What can we help you find?

Photo by Towfiqu barbhuiya on UnsplashThe EndGame is a reader-supported publication. To receive new posts and support my work, consider becoming a free or paid subscriber.If you have not had the pleas…

Photo by Towfiqu bar…

Photo by Towfiqu barbhuiya on UnsplashThe EndGame is a reader-supported publication. To receive new posts and support my work, consider becoming a free or paid subscriber.If you have not had the pleasure of visiting an Emergency Room lately, let me assure you that it is nothing like the televised medical dramas. On television, heroic doctors and nurses are the stars, and the patients are minor characters. But when you are the patient, you might think you are the center of the story, and you would be wrong. You’re still a bit player. Forget the suspenseful drama and fast-paced action – you …

Photo by Katie Rosario on UnsplashSome birthdays are cause for celebration. I didn’t consider my 75th birthday to be one of them. Aside from my radical amazement that I’m still walking the planet …

Photo by Katie Rosar…

Photo by Katie Rosario on UnsplashSome birthdays are cause for celebration. I didn’t consider my 75th birthday to be one of them. Aside from my radical amazement that I’m still walking the planet after three-quarters of a century, it didn’t strike me as an occasion worthy of summoning friends and Family to offer toasts, present gag gifts, and deliver snarky birthday cards poking fun at my whitening brow and steadily crumbling infrastructure.The EndGame is a reader-supported publication. To receive new posts and support my work, consider becoming a free or paid subscriber.Share The EndGam…

Photo by Aysegul Aytören on UnsplashThe EndGame is a reader-supported publication. To receive new posts and support my work, consider becoming a free or paid subscriber.Odds are, you have heard someo…

Photo by Aysegul Ayt…

Photo by Aysegul Aytören on UnsplashThe EndGame is a reader-supported publication. To receive new posts and support my work, consider becoming a free or paid subscriber.Odds are, you have heard someone toss off the remark, “You can never be too rich or too thin,” as if it were true. Some people must believe it’s true, to judge from the images of impossibly trim young darlings bombarding us from movies, television, telephones, and Instagram sites. As a former beauty editor observes, “Some of our most visible celebrities have gone from merely thin to gravely gaunt.”In fact, I would ar…

No. 108/May 27 , 2026NewScan is a biweekly briefing on news relevant to readers of The EndGame. NewScan is a premium feature exclusively for paid subscribers.Few Retirees WorkAlthough 75% of American …

No. 108/May 27 , 202…

No. 108/May 27 , 2026NewScan is a biweekly briefing on news relevant to readers of The EndGame. NewScan is a premium feature exclusively for paid subscribers.Few Retirees WorkAlthough 75% of American workers expect to supplement their Retirement savings with paid work, only 27% of retirees actually do, according to EBRI’s 2026 Retirement Confidence Surv… Read more

Photo by Sabine van Straaten on UnsplashNote to Readers: Today, May 23, is my father’s birthday. (It is also my birthday, and my grandfather’s birthday, but that’s another story.) In his honor, …

Photo by Sabine van …

Photo by Sabine van Straaten on UnsplashNote to Readers: Today, May 23, is my father’s birthday. (It is also my birthday, and my grandfather’s birthday, but that’s another story.) In his honor, I am reprinting this post from the archive.The EndGame is a reader-supported publication. To receive new posts and support my work, consider becoming a free or paid subscriber.Life dealt my father a pretty lousy hand at birth. As an infant he had asthma so severe that he almost didn’t make it. His parents had to drive him to a hospital in another state to bring the illness under control. When he…

Photo by David Pennington on UnsplashThe EndGame is a reader-supported publication. To receive new posts and support my work, consider becoming a free or paid subscriber.Many years ago, The Different …

Photo by David Penni…

Photo by David Pennington on UnsplashThe EndGame is a reader-supported publication. To receive new posts and support my work, consider becoming a free or paid subscriber.Many years ago, The Different Drum, a book on building community by M. Scott Peck of The Road Less Traveled fame, made a huge impression on me. Peck described creating intentional community as a four-step process. In the first, “pseudo community,” people are polite and congenial and avoid saying anything controversial. In the second, “chaos,” conflict rips off the mask of camaraderie and leaves it in tatters. The third…

