People often look for ways to ensure that both they and their parents or senior loved ones that they are caring for will all continue to live a comfortable life as they age. Many caregivers often manage complicated finances alone without realizing there is help out there for them. We spoke with Greg Smith at Transamerica, who recommends that caregivers use the following four tips to begin financial planning for their family.

4 Steps to Take towards Better Financial Planning

• If you haven’t started, start now.

Smith says the best advice anyone can give is to tell you to start early. Many of his ideas all boils down to starting as soon as possible. He said, “The earlier you start saving and making plans for your financial future, the better”. But if you haven’t started yet don’t feel disheartened. Just by thinking about it, you’re ahead of much of the population. Says Smith, “there’s a lot of industry research where a lot of people are either apathetic or in denial about their financial situation. Having that level of awareness is a good first step.”

• Meet with a financial planner with your family.

There is lots of information difficult to grapple with when you think about all the different categories and factors that go into financial planning and some of them include estate planning, social security benefits, taxes and so on. Smith explained that all of these can be done as an individual but often, analogy of working on your car is given; doing it alone can be difficult.
Get your whole family together and go talk to a financial advisor about your goals and needs. Your situation is distinct and no article or resource online will speak to it directly as well as a knowledgeable individual who has the chance to analyze your particular situation.

• Understand your options.

“As we’ve ventured into the caregiving market… one of the biggest things that we’ve seen is there’s a lack of understanding of everything from government entitlement programs to long-term care insurance to how you qualify for certain benefits,” Smith explains. Of course, there is. Financial options and resources are complicated. You don’t want to miss out on benefits you’re entitled to, and you don’t want to assume you’ll be getting more after you retire than you do.
Says Smith, “a lot of people [going into retirement] have plans for health care expenses, their home and traveling, but that reality of not just the first day of your retirement, but once you get into it and unexpected things come up – it’s a very big reality check for a lot of folks.” Don’t let reality take you by surprise.

• Why consider Transamerica?

As much as you can find lots of businesses in the financial services field, SeniorAdvisor.com works with Transamerica because apart from the fact that they have been around for quite a while to know their stuff, they are also making an effort to focus on the needs of caregivers and people who are retired.
They have the understanding of the fact that good financial planning always means taking the full family into account. Financial planning isn't just about you – it’s about parents who are facing the difficult decision of what type of senior living community to choose, and it’s about you, who will deserve the same comfort you seek to provide your family members and loved ones with now.
Proactive planning is one of the core tenets of Transamerica’s message and they’re values we can all benefit from.

There are different shapes, sizes and specialists when it comes to residential care homes. There are several care options available to seniors in most communities and this care options recognizes variety of needs, personalities and values of those seeking a new retirement home. The hope to provide a new living space that meets the particular needs of the residents is the main thing they have in common while still feeling like home.

Finding the right residential care home for you or a parent or senior loved one is a big step and one you don’t want to rush into. To help you identify the best possible care option available in your area, we recommend you take it step by step:

Step 1: Consider what you need (and what you want).
Take enough time to decide the most important need of your family before you start looking for residential care home. You need to be able to answer the question of what aspect of your daily activity and lifestyle do you most want to maintain? What values do you have that you hope fellow residents would share? Is there a particular type of medical care you need?
What you need is crucial, but what you want matters too. The rest home you choose will have a lot to do with what your life looks like in the coming years. You don’t want to settle on a place that means giving up any part of your life that’s important to you.

Step 2: Research the residential care options located nearby.
Finding out the options of residential care homes available to you is the next thing after you must have clarified for yourself the most important features you need to consider in your search. By searching SeniorAdvisor.com, you will have access to a list of the residential care homes in the geographical region you aim to live in. you will also have access to helpful snapshots of what these residential care homes offer, what they cost and what other residents have thought of them.
Spend some time browsing these options to see how they match up with what you’re looking for. But you haven’t made it this far in life without knowing that a good match on paper doesn’t always tell the whole story. Use this step to narrow down your options, but avoid making any final decisions until you’ve completed step three.

Step 3: Take the time to visit all your options.
Schedule a visit to each of the residential care homes your research suggests should be in the running. Try to pay attention to all the little things while you’re there. It’s easy enough to check off all the big boxes of what’s important to you, but the little stuff plays at least as big of a role in how much you’ll enjoy life each day. Do the residents seem to laugh much? Is the atmosphere comfortable and clean?

