See Your Folks
seeyourfolks.com
seeyourfolks.com
If my parents are 80, I don't expect them to die in 1 year just because life expectancy at birth is 81. I expect them to live about another 8 years.
Use a table like http://www.ssa.gov/oact/STATS/table4c6.html
Though that's really the current life expectancy, no one actually knows future life expectancy, which depends on future technology.
or if you've had children who can read english and can access the internet
The site didn't tell you anything you didn't already know, it only clarified it.
Instead of denying information to keep yourself happy, why not use the information? My 69-year-old mother remarked earlier this year that if she didn't get around to some of her life goals soon she wouldn't be able to.
Did she say that out of depression? No, to live the life she wanted even more. She celebrated her 70th birthday bicycle-touring a wine region in France with my step-father, riding something like one hundred kilometers a day.
We can all do the same in our ways. In my opinion, awareness trumps denial.
You've gotta have something for retirement...
Perhaps it is an expensive minimaxing strategy.
I am not advocating recklessness with personal savings, but at a certain age you pass the point where you can reasonably enjoy money.
As I've understood, the point is to blow all your retirement money between the age of 65(standard retirement age), and as you so eloquently put it, the age when you are pissing yourself in an old folks home. With a little luck, you've got about 30 years there.
People associate frailty with age, but it doesn't have to be that way. If we can fix or clean up the underlying processes that cause aging, being 90 years old will be a very different experience.
More to your point though, I think retirement dreams have been born out of blue-collar type work. People physically cannot do most types of blue-collar work when they reach the "golden years". Consider how you can enjoy your life now and how you can position yourself to have an income when you are not as nimble and healthy as you are now.
After signing up for the mailing list, there is a typo in the link to "continue to our website".
I'm not sure if this information is motivational or debilitating. :)
If you live close to your parents, do it in person the next time you see them (and bring a voice recorder, your grand-kids will thank you some day). If you live far away, I built a service that makes it easy to do over email (http://www.storyworth.com).
The awareness you speak of is quite freeing and empowering when you take the time to consider it. The appreciation you gain based on a stoic style of living can be quite freeing for people. It isn't just about using the information though as you mention, it is about being aware of it. Whether you act on it or not, you can gain some peace.
This site seems to put forward that idea, that knowing about it will in turn provide you with more appreciation and a better way of coping with the death as well.
Edit: I do agree that a fit student can do a 7 hour bike tour, but i still staand by my opinion that for 70 year old it seems to be impossible.
An average unfit person of almost any age, can, within a couple of weeks of regular riding, achieve 100 km in a day.
Outliers for sure, but those are just those who I personally know. My own parents, 71 for him and 68 (with an artificial knee) for her, will be touring Hungary next year. I don't think it'll be 100K per day, but it should be a healthy daily distance.
http://www.outsideonline.com/fitness/fitness-coach/Am-I-too-...
The worst part about a random person riding for 7 hours straight is being unused to sitting on a bike for that long. If you ride all the time it gets much easier.
If we were talking 90, then I could see why 100km a day might seem hard. However for some, 70 can still be considered youthful.
This is a great reminder to pick up the phone and tell your folks or anyone that matters to you that you love them. Everyone reading this should do that now if they can. You never know when it will be too late and you don't want those regrets.
I'm very lucky, my dad is 83 years old and doing great. The past few times I've gone to visit my parents, I've made a conscious effort to ask them a lot of questions about their life, and it's been incredibly rewarding.
One thing led to another and now helping people record their family stories is what I do for a living (http://www.storyworth.com if you want to check it out).
[edited to linkify]
If you can, you should say to the people you care about how much you love them. Time is limited, memories stay forever.
But this is a good opportunity for me to make an important point regards a discussion that took place here a few days ago.
You see - This website serves no purpose in the East or Eastern ethnic minorities.
It's not part of our culture to lose contact with our parents. I saw my parents on the weekend, my wife saw hers and we both spoke to our parents today on the phone. We live 3hrs away.
I'm 33 yrs old. I've never not spoken to my parents for more than 14 days ever in my life.
Why am I telling you this?
Because in the last discussion that took place - the rant about culture in India, many commented that people need to get more mature but what they dont realise that its culture holding them back
Your website proves my point.
I visit my family every single weekend. No exception. And that includes my uncles, cousins and grandparents when they were alive.
