REWahoo
Give me a museum and I'll fill it. (Picasso) Give
Reading about these folks who live to be 100, the term "poor but happy" comes to mind:
Notice there is no mention of the plight of the destitute and starving folks who die in their 80's and 90's......centenarians derive a remarkable amount of happiness from the financial resources available to them. In a seminal study published in the Journal of Aging Studies in 1996, researchers from Iowa State University and the University of Georgia found that 67 percent of 100-year-olds had income below the poverty line. The interviewers who gathered this data concluded that 44 percent of centenarians had no financial reserves and 37 percent had no money for buying any luxuries -- both rates are about double those for Americans in their 60s.
Surprisingly, the centenarians themselves told their interviewers an entirely different story. A full 95 percent said they had enough money to meet their needs, while 76 percent reported they had "enough to buy extras." Overall, a staggering 96 percent of 100-year-olds said they were doing better than or the same as others of the same age. These expert survivors, the researchers concluded, have managed to adapt successfully to a ripe old age, and they perceive themselves to be better off than their peers -- when clearly objective resources reveal quite the opposite. why-centenarians-are-so-content: Personal Finance News from Yahoo! Finance