As an estate planning attorney, I often work with what has become known as “blended families.” Blended families often include married couples who have children from prior marriages or relationships. These families can present unique planning challenges when it comes to what should be left to the spouse, the children, and the stepchildren.

One challenge is that each spouse may have assets they have accumulated during their life prior to their current marriage. For example, they may have a lake house that was a favorite vacation spot for their children growing up. When they remarried later in life, however, they may now have stepchildren for whom that lake house holds no memories or connections.

Another challenge is that spouses in second marriages may or may not have strong relationships with their stepchildren. In some cases, they may have known the stepchildren since a young age and essentially raised them as their own. In other cases, the stepchildren may be adults with children of their own living across the country, and the stepparent may have little or no connection with them.

One thing to remember at the outset is that there is no legal requirement that you leave any of your estate to your children or stepchildren. The only person that can potentially elect against your Will and seek a legal share is your spouse. Generally speaking, your spouse has the right to inherit one-third of your estate. The “estate” on which this one-third is calculated includes not only assets in your name, but also so-called “testamentary substitutes,” such as assets held in trust.

This spousal elective share right prevents a spouse from totally disinheriting their spouse in their Will; in some cases, spouses in a second marriage do, however, give up this right if they sign a pre-nuptial agreement which releases it.

When it comes to children and stepchildren, you are free to give them whatever you want. If you make no provision for them in your Will, they will have no legal right to challenge it. With the exception that your children may have the ability to challenge it in limited circumstances where a challenge is generally available, i.e., in cases where you lacked capacity or were under undue influence. Such challenges are rare and often unsuccessful.

So – with all this said – how do you handle your estate planning if you have a blended family? One option is to treat the children and stepchildren the same. This is more often the case where the stepchildren have been with the stepparent from an early age. In those cases, the stepparent may think of those stepchildren as their own children.

This does not mean, however, that all children and stepchildren will be treated equally. As is unfortunately sometimes the case, the parent and stepparent may be estranged from one of the children and both the parent and stepparent may choose to leave that child nothing. That is their right, and as I mentioned before, there is little the child/stepchild can do to challenge that.

If there is a desire to treat the children and stepchildren differently, then there are several planning techniques to accomplish that. I will review two common examples in order to give you a sense of the options available.

First, you can make particular general bequests or specific bequests or devises (gifts of real property). A general bequest can be a gift of a particular amount of money, i.e. “I give $10,000 to my stepson Robert.” A specific bequest can be a gift of a particular asset, i.e. “I give my all my musical instruments to my stepdaughter Amy.” A specific devise can be a gift of a particular piece of real property, i.e. “I give my lake house at Caroga Lake to my sons, in equal shares.”

These types of gifts can be tailored to meet your particular needs, and as soon as they do not impact a surviving spouse’s elective share right, they can be set up however you desire. This customization of gifting may lead to uneven shares among children and stepchildren, but that is entirely permissible and may be appropriate for your circumstances.

Second, you can also consider the use of trusts. A common planning technique with second marriages, is to leave some amount of assets in trust for a surviving spouse. That trust will often require that income is payable to the surviving spouse and that principal may be payable to them for their health, maintenance, and support, in the discretion of the trustee. 

This allows the first spouse to make sure the second spouse is taken care of for the rest of their lifetime, but it also allows the first spouse to direct the distribution of the remaining trust assets after the second spouse later dies. In some cases, the remaining assets are distributed to the children of the first spouse. Such a trust can also direct that the second spouse have use of the marital home for a specific period of time or for the rest of their life, in order to prevent them from being displaced.

As you might imagine, each family is unique and what is appropriate for one family may be entirely wrong for another. In order to ensure you properly consider all options, it is advisable to consult an experienced estate planning attorney in your area. 

Matthew J. Dorsey, Esq. is a Senior Partner with O’Connell and Aronowitz, 1 Court Street, Saratoga Springs. Over his twenty-five years of practice, he has focused on the areas of elder law, estate planning, and estate administration. Mr. Dorsey can be reached at 518-584-5205, mdorsey@oalaw.com and www.oalaw.com

As far as Jerome Powell and the Fed seem to be concerned, we’re living in a world where up is down, down is up, good news is bad news, and bad news is great. It’s Bizzaro World!

The economy continues to be a difficult one for investors, as the Fed remains insistent upon increasing interest rates, at any cost. While many, including us, have been sounding the alarm about inflation since the stimulus spending spree of ’20 and ’21, the Fed only acknowledged it may be an issue earlier this year. 

As a result, the Fed has been compensating for being asleep at the wheel through a series of massive and rapid interest rate hikes in an attempt to bring inflation back to its target of 2%. Considering inflation has averaged 3.3% since 1914, a 2% target becomes an onerous demand to place on the economy, especially given all of the other headwinds. 

This ham-handed strategy has meant that the Fed is reading otherwise positive metrics as harbingers of doom. For example, the economy is currently at full employment, with new jobs in manufacturing, hospitality, and other sectors being created throughout the year. This otherwise good news is being interpreted by the fed as a sign that the economy is not slowing down.  