Step 4: Visit your new home and move in.
You will be able to make your final decision with the information given to you when you visit the residential care home. Was there one place on the list that felt the most like home to you? If more than one was promising, was there anything from the checklist and your notes to make one stand out above the others?
In terms of what each rest home has to offer and make your decision; consider what matters most to you. You should have no problem feeling comfortable and at home once you move in after much careful consideration.

Step 5: Write a review to help out other families.
After settling in to your new residential care home, you can help the next person make the same decision you made by leaving a review on this article. This will let people know what they can and should expect if they are interested in considering your new home. Begin your search today.

It has been established by experts that it starts with changing the way society thinks about aging. Despite the advances in medicine giving humanity longevity, our fate of living longer lives remain riddled with discrimination and prejudice. Ideally, we consider ourselves equal regardless of our race, income, gender, or age. But the reality is, today's society treats older people unfairly often lumping all aged 65 and up into a group of old, frail, decrepit, forgetful and sickly beings separate from the rest of society. Ageism or age discrimination has deeply permeated our culture, mindsets and attitudes.

People are so afraid of aging that they consider older people others. Experts call this the “us versus them” mentality. It is so common that even the healthcare system which is supposed to be responsible for providing care older people deserve continues to belittle the dangers of ageism. According to a study published in the Journal of General Internal Medicine, one out of five older adults experiences ageism in health care settings and those who frequently experience it have a higher risk of developing a new disability or worsening existing ones. Around 10,000 Americans turn 65 daily and the numbers are expected to rise as mortality rates keeps declining. It is believed by experts that it is high time for ageism in health care to be put in the limelight.

Most Americans including older adults are not aware of ageism
A new research published by The Frameworks Institute (FI) found that most Americans are not aware of the dangers of ageism. The researchers call this the “cognitive hole” or the people's way of individualizing aging problems and not recognizing ageism as a ubiquitous problem for all. The FI's Gauging Aging: Mapping the Gaps between Expert and Public Understanding of Aging in America report was made to understand how people think about aging and use the results to identify challenging misperceptions that need to be changed by the whole society. In spite of the reality that older Americans continue to be ostracized from participating in socio-civic activities and opportunities such as employment, recreational activities, housing, business and others, the concept of ageism remain absent from the public's perception of what growing old means. Some older adults even accept that the discrimination they face is just a normal part of being in the last stage of living. In the report, aging should be considered by society as “both a personal and a shared resource and opportunity”. This rethinking makes us view older Americans are as “central rather than marginal participants in our collective life as a nation.” Developing information tools and ways to help society reframe or change their understanding and perception of the aging process is recommended by the study. Reframing itself has the ability to change policy for the betterment of older generations. It was also suggested by experts to start changing the way we perceive aging in order to fight ageism. The first thing is to know how ageism manifests and be able to recognize ageist situation especially within the healthcare system.

The Dangers of Ageism in Health Care
Experts say that older patients comprise around 27 percent of all doctor's visits and 35 percent of all hospital stays. Negative views about them can bring unnecessary stigma that weakens the healthcare system's capability to treat one of their major clientele. It also hinders from adding more capable medical practitioners to the workforce. Ageism among medical providers is either done obviously or unconsciously and causes real damage to the patient. In Dr. Karin Ouchida and Dr. Mark Lams' article on Ageism in Healthcare, they enumerated several manifestations of ageism in our healthcare system.