No. 107/May 13 , 2026NewScan is a biweekly briefing on news relevant to readers of The EndGame. NewScan is a premium feature exclusively for paid subscribers.Long-Term Care Drains Middle Class WealthA…

No. 107/May 13 , 202…

No. 107/May 13 , 2026NewScan is a biweekly briefing on news relevant to readers of The EndGame. NewScan is a premium feature exclusively for paid subscribers.Long-Term Care Drains Middle Class WealthA new report from the Roosevelt Institute, a New York think tank, finds that the costs of long-term care put a significant dent into middle-income household… Read more

Photo by Isaac Quesada on UnsplashThe EndGame is a reader-supported publication. To receive new posts and support my work, consider becoming a free or paid subscriber.Reader Alert: I’m going to be s…

Photo by Isaac Quesa…

Photo by Isaac Quesada on UnsplashThe EndGame is a reader-supported publication. To receive new posts and support my work, consider becoming a free or paid subscriber.Reader Alert: I’m going to be signing copies of my book The AfterWork: Finding Fulfilling Alternatives to Retirement at Browseabout Books in Rehoboth Beach, DE on Saturday, May 23 from 11 am to 1 pm. So if you’re going to be danny ocean (as we say in Balmer) drop in! The book is also on sale at Amazon.The fact that there are so many of us chronologically gifted adults is being framed as a perplexing problem for society. (And …

Photo by Towfiqu barbhuiya on UnsplashThe EndGame is a reader-supported publication. To receive new posts and support my work, consider becoming a free or paid subscriber.The word “Longevity” is h…

Photo by Towfiqu bar…

Photo by Towfiqu barbhuiya on UnsplashThe EndGame is a reader-supported publication. To receive new posts and support my work, consider becoming a free or paid subscriber.The word “longevity” is having its 15 minutes of fame these days. It shows up in serious journals. It also shows up in pitches for unproven treatments designed to beat back the ravages of time.Let’s talk about what’s real and what’s hokum.Share The EndGameWhat’s very real is the fact that populations around the world are getting older. Thanks to medical breakthroughs and more attention to healthy lifestyles, peopl…

No. 106/April 29, 2026NewScan is a biweekly briefing on news relevant to readers of The EndGame. NewScan is a premium feature exclusively for paid subscribers.Letting Go of Who We WereOne hard part of…

No. 106/April 29, 20…

No. 106/April 29, 2026NewScan is a biweekly briefing on news relevant to readers of The EndGame. NewScan is a premium feature exclusively for paid subscribers.Letting Go of Who We WereOne hard part of Aging is saying goodbye to our former, younger self. Two writers reflect on the emotional struggle. Rebecca Gummers finds that you can have a positive out… Read more

Photo by Takuya Nagaoka on UnsplashThe EndGame is a reader-supported publication. To receive new posts and support my work, consider becoming a free or paid subscriber.Monday was the day of reckoning,…

Photo by Takuya Naga…

Photo by Takuya Nagaoka on UnsplashThe EndGame is a reader-supported publication. To receive new posts and support my work, consider becoming a free or paid subscriber.Monday was the day of reckoning, I was certain.My latest lab results were back, and my glucose score was not looking good. My doctor had been warning me for two years that my score was on the high end of the normal range and on the verge of crossing into the pre-diabetic stage. Now my score had crossed the line. From there it was a hop, skip, and a jump to … Diabetes!I knew what that meant. No ice cream, ever again. No sweeten…

Photo by Curated Images for UnsplashThe EndGame is a reader-supported publication. To receive new posts and support my work, consider becoming a free or paid subscriber.I admit that when I learned the…

Photo by Curated Ima…

Photo by Curated Images for UnsplashThe EndGame is a reader-supported publication. To receive new posts and support my work, consider becoming a free or paid subscriber.I admit that when I learned the so-called One Big Beautiful Bill was going to cut $911 billion from Medicaid over 10 years, my first thought was, That’s really cruel, but at least it doesn’t affect me.And if Medicaid were, as it was intended to be, a program strictly for older adults in poverty, I might have been right. But Medicaid has become something else in recent years that does affect middle-income families – any fa…