Daily Archives: July 15, 2015
Transgender Victory: Ireland Set to Make History Again With Gender Identity Bill
Transgender Victory: Ireland Set to Make History Again With Gender Identity Bill
The president of Ireland is expected to sign the bill into law before month’s end.
Dawn Ennis
The Golden Girls Retirement Plan: Oh Rose, Where Did Our (Pension) Funds Go?
The Golden Girls Retirement Plan: Oh Rose, Where Did Our (Pension) Funds Go?
The Golden Girls Retirement Plan: Oh Rose, Where Did Our (Pension) Funds Go?
Second in a series. Major intellectuals, foremost philosophers and all my friends at the Abbey agree that most financial (or indeed life) issues can be explained in terms of the “The Golden Girls.” In this episode Rose Nylund, played by the inimitable Betty White, faces a double whammy.
I’ve previously written about the “The Golden Girls Retirement Plan” using one of the best sitcoms ever to make talking about retirement a little more relatable and enjoyable. Response to that post was quite enthusiastic which for me is hugely gratifying. Turns out that Blanche, Rose, Dorothy and Sophia have plenty more to teach us in the financial sector that we’ll be looking at in future posts. This one (‘Rose Fights Back’, Season 5, Episode 4) tackles the critical question: What happens when the pension fund that you’ve been counting on — and living on — goes belly up?
Setting the scene
One can assume from the show that Rose has little in the way of retirement accounts or other savings. She’s most likely getting by on her deceased husband Charlie’s pension (as a horse shoe salesman, no less) and a pretty modest survivor benefit from Social Security. So when the company that Charlie worked for goes bankrupt and cuts off her pension, she must face the fact that she’s going to have get a new job, one that pays enough to keep her solvent. However, she quickly finds herself dealing with something she never expected, age discrimination.
While very few of us have a pension to begin with, this classic episode brings up a few critical issues we all must address today: We are getting older and the burden for funding our retirements now falls fully on our own shoulders. Furthermore, many of us in our advanced years may not even be able to work, either because we can’t find a job or we’re infirm.
This brings us to the important takeaways from this episode:
• You Can No Longer Count on a Pension to Fully Fund Your Retirement: While it would have been unthinkable to Charlie or Rose that a thriving horse shoe company could possibly ever go bankrupt or default on its pension, these things do happen. Today in the real world at the simplest, the number of workers covered by Defined Benefit Plans (pensions) has been in decline for at least the last 30 years. For most of us, the days when we could count on retiring comfortably on a company pension alone are over. And if we even have a pension, it’s not necessarily safe; we should be prepared in case those benefits get cut in the future. In some cases, even if a pension doesn’t get fully erased it could be frozen and no longer able to accumulate benefits.
• Social Security Is Not Enough to Retire On Alone: Rose never specifically comes out and says it, but she certainly wouldn’t be able to comfortably live on her Social Security checks. Even with three housemates, and a modest cost of living, she finds herself forced into the workforce for her foreseeable future. After spending most of her life as a stay at home mom with few marketable skills, this prospect is clearly terrifying.
• You May Not be Able to Work as Long as You Want to: While applying for jobs, Rose is often called “too old.” In a handy sitcom save, she was lucky enough to land a job with consumer reporter Enrique Mas despite her age. But many people nearing retirement find themselves under-employed or have trouble finding work at all. In fact, according to a recent Employee Benefit Research Institute Survey, 49 percent of workers retire earlier than expected. Among the reasons cited, were health, layoffs or caring for a loved one. While you may need to work until full retirement age (which equals 66 to 67 for most of us), you may not always have the choice.
• Proactive Retirement Planning Pays off: Losing a major source of your retirement income would be devastating for most retirees and Rose is no exception. She thought she was set with a pension that would take care of her for the rest of her life. If I were her financial advisor when she and Charlie were socking away funds during their younger years, I would have suggested that she would greatly benefit from some further diversity in her retirement assets. Perhaps an IRA or even just a healthy emergency fund could have alleviated a ton of stress from her situation.
• You Gotta Have Friends: Rose has two major saving graces in this difficult time; her friends, and her good health.
Dorothy, Blanche and Sophia would never let Rose end up on the street like the bag lady she fears she is doomed to become. And their social support is of immeasurable value (full disclosure: I’d certainly take a night of cheesecake with those ladies at home over a blue plate special in a restaurant any day.) Financially, living with the other Golden Girls is most likely a godsend for Rose as well because she gets to live well but at a fraction of the normal cost. But the other Golden Girls aren’t rich either and shouldering the extra expenses would cramp their styles.
