The heart is an incredible organ. From the time you’re born to the time you die, it never stops working, not even when you’re asleep. Once it starts beating it won’t stop until its work is done. The heart works by pumping blood throughout your entire body. Every hour it will transport around 260 liters of blood, about 6240 liters per day. Not only must your heart pump oxygenated blood away from itself, but it has to bring deoxygenated blood back again. This is an intense amount of work for something only roughly the size of your clenched fist, and so it makes sense that something working this hard will start to wear out as we get older.
How the Heart Ages
As you get older the chances of you developing heart disease increase. After the age of 65 the chances of having a stroke or heart attack are significantly higher. Because of this, it makes sense to take preventative measures well ahead of time and ensure that your heart remains healthy for as long as possible.
As you age, the cells and muscles within your heart begin to weaken. While this doesn’t alter the number of times your heart beats, the strength with which your heart pumps does begin to weaken. This, in conjunction with genetic factors and or poor lifestyle choices, can lead to a number of different complications.
Signs of Heart Disease
Early signs of heart disease may be difficult to determine and may be ignored altogether. It’s for that reason that you should visit your doctor for regular checkups. That being said any pain or tightness in your chest should warrant a visit or call to your doctor straight away. Other signs of the onset of heart disease include:
Pain
Chest pain during physical activity
Lightheadedness
Dizziness
Shortness of breath
Headaches
Cold sweats
Confusion
Nausea/vomiting
Numbness or tingling in the shoulders, arms, or neck
Tiredness or fatigue
Swelling of the ankles, feet, legs, stomach, or neck
Reduced ability to exercise or be physically active
How to Prevent Heart Disease as you age
While the risk of contracting heart disease is dependent on genetics to a certain extent, it’s also largely related to lifestyle. With this in mind, there are a number of different steps you can take to minimize the risk of developing heart disease.
Quit smoking
If you’re a smoker then it’s heavily advised to quit as soon as possible. Smoking is one of the leading causes of various cancers and heart diseases and is associated with higher mortality rates. With regards to the heart, smoking damages artery walls as well as red blood cells, and can lead to arteriosclerosis, a condition in which plaque hardens in your arteries. Quitting smoking reduces the risk of arteriosclerosis, as well as strokes, cardiac arrest and heart attacks.
Cut down on alcohol
It’s no secret that heavy drinking can lead to any number of debilitating diseases including diabetes, liver disease and certain types of cancer. It can also lead to heart failure. To reduce the risk of heart disease caused by excessive drinking, it’s advisable to cut down when possible. Men should consume no more than two drinks a day and one drink for women.
Follow a healthy diet
Diet plays a huge role in regulating both heart health and overall well-being. The food you eat directly affects both how you feel and how your body functions. To lower the risk of heart disease and other diet-related related maladies such as type-two diabetes, stay away from overly processed foods, and foods high in sugar, additives and trans-fats. Instead, make sure that your diet consists of healthy foods such as whole fruits, vegetables, eggs and foods high in fiber.
Maintain a healthy weight
This goes hand in hand with following a healthy diet, but maintaining a healthy weight is one of the surest ways to minimize the risk of heart disease. Staying physically active while balancing the calories you consume with the calories you burn is important not just for heart health but overall wellbeing.
To maintain a healthy weight, it's advised that you limit your portion sizes, eat only healthy, nutrient-dense foods, and do moderate to vigorous exercise for at least 150 minutes per week. This doesn’t mean you have to do all of the exercise at the same time; try and break it up over the course of a few days. If you’re unable to do that amount, then do as much as you can. The most important thing is that you stay active to the extent to which you’re able.
