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Dumber after age 53?
New study says people get smarter with money only to a certain point, usually around age 53.
We're supposed to get smarter about money and finances as we get older, right? One new study suggests that may not be the case.Researchers have been tracking the financial mistakes people make in their lives, and came up with an interesting conclusion: The mistake pattern is U-shaped, with the most mistakes occuring early and then later in life.
So when are we the smartest in life, financially speaking? At age 53. After that, we get dumber with money.
I can understand being financially dim-witted early on in life. You don't have much money in your 20s, for example, and there's an unwritten law that the money you do have you will spend stupidly.
But seniors don't really go around blowing cash on 7 For All Mankind jeans. So how do we get dumber?
The researchers studied 10 different kinds of credit behavior. The mistakes they tallied included wrongly estimating the value of your house, paying too much when it comes to interest rates and fees, and not taking advantage of credit card balance transfer offers.
Carla Fried at CBS MoneyWatch.com says that a few decades ago, older Americans weren't making the kind of big-ticket financial decisions they are today. Back then, retirement income was pretty cut and dry, and came from pensions and Social Security.
But now, retirees are more hands-on with retirement income, and have more options, including 401(k)s, IRAs and a variety of other investing tools. Those new choices leave more room for errors.
"The bottom line is that while our cognitive skills may peak at 53, the need to keep making smart financial decisions doesn’t recede with age," Fried writes. "If anything, it continues to grow."
Older adults are particularly vulnerable to mistakes, the researchers say. Half the adults between age 80 and 89 either have dementia or have been diagnosed with "cognitive impairment without dementia."
At least I know the proper form of "too" to use! The thing is, I can sustain that growth rate easily with the line of work I'm in, at least until I'm banking a couple hundred thousand a year. If I want to be optimistic, I might be able to keep that kind of growth rate up until it's a multi million dollar a year business. Not to mention it's actually much higher right now. I'm probably going to double my business in the next year or so. 20 percent is my conservative estimate based on having more employees and doing virtually none of the actual work myself.
I'm in a field involving intellectual properties, so once the work is done I get checks forever my friend. Passive income with only a meager amount of accounting required. So we'll see! I may be arrogant... But so is Donald Trump, and plenty of other wealthy people I know personally. Being above the national average, self made, not a college boy at 24 seems ok by me, especially given the growth prospects. Perhaps I will never be a billionaire, but I will certainly do better than most... AND more importantly it will be entirely on my own terms. Having total control over my own life is far more valuable to me than annual income anyway, it's just a plus that there will be plenty of that too!
LOL Just kidding.
But seriously, did half of you even read the article? OR the page it links to about the study? Because it doesn't seem like it, and if you did then you're ability to take in what is being said is seriously flawed.
The article simply is stating that a certain study has found these results based on certain criteria, primarily (to quote the researchers) "cost-minimizing performance". What they're talking about is that older people don't make sure they have their big credit card balance on their lowest interest card, or their mortgage rate is higher than it could be, etc etc etc.
That said, I wouldn't be surprised if SOME people over 53 were poorer at handling certain things overall. It's a known fact that people find it harder and harder to assimilate new information as they age, and if that's the case then older people might have a harder time ON AVERAGE dealing with changing financial situations. They might have stacked up more nuggets of general wisdom on the subject, but might not be as nimble as a 40 year old.
And the ultimate caveat is, of course, that no generalization is true in all instances. Just because Warren Buffett is still pretty sharp doesn't mean that people over XX age don't start dropping the ball statistically speaking. Plus they don't even bother to mention how the curve actually functions. It might be a very slow drop after 53, and not really drop off until 70 or something. If that were the case I'd have little doubt about it being true. People simply aren't on the ball when they get really old, and there's nothing unreasonable about that starting a slow slide even as early as the 50s.
Whatever. I'm done babbling on this subject. Half of you people will seemingly be too unintelligent to understand what I'm saying or utilize any critical thinking skills to analyze what I said. FYI I'm freshly 24, and probably smarter about money than the overwhelming majority of you old farts! 50K a year income, growing at over 20 percent a year with a vastly scalable company I own... beat that suckas!
This article typifies the problem of what is factual and non-factual, fiction and non-fiction and, what is thoroughly researched and what is not. The first sentence did it for me by use of the word "dumber;" I start to question the intelligence of the author when referring to intelligence in a poor grammatical sense. Most stories or research articles are made or broken in the first paragraph or abstract. I can see that bankruptcy is the option here.
I tire of non-educated people making educated assumptions regarding everyday life. A veteran journalist??? I thought journalists are supposed to gather accurate facts, not read entertainment literary sources to further expound her version of entertainment. Assumptions are the mother of catastrophy. The author's usage of periodicals, TV show(s)and very poorly researched "data providing tools" provides no proof or foundation to her argument. She states "research:" Who? When? Where? What? But, I'll mention an excerpt from a TV show to substantiate my argument.....that will prove my point. Did her scholarly enlightenment come down from the heavens in a fit of omniscent and all knowing power? Blind leading blind, and in her words......the dumb, become "dumber" through her foray into being a world class economist, financial wizard and geneological expert on monetary management.
What she finds plausible to what she wants to hear or what others she feels they should hear, is the issue. Objectivity 101 was not a course taken by the author and I question the credentials, background or creditability of her sources. "Common sense" approaches to research and writing is why authors such as her make a living off entertaining readers and produce, largely, caca del toro. In an issue such as this, she should be accurately informing with the best data available. This is not the case and follows the typical mindset projected in our ignorant society....."if it isn't what I want to hear or am not entertained by it, i don't want to hear or listen to it." The funniest part? The author probably makes a good living inaccurately and misinforming readers. The saddest part? The author actually believes she is actually doing something to inform people.
My first retirement was at 39, I was a Taco Bell Franchise and I retired because I HATED that company! Then 11 years playing the stock mkt. I'm now 58, still retired, and it was my Pops, now 91, that helped me with most of this success. What a stupid article!!!
Perhaps its all the money that we hide away from the Government and all the time we spend not killing ourselfs with 80 hour work weeks that makes us stupid. LOL
I think greed sets in at the beginning and end of life!
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