Luckily, Rose is young enough, motivated enough and healthy enough to go to work, despite her inexperience. Her new job may cause her some neck pain and stress, but it’s nothing she can’t handle. But if the timing were different and the pension had gone broke ten years down the road, Rose’s options for financial security would have been catastrophically limited.
In real life, the beloved Betty White continues to be in demand at a vital and vigorous 93. I’m going to assume she is in better shape financially than Rose Nylund ever was on the show, and that she continues to delight audiences young and old because she wants to, rather than because she needs the paycheck.
Pension or no pension, there are no guarantees in this life. Your life is your responsibility and the time to get started preparing for your later life is now. Cheesecake, anyone?
DAVID RAE, CFP®, is a Los Angeles-based retirement planning specialist with Trilogy Financial Services, a regular contributor to Advocate.com and a financial advisor proudly helping people across the county. Follow him on Twitter @davidraecfp Facebook or via his website, www.davidraefp.com.
Securities and advisory services offered through National Planning Corporation (NPC), Member FINRA, SIPC, a Registered Investment Advisor. Trilogy and NPC are separate and unrelated entities.
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Trans teen Jazz Jennings’ family are so supportive it hurts
Trans teen Jazz Jennings’ family are so supportive it hurts
Trans teenager Jazz Jennings‘ brothers, sister, and mom have shared their experiences of her transition, offering support to other transgender kids and their relatives in a series of videos.
The family of the 14-year-old activist and YouTube star recorded a series of ‘getting to know you’ videos, telling the world what it’s really like living with such an extraordinary young woman, ahead of ahead of the launch of Jazz’s reality TV show, I Am Jazz.
Jazz’s family offered a unique insight into their family life – sharing everything from their everyday experiences of cooking and light-hearted squabbles, to more poignant stories of Jazz’s transition.
Her sister, 19-year-old Ari, explained what it was like to discover her sister was trans.
‘When Jazz was three and we first discovered that she was transgender, I didn’t really know what to think at first,’ she said.
‘I really liked being the only girl, because its really cool to be like ‘I have three brothers, I’m the only girl, I’m the princess of the house’ but I got past that once my dad explained to me that we need to support her and be there for her and I realised that it doesn’t really matter if i’m not the only girl any more.’
Ari also spoke from the heart, giving her advice to any other young people who have trans relatives.
‘Always be there for them,’ she said.
‘Support them, listen to them, have an open mind and an open heart, and just always be there for them 100%.’
Her twin brothers Griffen and Sander revealed how they struggled with a lack of educational resources, especially aimed at children, to help them understand what being transgender meant for their sister.
Griffen said: ‘Being so young, we didn’t understand what being transgender was.’
He added: ‘As we’ve become older it’s just become natural that Jazz was our sister. Just, through time, it just became so natural that I don’t even think of the fact that she’s transgender.’
‘She’s just my sister, that’s it.’
Mom Jeanette shared the heart-breaking moment she had to tell her little girl to wear her boy clothes to school so she didn’t get bullied.
Holding back tears, she said: ‘She wanted to know, ‘can girls play sports?’, and I said girls can do anything they want to do.
‘And she was so happy, and she was dancing around. That was such a great moment, i just loved her and wanted to see her happy – and it made her so happy, but she wasn’t allowed to go to school like that, which was awful, because this kid, it just made her day.
‘She looked up at me with these eyes, and I knew that I was going to do whatever it took to make her happy. I didn’t care what anybody thought, I just wanted her to be happy.’
Speaking ahead of the first episode, Jazz said: ‘I’m so lucky, because my family has taught me what unconditional love means, and that’s honestly all I need.’
I Am Jazz airs on US channel TLC at 10/9C this evening, July 15.
The post Trans teen Jazz Jennings’ family are so supportive it hurts appeared first on Gay Star News.
Mel Spencer
www.gaystarnews.com/article/trans-teen-jazz-jennings-family-are-so-supportive-it-hurts/
HRC Global Meets with Salvadoran LGBT Advocate
HRC Global Meets with Salvadoran LGBT Advocate
Earlier this week, HRC Global staff met with Salvadoran advocate and lawyer Andrea Ayala, who is on tour in Washington, D.C. to raise awareness about the recent spike in violence against LGBT advocates and human rights defenders El Salvador.