Estimates are that GDP for the third quarter will be positive by as much as 3% annualized. After two quarters of negative growth, one can only wonder at the Fed’s reaction to economic expansion. 

Most of the information that the Fed is using to make decisions about rate changes are lagging economic indicators. Consequently, the Fed won’t know it’s gone too far, until it’s gone too far. This compounds the difficulty around reining in inflation without sending the economy into a recession.

To make matters worse, the Fed needlessly unsettles markets by telegraphing today what it thinks it might do in the future, based on information from the past. It’s bizarre. 

Year to date, US indices are down as much as 32% (as of Oct 10).

So, where do we go from here?

1. We expect the Fed to continue raising interest rates, although any slowdown in the pace of these increases should be positive for the markets.

2. While rates have increased, it’s important to keep in mind that they are still not historically high.

3. The dollar continues to be very strong, which makes the cost of commodities, like grain and oil, which are priced in dollars on the world market, relatively less expensive to US consumers. Conversely this hurts our European friends.

4. Unemployment rates continue to be extremely low, signaling full employment. Recessions do not typically happen during these periods. We, and the Fed, will continue to monitor this metric.

5. We fully expect markets to continue to be volatile during the remainder of the year as economic and geopolitical factors remain at the forefront.

6. According to Reuters, fund companies are sitting on a mountain of cash. In fact, they are holding more cash than they’ve held in any year since 2001, as fund managers seek opportunities. We continue to watch this as an indication of what the “smart money” is doing.  

In light of economic and geopolitical headwinds, tactically overweighting cash and cash equivalents while you, too, seek opportunities, may make a lot of sense depending on your circumstances. As always, work closely with with your Certified Financial Planner® Professional to help ensure that your portfolio accurately reflects your individual needs, as well as the ever-changing market landscape. 

Stephen Kyne CFP® is a Partner at Sterling Manor Financial in Saratoga Springs, and Rhinebeck.Securities offered through Cadaret, Grant & Co., Inc. Member FINRA/SIPC. Advisory services offered through Sterling Manor Financial, LLC, or Cadaret Grant & Co., Inc, SEC registered investment advisors. Sterling Manor Financial and Cadaret, Grant are separate entities.

In the middle of a housing boom, especially during a period of high inflation, many people are tempted to explore the idea of investing in real estate. Real estate tends to carry a certain allure due to the concept of passive income, but talk to anyone who owns rental property, and they will tell you it is anything but passive. Like everything else, this decision is not entirely straightforward, and one should be aware of the costs and risks before jumping in. There are many avenues to access a real estate investment, so we will explore each individually.

This might be controversial, but I do not believe a home should be considered an investment in the traditional sense. Many people will disagree with this by saying they sold their house for more (sometimes much more) than they bought it. In fact, the long-term average appreciation in home prices published by Standard & Poors is 5.22% per year. Not too shabby. The problem is that price appreciation doesn’t account for input costs like taxes, maintenance, and mortgage interest. This isn’t to say everybody should just rent. Ask anybody selling the house they watched their kids grow up in, and they will tell you it is so much more than four walls and a roof.

Rental real estate can be great for regular income and a hedge against inflation, but it also carries drawbacks. In an ideal world, a rental property owner would have perfect tenants along with minimal upgrades and repairs. Being a landlord on a small scale sometimes means getting a call at 2 a.m. because the toilet is overflowing. If you are handy, this might not be too big of an obstacle, but the inconvenience of answering these calls can become a bit much. You might outsource these issues to a management company to solve this problem. The average cost for these services is about 10% of the rent. Then there are the issues of liquidity and transaction costs. Selling a house is far from an overnight process and paying realtor or broker commissions can eat into your profit margin. Despite these issues, rental real estate can be a great addition to a portfolio – just be sure to enter the venture only after considering all the nuances.

The other option for real estate exposure is via Real Estate Investment Trusts (“REITs”). These are designed and mandated to pay at least 90 percent of their income to shareholders. These come in various flavors, from those invested in shopping malls to those invested in cell towers. REITs can be accessed privately or publicly. Private REITs typically have higher fees, less liquidity, and a greater chance of picking a relative underperformer. However, those with a keen eye for real estate might be able to enhance their returns by going this route. Publicly traded REITs are more liquid and can be combined into a fund to diversify your risk among different geographical areas and types of REITs.

In conclusion, real estate is a perfectly fine investment under the right circumstances. There are plenty of success stories of people who built their fortune with real estate as the main driver. Ultimately, success comes down to timing and location if you go the route of physical real estate. You could generate a decent stream of income along the way, but the price appreciation you were expecting may not occur at the rate you were hoping for. If you are investing in REITs, they should be part of a diversified portfolio that is monitored and rebalanced. As with anything, make sure you have analyzed the investment from every angle before deciding to make the move.

David Rath, CMT, CFA, is the Chief Investment Officer at Continuum Wealth Advisors in Saratoga Springs. Continuum Wealth Advisors, LLC is a Registered Investment Advisor registered through the Securities and Exchange Commission.

For more information, visit contwealth.com.