As you know, the gig economy has been booming over the past several years. If youre thinking of using your skills to take on a side gig, what should you do with the money youll make?Theres no one right answer for everyone, and the decisions you make should be based on your individual situation. And of course, you may simply need the extra income to support your lifestyle and pay the bills. But if you already have your cash flow in good shape, and you have some freedom with your gig money, consider these suggestions: Contribute more to your IRA. If you couldnt afford to contribute the maximum amount to your IRA, you may find it easier to do so when you have additional money coming in from a side gig. For the 2023 tax year, you can put in up to $6,500 to a traditional or Roth IRA, or $7,500 if youre 50 or older. (Starting in 2024, this extra $1,000 catch-up contribution amount may be indexed for inflation.) The amount you can contribute to a Roth IRA is reduced, and eventually eliminated, at certain income levels. Look for new investment opportunities. If youre already maxing out your IRA, you might be able to find other investment possibilities for your side gig money. For example, if you have young children, perhaps you could use some of the money to invest in a 529 education savings plan. A 529 plan offers potential tax advantages and can be used for college, qualified trade school programs, and possibly some K-12 expenses. Please keep in mind that potential tax advantages will vary from state to state. Build an emergency fund. Life is full of unexpected events and some can be quite expensive. What if you needed a major car repair or required a medical procedure that wasnt totally covered by your health insurance? Would you have the cash available to pay these bills? If not, would you be forced to dip into your IRA or 401(k)? This might not be a good move, as it could incur taxes and penalties, and deprive you of resources you might eventually need for retirement. Thats why you might want to use your gig earnings to help fund an emergency fund containing several months worth of living expenses, with the money kept in a liquid, low-risk account. To avoid being tempted to dip into your emergency fund, you may want to keep it separate from your daily spending accounts. Pay down debts. Most of us will always carry some debts, but we can usually find ways to include the bigger ones mortgage, car payments and so on into our monthly budgets. Its often the smaller debt payments, frequently associated with high-interest-rate credit cards, that cause us the most trouble, in terms of affecting our cash flow. If you can use some of your side gig money to pay down these types of debts, you could possibly ease some of the financial stress you might be feeling. And instead of directing money to pay for things you purchased in the past, you could use the funds to invest for your future.As weve seen, your side gig money could open several promising windows of opportunity so take a look through all of them. Chad Choate III, AAMS828 3rd Avenue WestBradenton, FL 34205941-462-2445chad.chaote@edwardjones.com This article was written by Edward Jones for use by your local Edward Jones Financial Advisor. Edward Jones, Member SIPC
Its been a bumpy year for the financial markets which means that some of your investments may have underperformed or lost value. Can you use these losses to your advantage?Its possible. If you have some investments that have lost value, you could sell them to offset taxable capital gains from other investments. If your losses exceed gains for the year, you could use the remaining losses to offset up to $3,000 of ordinary income. And any amount over $3,000 can be carried forward to offset gains in future years. This tax-loss harvesting can be advantageous if you plan to sell investments that youve held in taxable accounts for years and that have grown significantly in value. And you might receive some gains even if you take no action yourself. For example, when you own mutual funds, the fund manager can decide to sell stocks or other investments within the funds portfolio and then pay you a portion of the proceeds. These payments, known as capital gains distributions, are taxable to you whether you take them as cash or reinvest them back into the fund. Still, despite the possible tax benefits of selling investments whose price has fallen, you need to consider carefully whether such a move is in your best interest. If an investment has a clear place in your holdings, and it offers good business fundamentals and favorable prospects, you might not want to sell it just because its value has dropped. On the other hand, if the investments youre thinking of selling are quite similar to others you own, it might make sense to sell, take the tax loss and then use the proceeds of the sale to purchase new investments that can help fill any gaps in your portfolio. If you do sell an investment and reinvest the funds, youll want to be sure your new investment is different in nature from the one you sold. Otherwise, you could risk triggering the wash sale rule, which states that if you sell an investment at a loss and buy the same or a substantially identical investment within 30 days before or after the sale, the loss is generally disallowed for income tax purposes.Heres one more point to keep in mind about tax-loss harvesting: Youll need to take into account just how long youve held the investments youre considering