HRC.org
Justice Kennedy’s Male Lover Blackmailed Him To Vote For Marriage Equality, Semen Latte Pastor Says
Justice Kennedy’s Male Lover Blackmailed Him To Vote For Marriage Equality, Semen Latte Pastor Says
Was Justice Anthony Kennedy blackmailed by his secret lover into voting in favor of marriage equality? According to antigay “semen latte” pastor James David Manning, yes. A million times yes!
While speaking with Rick Wiles at Trunews about “Obama’s satanic assault on America’s morality,” Manning veered somewhat off topic into la-la land to discuss the recent Supreme Court marriage ruling, arguing that “the Devil himself has written this opinion!”, meaning, apparently, the conservative Catholic Justice Kennedy.
“Perhaps Kennedy and many of those who are on the Supreme Court have had sodomite relations themselves,” Manning hypothesized, before suggesting the Justices were being blackmailed by their secret gay lovers: “They have got to support this sodomy, they’ve got to say it or otherwise they get exposed!”
Manning issued a warning to Americans: “Fifty years from now people will look back at this period and say, ‘My God from Zion, how could a nation have fallen, how could the mighty have fallen so quickly and so far and so low?”
“If,” Wiles added, “there’s anybody still alive in the United States of America 50 years from now!”
Related: Someone Sent The Antigay “Semen Latte” Pastor A Giant Bucket Of Poop. Yes, Poop.
Wiles then suggested that the United States is “ripe to be overthrown” since “we no longer have the Lord’s protection” and “the Lord is no longer obligated to defend the United States of America,” which means “there’s a great attitude adjustment coming to the United States very, very soon!”
What do you think? Is Justice Kennedy a victim of blackmail? And will the United States be overthrown sometime in the next 50 years now that marriage equality is the law of the land?
Sound off in comments below.
h/t: Right Wing Watch
Graham Gremore
Samantha Bee Goes To A Male Model Casting for #NYMFW – WATCH
Samantha Bee Goes To A Male Model Casting for #NYMFW – WATCH
Former Daily Show correspondent Samantha Bee went to a male model casting for New York’s first ever Men’s Fashion Week (#NYMFW) and found out a little bit more about the plight of the male model. She also had a chance to interview some of the good looking guys set to jaunt down the runway.
For instance, this nordic hipster.
Bee asked him, “Where were you originally discovered? Abercrombie & Fitch or the Kingdom of Asgard?”
Watch the video below, but beware, “There are abs everywhere”:
The post Samantha Bee Goes To A Male Model Casting for #NYMFW – WATCH appeared first on Towleroad.
Sean Mandell
Samantha Bee Goes To A Male Model Casting for #NYMFW – WATCH
Bristol Pride Parade 2015
Why Are Dildos Suddenly Everywhere in Portland?
Why Are Dildos Suddenly Everywhere in Portland?
For generations, kids would toss shoelace-tied old sneakers up and over power lines crisscrossing their streets. Now this.
Dawn Ennis
www.advocate.com/portland/2015/07/15/why-are-dildos-suddenly-everywhere-portland
YouTube Star Joey Graceffa Talks Coming Out, New Book In GLAAD Interview
YouTube Star Joey Graceffa Talks Coming Out, New Book In GLAAD Interview
YouTube star Joey Graceffa opened up about his decision to come out publicly as gay, telling GLAAD in a new interview that he wanted fans who may be struggling with their own sexuality “to not feel so alone.”
“Originally I needed something to encompass [my new book, In Real Life: My Journey Through a Pixelated World] in a video format,” Graceffa told GLAAD’s Claire Pires of “Don’t Wait,” the fairy tale-themed music video released in May, in which the 24-year-old addressed his sexuality for the first time. “So I thought it would be really cool to incorporate three main things in the music video: bullying, dealing with [my mother’s] alcoholism, coming to terms with your sexuality and accepting yourself.”
It turned out to be a winning approach. One month after it was posted, the “Don’t Wait” video has drawn over 8 million views.
Coming out, Graceffa added, put “an army” of speculation to rest, but it was far from the most difficult subject he delved into for the book.
“Talking about my history with my mom and her alcoholism was definitely really tough,” he said, “but also talking about my first dating experiences and getting my heart broken and re-living those moments…I guess I just have this thing of just pushing things aside in the back of my mind. Writing this, I had to go back through it all.”
In Real Life: My Journey Through a Pixelated World hit shelves on May 19.
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