JANUARY EVENTS

Free Breakfast – Bagels & Coffee 
Friday, January, 14 • 8:30-10 a.m.
Thank you to Trackside Grill for the donation of bagels. 

Dinner & a Drink! Chef Dinner by Old Bryan Inn. Enjoy a Sangria tasting.  
Tuesday, January 18 • 5:30 p.m. 
$11 per dinner. Menu to be determined. It’s Old Bryan Inn – how can you go wrong! Dinner is served at 5:30. Please sign up, seating is limited. Dine-in only! 

Simply Food by Maura 
Monday, December 13 To Go dinner only. $11 per dinner.
Tuesday, January 25. Turkey Dinner. 3:30-5:30 p.m., curbside pickup. 
To go dinners sponsored by Humana.

Light Fare and Live Classical Music Performance with The C/Dee Ensemble. 
Friday, January 28 • 2 p.m.
Music at 2 p.m. Light fare at 3 p.m. $5. Please sign up, seating is limited. Featuring Melanie Chirignan and Michael Dee. They will be performing popular classical works by Geroges Bizet, Camille Saint-Saens, Felix Mendelssohn, Mozart, Telemann, and Beethoven for flute and clarinet. Melanie is a flautist known for her musicality and versatility of repertoire. She has performed with: New York Chamber Players Orchestra, Albany Pro Music, and many more. Las Vegas born clarinetist, Michael is a versatile soloist, chamber, and orchestral musician. 

Save the Date! Beatles Tribute and Trivia 
Tuesday, February 8 • 3 p.m.
Live music with Jeff Brisbin. $5. Light fare served! Please sign up, seating is limited.

Conversational Spanish 
Fridays • 10:15-11 a.m
Hola! Speaking in Spanish is now being offered at the center! Come and join Mark and Robert for this fun and exciting class. Come to practice, learn or just converse in Spanish. All levels welcome!   

TIE DYE FUN! 
Thursday, January 20 • 1-3 p.m.
Facilitated by Meryl, artist and instructor. $5.00 material fee. Please sign up! Please bring your own t-shirt, blouse, shorts, etc., preferably 100% cotton white or light color, must be pre-washed. If accessible, check out some YouTube videos on tie dye to get ideas. All other supplies provided by Senior Center.   

Tech Fair with TRIMEDX
Thursday, January 27 • 2-4 p.m.
Did you get a new gadget for Christmas? The employees of TRIMEDX will be here to help you with ANY & ALL questions regarding technology! How to use: E-mail, cell phones, IPADS, Laptops, Kindles and more! Have you always wanted to try ZOOM, Facebook, Instagram, Spotify for music or order groceries for delivery? Here is your chance to learn. 

TAROT CARD READINGS 
Last Thursday of the month.
January date: Thursday, January 27 • 10-2 p.m. 
Facilitated by Mary Shimp. $5 donation. Do you have some unanswered questions about your life? A tarot card reading provides guidance to gain an insight into what the future holds. Call to make a 15-minute appointment.

ACADEMY FOR LIFELONG LEARNING
The Academy for Lifelong Learning will be holding select classes at the Center. Senior Center members may enroll in the classes at the Center only for just the class fee. See Front Desk for sign up instructions; registration is by mail. Classes are limited. Classes held at the Saratoga Senior Center are:

• Introduction to Classical Music: Tuesdays • 1 – 2:30 p.m.
5 weeks beginning Jan 25. Facilitated by Patricia Brady. Come and learn more about classical music, or catch the classical music bug. Media such as slides, videos, and recordings will be used to listen to compositions from Strauss to Stravinsky. There is no preparation. Just come with your ears open and your souls ready to be touched.

• Journal Writing: A Path to Understanding & Healing: Wednesdays • 11 a.m.-12:30 p.m.
5 weeks beginning Jan 26. Facilitated by Patricia A. Nugent. Journaling is an effective and therapeutic tool for better understanding ourselves and others, managing daily stress and anxiety, improving overall health, healing old wounds, and finding answers within. This class will review best practices in the art of journaling, as well as offer opportunities and reasons to “go deeper.” Both long-time journal-keepers and beginners will benefit. Bring paper and a writing instrument to first class but do not purchase a journal…yet.

• The Six Wives of Henry VIII Broadway Musical: Thursdays 11 a.m. – 12:30 p.m.
5 weeks beginning Jan 27. Facilitated by Kathy Welch. In the style of the hit show “Hamilton,” a new Broadway musical called “Six” examines the lives of the wives of King Henry VIII. The musical, sung in the style of a pop concert competition between the wives, gives us an idea of their ultimate fates: “divorced, beheaded, died, divorced, beheaded, survived.”

TRIPS & EXCURSIONS! 

VAN TRIPS – Saratoga Auto Museum 
Friday, January 21
A gem right in our own backyard, Saratoga Automobile Museum is located within the Saratoga State Park. Enjoy a guided tour of beautiful, vintage cars, vehicles, photos, and history of autos in NY. Current exhibit is : Considered to be one of the few complete collections of Porsche 911 RSs in the world, the Saratoga Automobile Museum is proud to announce Rennsport: The Complete Collection (RS) – featuring vehicles from the Steven Harris collection. Lunch at Old Bryan Inn. Pay $15 at sign up. Bring money for lunch. Leave the Center at 10 a.m. 

