Choice decisions

Good morning Staker! Here’s what’s cookin’ today. Survey finds nearly 40% of retirees hesitate to spend savings; can creatine help reduce muscle loss; and why do old photos so frequently feature an empty chair?

Let’s get into it!

A survey conducted recently by Allianz Life found 39% of retirees were so disciplined in decades of saving for retirement, that they’re uncomfortable spending the money, even in retirement.

Additionally, 71% are still working age and expect they’ll find it unsettling to actually crack open the nest egg they’re building when the time comes.

“It’s hard to get somebody to even go out and spend five dollars for a cup of coffee at 7-Eleven when they’re so used to saving everything,” said Melissa Cox, a certified financial planner in Dallas. 

“One of my favorite clients, I am literally begging him to spend money,” she said. “He won’t go on vacation, which he desperately needs.” 

Money may have been put away specifically to be spent during retirement, but experts say the transition between spending income and spending savings can be jarring.

“We’re all accustomed to spending our paychecks, but we’re not accustomed to spending our retirement savings,” said Jonathan Swanburg, a certified financial planner in Houston. “If you watch your portfolio go down, it can be a very stressful thing.” 

Inflation and longer life expectancy are also reasonable concerns, with many worried they’ll outlive their savings, so they become reluctant to spend.

Creatine is a popular supplement mostly used by high-performance athletes, helping with muscle recovery.

Research published recently in the Journal of the International Society of Sports Nutrition found creatine can also slow muscle mass deterioration, while helping to sustain strength and endurance, even for those living more sedentary lives.

The researchers recruited 64 sedentary participants between 45 to 65 years old for a 12-week experiment. Some were given daily high doses of creatine, and others were given a placebo, but neither they nor the researchers knew who got what.

Among the participants, 26 opted not to exercise or diet during the trial, while the rest did some combination of the two. The researchers found that even those who remained sedentary but still took creatine increased their bench press and leg press strength, while also building more lean muscle mass and reducing fat.

For those who exercised and dieted while on creatine, the strength and muscle mass improvements were even more pronounced. Additionally, they also demonstrated improvements in cognitive function and scored higher on memory-testing exercises.

"These findings may have important implications for middle-aged and older individuals seeking to reduce body fat while maintaining muscle mass and cognitive function," the researchers wrote.

Old photos have an ineffable quality to them, beyond simply evoking nostalgia or wanderlust. They’re liminal in a way, almost acting like a window into both the past and the next life.

It can get particularly intense when you realize how many 19th-century photos were taken with the intention of spotlighting an empty chair—a rhetorical device plenty of cultures have utilized for thousands of years.

During the time of Alexander the Great, an empty throne was intended to represent the absence of a monarch. In various forms of art, the empty chair is meant to signify the unseen presence of the divine.

However, when it came to including empty chairs in traditional family photographs around the time photography was invented, the purpose was largely to honor the fallen. The Mexican-American War and the American Civil War were the first major conflicts that were able to be documented photographically.

One of the ways people did that was by visually capturing the nightmare of living in a home that used to be shared with another person who left behind an empty chair. The experience was nearly universal in the United States in the wake of the Civil War that took the lives of 2% of the country’s population.

Anika Nilles has received monumental praise for her performances with Rush while filling in for the late great Neil Peart during the band’s reunion tour.

Very early in the tour, she narrowly avoided disaster when retrieving a drum stick she lost grip of that was well on its way to disappearing into a thick fog that formed on stage due to a dry ice malfunction.

She was workin’ her magic again last week, though, with the stakes even higher this time, given when the incident occurred.

At the band’s San Antonio performance on Thursday night, her stick once again decided to fly by night away from her, and this time it really got away. However, it would have been impossible to tell what happened unless you were looking directly at her and anticipating her losing the stick.

It happened during the iconic drum fill section of Tom Sawyer, which is widely regarded as one of the best percussive performances in the history of rock ‘n roll, and one that requires absolute mastery of the kit.

She had all her bases covered. By the time anyone was capable of seeing the stick in the air, she was already holding its replacement, and—quite literally—did not miss a beat.

Mr. Peart’s legacy appears to be in good hands. You can watch the clip here.

1980 calling

From the top of the charts to the shows the top of the box office and more, there was a lot going on during this week in 1980. How much do you remember? Find out, with today’s trivia!