Hardly dumbass. My mother is 81 years old. She is the best insured person I know. She has been in assisted living for the last 4 years and hasnt paid a penny for it. Its all been covered by insurance. Instead of spending down her savings they are steadily climbing. We were setting up trusts and doing estate planning while you were diapers.

Up until last year she was all in fixed income securities. My parents were smart enough to tie all their money in 15% 10 year CD’s when rates were that high. They havent had a down year since the mid 80’s when they lost money on Whoops Bonds (google it if you dont know what it is). Last year I finally convinced her that she was no longer investing her money as there was no way possible she could come close to outliving her money. The reality was she was investing her kids money now. The money was in CD’s at the rates you say were punishing seniors so we moved alot of them because the timeline was no longer her life it was her baby boomer children who are all still 10 years or more from retirement age. The truth is with the possible exception of one of us, the other 3 dont need the money and would be happy to see her live to 120.

Luck has never played a part of what we do. We are smart yet conservative. We didnt buy growth stocks last year we bought stable Fortune 500 (more like Fortune 50) companies paying high dividends. We dont like taking big risks and just wanted income for the next several years for her. The punchline is….the rest of the country decided they wanted that too several month after we did and not only did we get close to 5% dividends on the portfolio but we got double digit appreciation which beat the growth stockls too. Yep, just call us a bunch lucky yocals following the trends. LOL