ONE DAY BUS TRIP – NEW YORK CITY
Wednesday, April 6, 2022. Sponsored by Humana. Details coming. 

Netherlands, Belgium & France 
June 11-22, 2022 with Optional 3-Night London Post Tour Extension.

Western Canada’s Rockies, Lakes, Wine Country
July 30-August 7, 2022 

California Dreamin’ featuring Monterey, Yosemite & Napa
September 19-26, 2022 

Tropical Costa Rica
November 2-10, 2022 with Optional 3-Night Jungle Adventure Post Tour Extension 

America’s Music Cities Holiday
December 4-11, 2022

TRAVEL SLIDE SHOW with Collette Travel 
January 19 • 1 p.m.
Presenting informational slide shows on: 
• Western Canada’s Rockies, Lakes & Wine Country: July 30-August 7, 2022 
• California Dreamin’ feat Monterey, Yosemite & Napa: September 19-26, 2022 
• America’s Music Cities Holiday: December 4-11, 2022

If you have a headache, you’re not alone. Nine out of ten Americans suffer from headaches. 

Some are occasional, some frequent, some are dull and throbbing, and some cause debilitating pain and nausea. What do you do when you suffer from a pounding headache? Do you grit your teeth and carry on? Lie down? Pop a pill and hope the pain goes away? There is a better alternative.

Research shows that spinal manipulation – one of the primary treatments provided by Doctors of Chiropractic – may be an effective treatment option for tension headaches and headaches that originate in the neck. A 2014 report in the Journal of Manipulative and Physiological Therapeutics (JMPT) found that chiropractic care improved outcomes for the treatment of acute and chronic neck pain and increased benefit was shown in several instances where a multimodal approach to neck pain had been used.

Headache Triggers

Headaches have many causes, or “triggers.” These may include  foods, environmental stimuli (noises, lights, stress, etc.) and/or behaviors (insomnia, excessive exercise, blood sugar changes, etc.) Ninety-five percent of headaches are primary headaches, such as tension, migraine, or cluster headaches. These types of headaches are not caused by disease; the headache itself is the primary concern.

The greatest majority of primary headaches are associated with muscle tension in the neck. Today, Americans engage in more sedentary activities than in the past, and more hours are spent in one fixed position or posture (such as sitting in front of a computer). This can increase joint irritation and muscle tension in the neck, upper back, and scalp, causing your head to ache.

What Can You Do?

The American Chiropractic Association (ACA) offers the following suggestions to prevent headaches:

•  If you spend a large amount of time in one fixed position, such as in front of a computer, on a sewing machine, typing or reading, take a break and stretch every 30 minutes to one hour. The stretches should take your head and neck through a comfortable range of motion.
• Low-impact exercise may help relieve the pain associated with primary headaches. However, if you are prone to dull, throbbing headaches, avoid heavy exercise. Engage in such activities as walking and low-impact aerobics.
• Avoid teeth clenching. The upper teeth should never touch the lowers, except when swallowing. This results in stress at the temporomandibular joints (TMJ) – the two joints that connect your jaw to your skull – leading to TMJ irritation and a form of tension headaches.
• Drink at least eight 8-ounce glasses of water a day to help avoid dehydration, which can lead to headaches.

What Can a Doctor of Chiropractic Do?

Your Doctor of Chiropractic may do one or more of the following if you suffer from a primary headache:

• Perform spinal manipulation or chiropractic adjustments to improve spinal function and alleviate the stress on your system.
• Provide nutritional advice, recommending a change in diet and perhaps the addition of B complex vitamins.
• Offer advice on posture, ergonomics (work postures), exercises, and relaxation techniques. This advice should help to relieve the recurring joint irritation and tension in the muscles of the neck and upper back.

Doctors of Chiropractic undergo extensive training to help their patients in many ways beyond just treatment for low back pain. They know how tension in the spine relates to problems in other parts of the body, and they can take steps to relieve those problems.

Dr. Matt Smith has been a Chiropractor in Saratoga Springs for 35 years. He and his daughter Dr. Kevy Smith Minogue can be reached at 518-587-2064 or at www.MySaratogaChiropractor.com

We have a lot of laundry in our house.

There are school and play clothes, underwear and socks, towels and washcloths. (I should note that we are constantly looking for socks, yelling that we have no socks, and arguing about who took whose socks.)

There are work clothes that generally needed to be treated more carefully.

There’s sports laundry: items needed for practices, and different items needed for games and matches, which also change based on whether the game or match is home or away. 

Seasonal clothes: bathing suits and beach towels that need to be washed in the summer; snow clothes that have to be washed or at least dried on a nearly daily basis in the winter.

Masks: we have about a thousand of them, though it seems that only ten or so can be found at any one time. We have small ones for small faces and big ones for big faces; it’s not a guarantee that the ten that can be found are the right mix of small and big.