I guess that for our cultures, family is a very important part of our lives, a safety net, etc... The average American is very individualistic in comparison (it's not meant to be negative - the very same traits mean Americans are more self-reliant and adventurous)
From the link, I gather that you feel under societal pressure to stay in constant touch with your parents, even when you don't wish to.
Is someone physically holding a gun to your head? If not ... you, and only you, are responsible for the conduct of your own life.
3 hours really isn't very far. I had Indian colleagues who would see their parents once or twice a year because they lived in different continents. In China they have passed a law that people need to look after their parents, presumably because people weren't doing so. I don't think you're seeing the picture with your one-size-fits-all East versus West cultural comparison.
I'm treating the money and job ones first, after that I'll tackle my weight (I did manage to lose 40 pounds a few years ago, but got them back compensating for the shitty job and money troubles).
Thanks for the prod :)
You can lose weight even with really busy schedules under $10/day with a combination of liquid egg whites with salsa, carrot stick snacks and subway/chipolte for example. Just eat at the -1.5lbs/week calorie level to lose weight with a calorie calculator[1]. Remember to recalculate every 5lbs or so of weight loss.
Also record your weight at least weekly with something like myfitnesspal or a wifi weight scale (like the fitbit aria) to snip weight gain trends in the bud. I once gained 30 lbs over a period of 5 months without realizing it due to not tracking my weight, stress and my exGF getting into baking. %70 of americans are overweight, your not alone.
Download Myfitnesspal (or bookmark the website) and use it for one week.
I'll disagree with mahyarm about needing anything fancly like liquid egg whites. For most people substituting water for softdrinks will make a substantial difference to the calories. Carrot sticks do make a good snack though (they have a high satability index). Pears are also good if you prefer something sweeter.
But now that I think of it, I would probably have to count pixels to tell if I switched month and day. The effect of seeing that is still neat.
Never mind, I'll just head for the Carrousel.
Instead, what would be nice is if provided information such as: ask your father to go for a prostrate exam, ask your mother to run these other tests, and so on - based on the country, age and perhaps race data (which is not collected right now).
The website is nice and intuitive.
I have a theory that much of the high rates of depression and unhappiness in the US can be attributed to the large size of the country combined with our mobility within it. Childhood friends always move far away, families separate, your schoolmates drift away. You need 2-5 hour flights to see anyone. Take for example a Brit or a German. The people you grow up with and your families might move to another city, but they are always just a reasonable train ride or drive away. It's quite isolating when you realize everyone you're close with is spread across a continent.
UK - I don't know anyone with friends in a different city who frequently sees the people they grew up with, (or their parents for that matter.)
Not that reasonable.
I'm a Brit, living in Scotland. Many, many of my friends live either 5-and-a-bit hours' train ride away (London) or 7-8 hours by train or car away (Bristol).
I do agree that I wouldn't want to do a US-style road trip to visit people!
When you consider the sheer size of the USA... It's an 8 hour flight from Anchorage, and a 3hr 20min flight from San Fran.
Wanting to spend more time with your parent's isn't a moral absolute. It's a social pressure that has proved hardier than going to church or getting married while you are still fertile.
The point isn't that you must spend time with them, it's that if you want to you should know how much time you have (or don't).
Our ambition, our regrets have made us distant from the now and the present. We are not satisfied with it, how can we? We have our own expectations and dreams to achieve in life. So we run from the present, we live like we have a millennia more. We believe that our parents will always be there when we have time. So we don’t go meet them on holidays, we rarely talk to them over the phone. When we meet them we are obsessed with our future, never paying attention to their stories. Never really looking into their eyes. After all, Facebook and Twitter is way more interesting then old people’s talk.
And one day you will catch the train (success, fame, money or whatever it is) but you realise that there is no one on the other side, that you are all alone. It feels empty, it feels incomplete. That you have an entire life to go through now.
Don’t let that happen, go to their place. Talk to them over the phone (at least once a week). When you meet them, turn off your smartphone. Look at them in the eye and listen to their stories. You will find out that they need you as much as you needed them in the past.
Life is not all about fame and achievements, it’s about the people (Family, friends, etc). And whatever insignificant time we have on this planet, it’s better spent together in the present.
How is this website not about pushing us out of the present? It is prompting us to worry about the future.