selling. Thats because long-term losses are first applied against long-term gains, while short-term losses are first applied against short-term gains. (Long-term is defined as more than a year; short-term is one year or less.) If you have excess losses in one category, you can then apply them to gains of either type. Long-term capital gains are taxed at 0%, 15% or 20%, depending on your income, while short-term gains are taxed at your ordinary income tax rate. So, from a tax perspective, taking short-term losses could provide greater benefits if your tax rate is higher than the highest capital gains rate.Youll want to contact your tax advisor to determine whether tax-loss harvesting is appropriate for your situation and youll need to do it soon because the deadline is Dec. 31. But whether you pursue this technique this year or not, you may want to keep it in mind for the future because youll always have investment tax issues to consider. Chad Choate III, AAMS828 3rd Avenue WestBradenton, FL 34205941-462-2445chad.chaote@edwardjones.com This article was written by Edward Jones for use by your local Edward Jones Financial Advisor.Edward Jones, Member SIPC
As you go through life, youll have various financial goals and to achieve them, youll need to invest. But just recognizing the need to invest is not as useful as matching specific types of accounts or investments with specific goals. How can you make these connections?Lets look at some common goals and how they could possibly be met with appropriate accounts and investments: Saving for a down payment on a house When youre saving for a down payment, you want a certain amount of money available at a certain time so, for this goal, you wont want to take too much risk. Consequently, you might consider investing in certificates of deposit (CDs), which will pay you regular interest payments and return your principal when the CDs mature. CDs are issued in a range of maturities, from one month to 10 years. Other vehicles you might consider are money market accounts or other cash equivalents. Saving for a childs education If you have children, and youd like to help them pay for some form of higher education, you may want to consider a 529 education savings plan. Any earnings growth in a 529 plan is federally tax free, provided the withdrawals are used for qualified education expenses, and you may also receive state tax benefits. A 529 plan can be used for college, approved trade school programs, student loan repayments and some K-12 costs. And if the child youve named as a beneficiary chooses not to continue their education, and doesnt need the money in a 529 plan, you can generally switch beneficiaries to another immediate family member. Saving for retirement This is the one goal that will remain consistent throughout your working years after all, you could spend two or even three decades in retirement, so youll need to accumulate as many financial resources as you can to pay for those years. Fortunately, you likely have access to several good retirement-savings vehicles. If you work for a business, you might have a 401(k) plan, which offers you the chance to put away money on a tax-deferred basis. (If you have a Roth option in your 401(k), your withdrawals can be tax free, although, unlike a traditional 401(k), your contributions wont lower your taxable income.) If you work for a public school or a nonprofit organization, you may be able to participate in a 403(b) plan, which is quite similar to a 401(k), and the same is true if you work for a state or local government, where you might have a 457(b) plan. And even if you invest in any of these plans, you can probably also contribute to an IRA, which gives you another chance to invest on a tax-deferred basis (or tax-free basis, if youre eligible for a Roth IRA). Try to take full advantage of whatever retirement plans are available to you.Here's one final point to keep in mind: While some investments and accounts are appropriate for certain goals, they may not necessarily be suitable for your individual situation so keep all your options in mind and take the steps that are right for you. Chad Choate III, AAMS828 3rd Avenue WestBradenton, FL 34205941-462-2445chad.chaote@edwardjones.com This article was written by Edward Jones for use by your local Edward Jones Financial Advisor. Edward Jones, Member SIPC
The Windsor of Venice has been providing an exceptional quality of services and environment to our residents for over nine years and awarded "Best of the Best" each year. We are owned and operated by a pioneer in assisted living and were recently recognized by Forbes Magazine as one of the best places to work in senior living. Our tenured team was recognized by a national survey company as scoring in the top 10% in satisfaction survey ratings nationwide. We urge you to visit us prior to making a decision to find out more about what makes us different and special.
The Windsor of Venice has been providing an exceptional quality of services and environment to our residents for over nine years and awarded "Best of the Best" each year. We are owned and operated by a pioneer in assisted living and were recently recognized by Forbes Magazine as one of the best places to work in senior living. Our tenured team was recognized by a national survey company as scoring in the top 10% in satisfaction survey ratings nationwide. We urge you to visit us prior to making a decision to find out more about what makes us different and special.