We have clothes that started out clean but have “somehow” ended up on the floor. We have clothes that were neatly folded and sorted in a laundry basket or in piles on the couch and I look away for a minute or I have to do something else for a minute, or, I do admit, sometimes for a day or two, and “someone” ends up jumping on the piles, dumping out the basket, or throwing items around the room (why do toddlers/preschoolers like to do this?); the formerly clean items then get walked on or kicked under the couch or, as once happened, are found hanging from the curtain rod, and since I can’t always distinguish the clothes on the floor that were dirty from the clothes on the floor that were just cleaned, they all have to go in the wash.

Every night, I ask the boys to gather up whatever clothes they want washed for the next day so I can run at least one load. I often have to put in a second load to make sure everyone has what they need. I usually have to run the dryer at least twice per load, because there are usually some damp things after one cycle. 

I do it at night because it’s often the case that people want things washed that they’ve worn to their practice that doesn’t get out until 8:15, for example. Also, because getting the laundry process going makes me tired, so it’s not until the eleventh hour that I find the will to deal with everyone yelling about how they don’t want to get up to find their laundry at that minute (no one ever wants to get up to get their laundry, but everyone always wants things washed for the next day). I often put the first load of laundry in as late as 10:00; if I have to run another, it goes in at 11:30; sometimes I run out of time to finish the dryer so I run it first thing in the morning before school.

People have offered to help me with laundry. My mom is always telling me she’d be happy to do some if I wanted to bring it to her house. My husband often runs a load of the boys’ things and/or puts away what’s in the dryer or what’s been sitting in a pile on the couch, and he’s always done his own as well, which cuts down on what I have to do. My biggest boy really wants me to let him do his own laundry (I know I have to let this happen, and soon). 

But the thing is, I’m one of those people who, if I don’t touch every single piece that goes through the laundry, I have no idea where anything is, and since everyone’s always asking me where things are, I need to know where things are. I’m also one of those people who loses my steam to get a job done if I’m faced with any kind of obstacle-if I’ve summoned the mental and physical strength to do the laundry and I find that someone’s already using the washer machine, there’s a good chance I’ll fizzle. My husband has gotten pretty good at anticipating when I won’t freak out that he needs to use the washer, but that is a learned skill that took years of marriage-I know for sure that my son would not have the same awareness. “Set a laundry schedule!” some of you are surely thinking, and that would be my thought, too, if I wasn’t dealing with someone (me) who is a slave to infrequent bursts of energy-I find it nearly impossible to get a task done if I’m not in the right frame of mind, and my “right frames of mind” often refuse to conform to a schedule.

I am my own worst enemy. But also, on the whole, I don’t really mind doing the laundry. In our house that is rarely tidy and orderly, there’s something satisfying and even soothing about taking a nice, warm, clean load of laundry out of the dryer. I get a great measure of satisfaction out of sorting, folding, and putting away all the clothes where they go-this step is the one that gets dropped most often (people are often scrounging through a dryerful of clothes to find what they need because I haven’t gotten to dealing with it yet), but it doesn’t get dropped as often as so many of the other tasks I wish I would do more often, because I like doing it. I like having my process, I like being able to do it when and how I like without anyone getting in my way, I like knowing where people’s things are when they ask, and I like making sure my kids have clean clothes. As with so many things, blessings and burdens go hand in hand.

Kate and her husband have seven sons ages 17, 15, 13, 11, 10, 7, and 3. Email her at kmtowne23@gmail.com.

Today is the third article in our series exploring the foundations of fitness. 

My last article reviewed the principle of stability. Improving stability will help you sharpen your ability to adapt to new activities, maintain balance, and react to new movements. Today, we will look at mobility and why it may be important to your fitness.

Mobility is our body’s ability to move freely, efficiently, and under control. Mobility allows us to move correctly and effectively with minimal restriction or difficulty. It is a crucial part of our fitness affecting all individuals and activities. 

A mobile joint taken through its full range of motion daily will be a healthier joint. We must incorporate it into our daily activities or sport, like the person who has to get down to play with grandkids and then reach overhead into the cupboard. If we don’t perform our mobility positions daily, it won’t be easy to do those movements when the time comes, basically, “use it or lose it.”

Over the last few years, mobility and stretching have been controversial in the fitness world—claims about what works and what doesn’t seem to change week to week. 

This controversy raises the questions:
• What stretching or mobility routine is the best? 
• How long should I hold a stretch for? 
• Should I stretch before or after participating in an activity? 
• Do I even need to stretch? 
• Does stretching help prevent injury?

Unfortunately, there is no one right answer, and there is no one-size-fits-all program.

Three myths about your mobility:

1. Stretching Reduces injury
The evidence for stretching reducing injury is inconclusive. Prepping your body with some active movements/stretches can only be a good thing. 

2. Stretching Improves Athletic Performance
Dynamic stretching and sport-specific warmup movements are ideal. Try to keep your warmup around 5-15 minutes.

Static stretching (i.e., stretching held for more than 30 seconds) has been shown to reduce strength, power, and performance! 

3. Stretching Improves Body Composition
Stretching does not make muscles appear longer and leaner. Lean-looking muscles come from diet and activity…NOT stretching. 