It's interesting that it sticks to a mother and father. A number of families are moving into more complex arrangements - 2 fathers, or 2 mothers, or step parents, or single parents, or etc etc. (I'm not complaining, just commenting.) I guess it shows that people know who they consider to be parents.
I haven't seen my mother in well over half a decade, and am much healthier for it.
"Where do your in-laws live?"
"On average how many times do you see your in-laws a year?"
/jk
The situation may be horrible, in which case this site may be an unwelcome reminder of the horribleness of the situation. But this site doesn't make anything worse or tell you anything you didn't already know.
Some will never see their parents again. For some of us, even when we see our parents they are too far lost in dementia to realize it. Some will lose their parents tragically early. Some will get far more time with their parents than expected. Some will become their parents' or in-laws' primary caretakers and privately sometimes wish in their hearts of hearts they saw their parents less.
None of that changes the message of this site. We have a finite amount of time on this earth. We could do worse than to spend some of it with those we love.
I'm sorry that this comment doesn't add much to the discussion, HN.
But I laughed very, very hard at that.
The underlying point is that divorce is not unusual, but the norm in some countries.
The rest of you: yes, it's also very nice that you're all nice, soft humans with good families.
My situation: I’m 33 years old and I live in the same city as my parents do. My mom is 65 years old, my dad is 69 years old. I visit my parents about once a week.
According to this test, I can expect to see my parents another 700 times before they pass. That may look like a large number, for me it is sobering. My dad has heart problems (he had an angioplasty and a stent placed last year, some incidents after, and he had a pace maker installed this year). I’m not sure whether I get to see him another 700 times at the rate that I visit him now. I will certainly increase the rate of my visits.
I hope we both get to surpass these numbers :)
You might be interested in trying my service http://www.StoryWorth.com. It helps people record their family stories, and we often end up talking about my parents' stories during our weekly phone calls.
[edited to linkify]
A more generalized version that produces See Your Folks calculations for people by gender, age, and frequency of visit would be appreciated by folks like me that have complicated family dynamics. Hell, maybe I don't want to see my folks, maybe I just know how often I should see my friend that moved to the EU!
Relevant reading:
Gay marriage: the database engineering perspective -- http://qntm.org/gay
First they make the wrong assumption that the most we see our parents the happier we are.
In any case, I don't think it makes a big difference for people to see their parents 500 or 700 times before they die. Especially if they don't get along with them, they should see each other as little as possible.
My parents died a while ago and while I miss them, I don't regret that i didn't see them enough.
The site is needlessly vague about what it's going to show me. What are "my results", and will they be compelling enough for me to send personal information to somebody I don't know?
Coming to this site cold, with no expectations, I had no desire to enter my parents' ages, to tell you where they live, or to tell you how often I see them.
It also fails to handle the case where your parents don't live together and therefore you see them at different intervals, or are already dead. But obviously this is a throwaway thing and doesn't really merit overthinking.
So send your folks a long letter or email. Call them on the phone. There is no need to feel guilty because you can only see them X times a year -- for some that is just a fact of life. Phone calls, emails, letters all have meaning. Letters and emails can be read multiple times (and often are). You want to really show your parents you care? Write one or both of them a poem or a song. If you have no skill in that area, write a long heartfelt letter. I wrote one of those letters to my dad years ago and he kept it forever.
It is good to remember that life is short and to use your time wisely. Remember the things that are important. But personal visits aren't the only way to do something about it.
I think I'd prefer not to have checked this out.
The only sad thing is that in India, if you abandon your abusive parents, it's looked down upon. In the West, if you stay with your angel like parents it's still derided. Hope this changes both ways.
Cheer-up folks! It's not like we are all soldiers during First World War.
I'd prefer to have 90 days of goodness than 300 days of meh, you know? There's only a certain amount of content you can share in a given relationship.
Comes with living abroad and away from the family, sure, but grim. I should visit them more often than once a year.
Somebody made http://pigeonpic.com just for this kind of scattered families.
I really love the text, it's so beautiful when you get towards the end.
A little harder-rocking, but no less emotional.
My dad passed away rather quickly fighting cancer back when I was 25, he only got an extra 2 years after he found out.
Oops...something went wrong.A much lesser problem, it doesn't work in Opera Mini, would be nice if it did, many of my friends are using it.
I think I will continue that now!
Very little I can do to change that.
Oh. Right. :-\
You need to input a number larger than 0.
Source: World Health Organisation Life Expectancy Data (2011).