• Practitioners Belittling Geriatrics and Gerontology as a Profession. Practitioners Belittling Geriatrics and Gerontology as a Profession. Obvious ageist comments proliferating among medical practitioners are clearly depicted in the story of a surgeon asking a medical student what specialty she's planning to pursue. She replied, “Geriatrics.” The professor immediately acted like a whiny high-pitched frail old man complaining about aching muscles and constipation. A lot of doctors also make jokes about their old patients. Humoring older adults' predicaments isn't just offensive but also unethical. Because of these kinds' ageist comments, geriatrics as a profession is stigmatized as a frustrating and less rewarding specialization, making doctors in training adamant in pursuing the career. The negative thinking of medical practitioners towards older adults hinder in recruiting more medical professionals to practice gerontology.
• Under-Treating Older Patients. “It's normal to be depressed because you're old.” This doctor's advice is one of the examples hindering medical providers from treating the real cause of an older adult's ailment. Lumping all aches and pains of an older patient into a pack labeled “normal signs of aging” is downright ageist. This means, they do not get the proper treatment they could have had. Patients are forced to convince themselves that what they're feeling is just part of aging. Another popular example of under treatment is ignoring other causes of complaints such as lifestyle, relationships and home situation. A doctor attributed the bruises on an older patient's arm as normal effects of anticoagulants to an aging body, without inquiring further if there is violence in the family. Another patient complains of frequent headaches, memory loss and confusion but the doctor just assumes it normal for all older people to experience that and not conducting tests that may rule out brain tumor. There were also a lot of cases wherein doctors just assume that their patients are sexually inactive because of their age and fail to treat ailments such as erectile dysfunction, sexually transmitted disease and HIV.
• Over-treating older patients. When medical providers’ over-treat older patients with ill-advised health endorsements and medications based only on their age while excluding their preferences, abilities and functionality, ageism becomes harmful. An example of this is the US health care system's program to give universal prostate cancer screening for older adults. While seemingly good, experts have found that these screenings resulted to exaggerated diagnosis of harmless tumors, and unwarranted treatment requiring surgery, that can lead to complications needing intensive care. Other examples include giving high dosage of diabetes medication which can trigger hypoglycemia and prescribing antibiotics for urinary tract problems without clinical signs or symptoms of infection To policy makers and economists, the overtreatment widely given to older adults is a complete waste of public funds. Statistically, one-third of the budget for health is basically spent on waste. About $158 to $226 billion of overtreatment waste was recorded by the country in the past.
• Ageist Talk in the Healthcare setting. One of the causes of under and over treatments is the lack of effective communication between the doctor and the older patient. Experts have pointed out complaints from older adults on how most medical practitioners do not talk straight to them. Instead they do the “elder speak” – a way of speaking similar to baby talk, with high pitch, exaggerated tones and volumes. Some even automatically shout near their ears without even knowing if they have hearing problems. They just assume all old people are deaf. For the record, all older adults, especially those who still can, hate elder speak. Like everybody else, they do not like to be talked down to. Doctors talking about older patient’s condition to a third party instead of directly to them are also a hindrance in developing a good doctor-patient relationship. Sometimes they tend to leave out the patients in the conversation about their own health. There are also times when nurses and other staff talk about their older patients in front of them as if they are not there. Multiple studies have shown that these ageist acts are disrespectful, demeaning and can cause lower self-esteem and depression among older patients.
• Ageism innate to older adults. There are ageist reviews by older adults about their personal aging process which have great effect on their health. Experts have found that older adults who accept that depression, fatigue, chronic pain, low libido, and dependency are just normal parts of aging, do not usually seek medical attention, get less care. Refraining from participating in physical activities such as exercising, using protective gear and eating a balanced diet can also be noted. 
• Institutionalized Ageism. In their article, Dr. Ouchida and Lam argue that the US healthcare system is prejudiced against older adults because of the following:

1. Lack of support to increase the number of doctors specializing in geriatrics and lack of action to reverse its declining number.
2. More doctors are opting not to treat Medicare patients; which supports most older adults.
3. Clinical Practice guidelines, which were studied based on adult populations, are not applicable when it comes to older patients with multiple chronic illnesses. As a result, physicians try to mix treatments for these diseases, which puts older patients at risk of the adverse effect of multiple drugs combined.

How to address ageism
Dr. Ouchida and Lam believes to get rid of Ageist Attitude in our health system, it requires medical practitioners to firstly recognize and appreciate the heterogeneity of older adults and this can be done through effective integration and exposure with them outside the hospital setting. Heterogeneity means, like any age group, older adults also differ in their functional status, health, and financial situation. Some older people are still strong, active, and sharp in their 80s while some may be weaker than others. And when it comes to race, income, gender, education, class and social status, disparities also apply to them as well as these apply to anyone. We should all start changing our unpleasant perceptions about aging and embrace aging for what it is – a normal process of living that doesn't necessarily mean disability, disease, and decline. According to the Framework Institute's research, reshaping our negative thinking towards older people entails making adjustments in ensuring that older people are not isolated from the rest society and still contribute to it. Making better age-friendly policies increasing their opportunities for employment, transportation, healthcare, community development and housing are inclusive. One expert made it known that our retirement culture were not designed to support an aging society. “We need to reengineer [our] institutions if we are going to be able to have a productive, secure, cohesive society.” Fighting ageism in the health care system isn't just about changing individual mindsets but also applying positive attitudes on aging to change policies and systems. Framework Institute recommends the following systematic changes to achieve a truly age-friendly society based on the research they made.