There are no detrimental or harmful effects of stretching. 

• Taking our joints through their entire available range of motion helps lubricate them and move the surrounding tissue and joint fluid. 
• You will improve your range of motion after stretching, but it will be temporary. Stretching simply does change the physical length of tissue.
• There is a strong mind-body connection and stress-relieving properties achieved with some forms of mobility/stretch training. 
• Mobility work with specific injuries or post-surgery can be helpful to decrease pain and sensitivity. 
• Particular movements or athletic positions that require a specific amount of joint motion can benefit from targeted mobility work.

How do we train mobility efficiently and effectively?

Remember, there isn’t a one size fits all program. But what I call “strength stretching” and dynamic warmups will serve you best in the most time-efficient manner. Strength stretching (aka loaded stretching) is a method to help simultaneously lengthen tissue (muscle, joints, ligaments) while developing strength and control through the full range of motion. 

This way of performing mobility differs from traditional stretching by incorporating a weight over a more extended period. Strength stretching provides the benefits of strengthening and stretching at the same time! 

Below are a couple of examples of ‘strength stretches’ you can perform. 

Calf raises to heel drop: 
Stand tall with your knees straight and heels hanging off of a bottom stair or a solid piece of wood. Hold onto the wall or railing for support. Start with your heels below the surface you’re standing on. Rise up, pushing your toes into the object that you are standing on. 

Slowly lower yourself (over 5-10 seconds) until your heels feel tight or restricted. Perform 2-3 sets of 5-10 reps three times per week. 

You can make this less challenging by standing on a shorter surface or with more hand support. To make this harder, try on one foot or hold a weight in one hand.

Deep chair squats:
Find a chair, sofa, or stool that is relatively low. Load up a backpack with several weights/books. (Start with 5-20 pounds). 

Next, drive your heels into the ground, lean slightly forward, and quickly rise out of the chair. You may need to use your hands a bit to help yourself up. After coming to a tall standing posture, slowly, with control, lower yourself down into the chair over 5 seconds. 

Repeat 2-3 sets of 8-12 more repetitions per session three times per week. 

Remember to always perform the movements in a range that you feel under control over and go slowly. Also, it is normal to have some post-stretch soreness. 

Mobility is a vital component of long-term fitness that helps you freely and efficiently for an active, healthy life. Any movement is better than no movement, so find a routine you like and stick with it! 

In my following two articles, we will be looking at power and strength and how you can participate and improve in each area!

Dr. Robert Rehberger PT, DPT, OCS, is a physical therapist at Goodemote Physical Therapy. He is a Board-Certified Orthopedic Specialist and a Board Certified Spine Fellow. 

Call 518-306-6894 to set up an appointment with one of our highly trained PTs. 

The end of another year is rapidly approaching, and just as you cross items off your checklist and prepare your home for the winter, it’s also important to complete maintenance items to prepare your finances to close-out 2021.

The first order of business is to make sure you’ve made the Required Minimum Distribution (RMD) from your IRAs and other retirement plans for the year. Congress gave a reprieve in 2020, but did not extent that for 2021. If you’re age 72 or older, or have certain inherited retirement accounts, you will need to make minimum distribution by year’s end. The penalty for non-compliance is 50% of the amount you should have distributed, so you’ll want to steer clear of that!

If, like many, you don’t need the RMD to make ends meet, and would prefer not to take any distribution at all, consider donating it to a charity of your choice. The IRS allows you to distribute funds directly from your IRA to a charity, and not pay taxes on the distribution, even if you aren’t eligible to itemize deductions on your federal taxes. 

It’s important to note that distributions must go DIRECTLY from your IRA to the charity. In other words, you cannot distribute to yourself, and then write a check to the charity. This can be a great option even if you aren’t subject to RMDs, but are charitably inclined and not eligible to itemize deductions!

The next piece of financial housekeeping will be to begin to gather documents you’ll be needing just after the new year to prepare your taxes. Compile receipts for medical bills, tuition payments, child care and charitable contributions, among others.

While many of us will no longer be able to itemize deductions due to recent tax law changes, there are credits for things like child care and education expenses which you may still be eligible for. For those with large medical bills, mortgage interest, or who have been particularly philanthropic this year, you may still be able to itemize, so it is important to have those receipts handy.

Of note: many families which are accustomed to, and depend on, large tax refunds in the spring may be shocked to find out that those checks may be much smaller than they are used to. This is because Congress changed how child tax credits are paid this year. 

Usually, this credit is received at tax time, for the prior year. This year, however, families have been receiving checks each month. No doubt this extra income has been helpful, especially for lower-income families. We feel, though, that the government has done a TERRIBLE job of communicating to these families that their refunds will be lower as a result, and wonder at the net impact on these families’ finances.

When it comes to planning for your retirement, this is the perfect time to evaluate your contribution levels to your retirement plans at work. If you have the ability, and you’re not yet contributing to the maximum levels allowed, consider topping these accounts off to take advantage of the possible tax deduction this year, as well as the ability to simply squirrel as much away for the future as possible. Even if you can’t contribute to the maximum, be sure to at least contribute enough to take advantage of any employer matching contributions. 

