and passion to our profession with a holistic approach of equal parts financial management, objectiveness and financial counseling. Money (and the lack thereof) is so emotionally draining for clients that some financial planning firms now have a psychologist on staff.

Almost 4,000 financial professionals from the United States and 20 international countries among them, Germany, Australia, New Zealand, Bermuda, Malaysia, Japan, Singapore, United Kingdom, Ireland, France, Saudi Arabia, Canada, met in intensive sessions over four days to discuss, debate and digest the state of our profession and the changing financial landscape.

Among the 60 education courses offered, Financial Planning Professionals(FPPs) presented seminars on recent developments in the retirement planning process.

One very impressive female FPP, who was voted one of the best 200 financial planning professionals in the United States for the year 2000 by Worth magazine, spoke of her worries relative to her own family situation.

Her award, by the way, was for consistently superior service and innovative solutions for her clients. She spoke of her two very elderly great-aunts and an uncle, already over 99 years; one of them had already been institutionalised for 15 years.

Her mother is still a fully functioning human being at 95, while her very own projected life expectancy is 110 years or longer! The US Internal Revenue Service recently adjusted upward its mortality tables by four years. FPP's feel that even these life expectancy adjusted numbers are unrealistic. We have been routinely using at least 90 or 95 years of age as a mortality benchmark to project retirement income needs.

THE OVERWHELMING THEME THROUGOUT THE CONFERENCE WAS THE VERY SERIOUS CONCERN OF OUR CLIENTS OUTLIVING THEIR RETIREMENT INCOME.

HOW LONG DO YOU THINK YOU WILL LIVE? How long you will live is based partly upon the genetic and mortality factors in your family and partly pure luck. Mortality is simply another way of saying, what is the statistically calculated average life expectancy for a particular age group? Gender also must be considered in the statistical curves. Sorry, gentlemen, but we ladies on average live much longer (eight years) than you do. Those of you gentlemen planning on taking charge of your physical health, here is a wakeup call.

RECENT AGE CONCERN ISSUES Bermudians are very, very long-lived people. After visiting many times at a local Rest Home, the ages of the lovely people residing there ranged (both men and women) from 82 to 100, with quite a few over 90. So, I decided to have a look at my own family's life expectancy and mortality ages.

My granny passed at age 94 after a survival life that would have killed most people today. We have vivid memories of her; bent over a sewing machine at age 87 (with a perpetual cigarette butt hanging out of her mouth) and chasing her dog while jumping over a three-foot stone wall (same age). The dear thing chain-smoked until her demise, even though she occasionally lit the ends of her hair on fire.

My poor mother (the caregiver) would go berserk at these antics, but granny had an indomitable will. Widowed early and pregnant (twins, one of whom died within a year), my granny at age 40 struggled for a marginal existence for the next fifty-four years. She would have become a statistic without her dressmaking, which she practiced well into her eighties. Later as her eyesight failed, although she fiercely resisted, she became dependent upon her children, among them my father, himself trying to feed, clothe and educate seven children. Her story (and many, many others) is not unusual in those days of no safety nets. What will be the safety net today and into the future? Using a life expectancy table for myself, taking into consideration the genetic family factors and general health, it was still very, very shocking to see that I will still be twirling and talking at 105 years of age! Readers, you could become bored of me by then; I could become very, very bored of me by then! THE GOLDEN HANDSHAKE If you are currently employed in Bermuda and in many civilised economies, when you reach 65 years of age, you will be presented with the golden handshake.

Years ago, entrenched tradition gave you a watch after such long years of service (or a plaque depending upon the generosity of your company); but, whatever the commemorative gift was, the hard, cold fact is, in most circumstances and for the first time in many cases, you are OUT THE DOOR AND OUT OF WORK. And the way that you define yourself and are defined within your community has changed forever.

Many people cannot wait for this golden age, have lots of things planned and trips to take. But I really wonder how many of you (whatever your age is right now) have actually thought about the projected life span in your family genes.

Forget about all those rosy, retired things the media espouse, such as golden golf, golden trips, golden grand children, golden healthy lifestyle and so on.

The reality, dear readers, we know may be much different. As long as we park our thinking about that "far-off time'' as another of life's pleasant experiences, everything today is cool! Right? TAKING THIS issue on personal basis, in ten years, I and YOU AND anyone else IN THE BABY BOOMER AGE BRACKETS can start looking for leisure wear on a full-time basis. Does this sound like scare tactics, you bet? Does this sound like a hidden agenda? No, the agenda is right out in the open! Besides personal responsibility for our own financial lives, collectively we have to, must plan for the future for all of our productive society members in a different way. As a Comprehensive Financial Planner, my own and my profession's fear of our clients of outliving their assets is very, very real (and already documented in case after case)! A NEW TIER OF MATURE PROFESSIONAL EMPLOYEES (MPE's) Given a choice, most seniors want to work, need to work and quite frankly, we need them to work. First of all, let's ban the WORD "SENIORS''. Isn't it interesting that within a corporate business culture, the word senior, as in senior vice president, senior management, etc., connotes powerful images of cachet and success? Take away the words business culture and "a senior moment'' becomes a diminishing, almost contemptuous term. Perhaps because stripping away meaningful work in life can diminish anyone.

Second, I submit to you that mature professional employees (MPE's) are among our most valuable resources. Restructuring, rethinking and rejection of artificial retirement age thresholds is long overdue. Mature professionals can and do fill ancillary and mentor roles, act as consultants to smaller businesses, relief positions and as floating multi-department advisors. Some forward thinking firms already have implemented innovative methods to circumvent the mandatory retirement age.

However, under the present Bermuda Pension law, after age 65, an MPE can still make his/her voluntary contributions to a pension, but his /her employers cannot continue to add to his /her pension in any way! AN EMPLOYED INDIVIDUAL IS A CONTRIBUTING MEMBER OF SOCIETY, carrying his/her own weight AND contributing to the growth of the economy. This is not hyperbole, the average 55 year old today (earning $50,000) just entering the Bermuda National Pension scheme under the mandatory minimum contributions will only have an estimated $120,000 at age 65 retirement. (Copy of this article available on request or on The Royal Gazette Website). WHAT WE HAVE HERE IS PLAIN AND SIMPLE, PAY NOW OR ALL OF US PAY LATER, FOR THOSE WHO CANNOT.