• Start by addressing institutionalized ageism to remove barriers prohibiting older people to engage fully in civic and economic activities as part of the community. This can be done through education and information campaigns or training among health care providers on the dangers of ageism.
• Giving more opportunities for them to be involved in the community through civic and social activities such as volunteer work, mentoring, and continuing their education.
• Changing our perception of work and retirement.  Older adults prefer to work past their retirement age due to economic and personal reasons. To address this, flexible policies should be made to avoid age discrimination and forced early retirement to older adults still capable of working.
• Spending public funds efficiently to avoid the humongous cost of health care programs
• Increasing the healthcare workforce trained in geriatrics.
• Finding a solution to the growing demand for long-term care.
• Developing more efficient policy solutions to ensure income security in retirement.
• Giving institutional and social support to caregivers providing unpaid care to their loved ones. Social security credits should still be given to those who leave work to take care of their ailing family.
• Investing in research on the persistent problems of the aging population to provide more bases to institutional changes needed for older adults to age well in our society.

A matter of defending equality and justice can be linked to fighting ageism. A way of giving respect and honor to the contributions older adults made for our society is by changing our minds on aging and fostering a future free discrimination. If we start crushing the pillars of ageism now, the one who would greatly benefit from the downfall is not just our generation, but also the next.

Scammers & Senior Targets

The computer dependent world was paralyzed on May 12, 2017 as a result of a malware called WannaCry attacked more than 230,000 Microsoft operating system computers in 150 countries. This attack crippled business transactions immediately, hospitals, and transportation and communication systems. One of the recent tech scams to cause worldwide panic is WannaCry. It encrypts internet user’s computer data and demands ransom money to give it back. Until four days, the cyber-attack could not be contained from its outbreak. Microsoft President and legal adviser Brad Smith explained that the company has issued a security patch for system protection two months before the attack.

However, he was disappointed that few users updated their computer systems. He added that cyber criminals are becoming more and more sophisticated so Microsoft users should always update their systems. Even owners of older operating systems of Microsoft should update for protection against malware attacks and other tech scams. Software technology advances and so does hackers. Every time software companies come up with new and seemingly unhackable system defenses, hackers will come up with new means to penetrate those defenses. In total, 19 cyber-attack was recorded in 2016 alone and it affected companies such as Citibank, Yahoo.com, Banner health and other government institutions such as the U.S. Department of Treasury was not left out. The major people vulnerable to scammers are older adults as everybody else when it comes to tech scams. According to the Federal
Trade Commission data; computer scams rank fourth to the fraud complaints from seniors in 2016.

How to Avoid Senior Scams

1. Watch out for signs that tell your personal information have been compromised. American Senior Communities (ASC) received an email from an ASC executive requesting copies of employees’ W-2s in January 2017. W-2 is a form which contains Social Security number, names, address and other information of an employee. The e-mail looked authentic so the payroll processor forwarded the W-2's as requested. Not until employees reported that the tax collecting agency rejected their tax returns did ASC figured out they've been scammed. The authorities and ASC got the report of the incident and they are currently paying for credit monitoring of their former and present employees.
2. Do not reply to malicious emails or click email attachments. Emails which doesn't address you by name, email with masked hyperlinks and attachments which are non-executable files are common signs of a malicious email. Double check emails which are requesting for personal information even if the sender is someone you know. Call the sender directly to confirm the authenticity of the email. Ignore calls or pop-up messages claiming they have found a virus on your PC and are offering to fix it. These tech scammers usually use names of big companies like Microsoft and claim to have found a virus or a malware on your computer. The posing technician will then install software to fix your PC and will later charge several hundred dollars through credit card or online payment. The software installed and the service they have provided are unnecessary because there is actually nothing wrong with your computer. The worst part is this tech scammers go as far as threaten victims that they will destroy their computer if they refuse the service being rendered.
3. Always make sure that your security patches have the latest updates. Keeping your security patches up to date blocks hackers from using software vulnerabilities to penetrate your computer system. Recent Microsoft security patches can be set to update automatically so you don't have to worry that you haven't installed updates for your computer. This is not a 100% guarantee of safety against tech scams but it will make it harder for attackers to break into your system, therefore pushing less-determined hackers to lok for other vulnerable systems to penetrate.

Better Therapies For TB Are Here, But They Will Not Deliver Themselves

Why shorter and safer TB treatments are needed?

New treatments will not deliver themselves

Pathfinder states must set an example

Stronger and reactive policies issue

Drug manufactures should go beyond contribution programs

Sleeping regulators need to wake up

While governments step up, donors may support inventions

We need a unified, collaborative TB community