You may not be aware, but once you reach age 50, you are eligible for higher contribution levels than in prior years. So, if you’ve turned 50 this year, consider increasing your contributions. For 401(k) and 403(b) plans, you can contribute an additional $6,500 to a max of $26,000 from $19,500 for those under 50. For SIMPLE plans, you get to contribute an additional $3,000, up to a max of $16,500. Take advantage of this opportunity to catch-up on contributions you may not have been able to make when you were younger. 

The end of the year is a perfect time to review your various forms of insurance, including your home and auto. Take note of various coverage limits and deductibles. If you can, consider a higher deductible in order to save on premium expenses. 

Ensure that your homeowners coverage amounts reflect the value of your home. Your home has probably appreciated since you purchased it, but have you increased your coverage limits to keep pace? 

An often-overlooked task is to review your beneficiary declarations each year. Families grow, as new members are added, and shrink with death and divorce, which means that beneficiary and Transfer-on-Death declarations can easily become outdated and no longer reflect your true wishes. 

Since these declarations are a matter of contract, they will overrule what your Will may say. So, even if you’ve updated your will to exclude an ex-spouse, but you left them as beneficiary on your IRA, your new spouse won’t be able to inherit those assets, but the ex will, and it can’t be challenged in probate.

Your Certified Financial Planner® professional is perfectly suited to help you mark most of these items off your list. Review your beneficiaries, gather tax documents, maximize funding of your various retirement plans, take required distributions, and review your insurance coverage with your advisor each year, to help ensure that your financial plan is well-tuned as you prepare to turn the page on 2021.

Stephen Kyne CFP® is a Partner at Sterling Manor Financial, LLC in Saratoga Springs and Rhinebeck.   

Securities offered through Cadaret, Grant & Co., Inc. Member FINRA/SIPC. Advisory services offered through Sterling Manor Financial, LLC, or Cadaret Grant & Co., Inc., SEC registered investment advisors. 

Sterling Manor Financial and Cadaret, Grant are separate entities.

Every time I hear the song “I’ll Be Home for Christmas,” I wonder about the “presents on the tree” part. On the tree? What does that mean? How would that work? I finally googled it recently and discovered that, indeed, presents used to be hung on the tree or nestled in its branches, but they were small things like dolls and cookies, and for a time there were even containers sold for the express purpose of hanging on the tree with small gifts inside. A holdover from that time is the animal crackers box with its string — it was originally made that way as a Christmas promotion, specifically to be hung on the tree! (If you want to read more, check on the great article “Hanging Gifts ON the Tree” at www.twelvedays.com/blogs/news/7040100-hanging-gifts-on-the-tree.)

Of course, my mind immediately went to “how on earth would that work with small children in the house??” but then I reminded myself that it’s not actually a thing we need to worry so much about anymore anyway, which is just another in a long list of ways my children are growing up and our household is looking so different from how it did even just last year.

Not only are “presents on the tree” not as terrifying an idea as it would have been previously, but even the location of our Christmas tree is evidence of the absence of babies and toddlers. For the vast majority of the last seventeen years, figuring out where to put our Christmas tree has been a no-brainer: it goes in the room that the little ones aren’t allowed in. 

In our first house, where my oldest two came home to after being born, we had a front room that the front door opened into, and a back sunroom that my grandmother had added on when she’d lived there. The back room was the kids’ playroom and our general living room; the front room was for the nice loveseat and the Christmas tree.

In our current house, where we’ve lived ever since we moved from my grandmother’s house, we also have a front room that our front door opens into, and my ideal is that it stays nice, like a sitting room or parlor, where we and guests can sit in relative peace and order (it almost never works out that way, but the intention is there). All the rest of the first floor is living space, where my children have free rein, but I always had a baby gate in the doorway into the front room when I had very small little ones so that there was some effort to keep it nice. Clearly, it was the only place for the Christmas tree.

It’s a perfect room for it too — it has a nice big window that looks out onto the street, which is ideal for a Christmas tree, and every year I sigh with happiness when I drive up to our house at night and see the pretty Christmas tree in the front window.

But this year, I’m not sure where the tree should go! Because of the shutdown and everyone working and schooling from home, it became very obvious to me that we didn’t have adequate workspaces for everyone, so Santa generously brought desks for the boys last year. Figuring out where to put them was a task, let me tell you. But we figured it out, and it’s been great, except that two of the desks are in our already very small front room — the “nice” room — and now there’s no room for the Christmas tree.

I’m sure I could figure out some way of reconfiguring the room for the month or less that we’d have the Christmas tree up, but I’ve actually been thinking about doing something different — I’ve been thinking about maybe putting it in the TV room, which is also in the front of the house, on the other side of a wall from the “nice” front room. It also has a window that looks out on the street — a much smaller window, but still. And this is the big thing, the thing that made me think to write about it for this column: my youngest is three, and while there will definitely be a learning curve for him about what he can and cannot do in regard to a Christmas tree in his living space, I actually think it’s not impossible like it would have been even last year, or any of the other previous almost seventeen years. 

Look how far we’ve come!

There are so many things about these kids growing up that make me sad, like how more than half of them are now wise to the ways of Christmas. I have always loved helping create the mystery and magic of Christmas, and while it’s still wonderful with big boys, and I still do have three little ones who are wide eyed with wonder, and I will always do what I can to help with the mystery and magic, there was something so special about all of our children watching the sky for Santa’s sleigh. But there are also a lot of things about the kids growing up that I’m not hating at all, like having the freedom to put the Christmas tree in a different spot. Look at us with our gateless house and our Christmas tree in our TV room! We could probably even hang some presents on the tree without worrying that Mr. Three-Year-Old would ruin it all. (Well … maybe not just yet.) A very Merry Christmas and Happy New Year to you all!

Kate and her husband have seven sons ages 17, 15, 13, 11, 9, 7, and 3. Follow her at www.facebook.com/kmtowne23, or email her at kmtowne23@gmail.com.

Article 81 of the Mental Hygiene Law outlines the legal provisions relating to guardianship of adults who are no longer able to handle their personal and/or financial affairs.  Adults suffering from chronic mental illness, such as bipolar disorder or schizophrenia, arguably cannot handle their personal or financial affairs, but they are not the most common subjects of Article 81 proceedings.

More commonly, Article 81 proceedings are brought with regard to older individuals suffering from Alzheimer’s Disease or other forms of dementia.  The proceedings are usually brought by family members, including spouses or children.

Those who suffer from mental illness may have functional deficits, which can sometimes lead to limitations presenting a danger to their welfare.  In contrast to an older individual suffering from Alzheimer’s Disease, the functional deficits of a mentally ill person can be intermittent.  As soon as the individual suffering from mental illness is getting proper treatment, i.e. consistent medication and/or therapy, the functional deficits may be manageable.

As a result, an Article 81 guardianship proceeding may be an inappropriate means of legal help for loved ones who seek assistance with a mentally ill friend or family member.  If this is the case, then what options exist under our current law to address the need?

One option to consider is Article 9.60 of the Mental Hygiene Law.  Article 9.60 is known as Kendra’s Law.  In January of 1999, Andrew Goldstein, a man with a long history of mental illness, pushed Kendra Webdale into the path of an oncoming subway train in Manhattan, causing her death.  Kendra was a 32 year-old journalist, originally from Fredonia, New York.  Prior to this tragedy, Mr. Goldstein had been in and out of mental health facilities, typically for short periods. Article 9.60 of the Mental Hygiene Law (MHL 9.60) was passed in honor of Kendra’s memory.

MHL 9.60 applies to adults who suffer from mental illness who are unlikely to survive safely in the community without supervision.  These individuals must have a history of lack of compliance with treatment for mental illness that resulted in: a) two inpatient hospitalizations in a mental health facility in the last three years, or b) one or more acts of serious violent behavior towards themselves or others in the last four years, or c) one or more threats or attempts at serious physical harm against themselves or others in the last four years.

The ultimate goal of MHL 9.60 is to bring mental health services to bear in critical cases to prevent another tragedy, like the death of Kendra Webdale.  MHL 9.60 proceedings are most commonly brought by county mental health authorities, but the statute does permit the proceeding to be brought by close family members and adults who live with the mentally ill individual.

The MHL 9.60 statute is titled “Assisted outpatient treatment,” which is often shortened to “AOT.”  As its name implies, the goal of the law is to put together a plan of outpatient treatment for the individual that can be made part of a judicial order.  For the proceeding to go forward, the petition must be accompanied by a statement by a physician that because of their examination of the individual or based on other factors, they believe the individual would benefit from AOT.

The judge hearing the case must find by “clear and convincing evidence” that AOT services are appropriate and that there is no “appropriate and feasible less restrictive alternative.”  If the judge so finds, he or she can order that the individual take appropriate medications and abide by a treatment plan designed to assist with their condition.  The treatment plan may include things like case management services, individual or group therapy, and alcohol or substance abuse treatment.  The court can order the AOT services plan to be in place for up to one year.

If the individual receiving AOT services fails to comply with the plan set forth for their treatment, MHL 9.60 provides a mechanism for him or her to be taken into custody and evaluated by appropriate medical professionals.  The law allows for the individual to be held for up to seventy-two hours, and potentially longer, based on the circumstances.

If someone who struggles with mental illness is not a good candidate for guardianship under Mental Hygiene Law Article 81, there may be tools that can be brought to bear under Mental Hygiene Law Article 9.60.  MHL 9.60 does not appoint a guardian for the individual, but rather mandates a program of assisted outpatient services to the mentally ill individual – which may help save their life, or potentially the life of another.

Matthew J. Dorsey, Esq. is a Partner with O’Connell and Aronowitz, 1 Court St, Saratoga Springs.  Over his 24 years of practice, he has focused in the areas of elder law, guardianship, estate planning, and estate administration.  Mr. Dorsey can be reached at 518-584-5205, mdorsey@oalaw.com, and www.oalaw.com.