Mountain Views News, Pasadena Edition [Sierra Madre] Saturday, November 3, 2018

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BUSINESS NEWS & TRENDS

ARTS & ENTERTAINMENT

Mountain Views-News Saturday, November 3, 2018 

FAMILY MATTERS By Marc Garlett

Jeff’s Book Pics By Jeff Brown


3 DEADLY SINS OF 
RETIREMENT PLANNING

Retirement planning is one of life’s most important 
financial goals. Indeed, funding retirement is one of 
the primary reasons many people put money aside 
in the first place. Yet many of us put more effort into 
planning for our vacations than we do to prepare for 
a time when we may no longer earn an income.

 Whether you’ve put off planning for retirement 
altogether or failed to create a truly comprehensive 
plan, you’re putting yourself at risk for a future of 
poverty, penny pinching, and dependence. The 
stakes could hardly be higher.

 When preparing for your final years, it’s not 
enough to simply hope for the best. You should treat 
retirement planning as if your life depended on it—
because it does. To this end, even well-thought-out 
plans can contain fatal flaws you might not be aware 
of until it’s too late.

 Have you committed any of the following three 
deadly sins of retirement planning?

 1. Not having an actual plan

 Even if you’ve been diligent about saving for 
retirement, without a detailed, goal-oriented plan, 
you’ll have no clear idea whether your savings 
strategies are working adequately or not. And such 
plans aren’t just about calculating a retirement savings 
number, funding your 401(k), and then setting things 
on auto-pilot.

 Once you know how much you’ll need for retirement, 
you must plan for exactly how you’ll accumulate that 
money and monitor your success. The plan should 
include clear-cut methods for increasing income, 
reducing spending, maximizing tax savings, and 
managing investments when and where needed.

 What’s more, you should regularly review and update 
your asset allocation, investment performance, and 
savings goals to ensure you’re still on track to hit your 
target figure. With each new decade of your life (at 
least), you should adjust your savings strategies to 
match the specific needs of your new income level 
and age.

 Failing to plan, as they say, is planning to fail. 

2. Not maximizing the use of tax-saving retirement 
accounts

 One way or another, the money you put aside 
for retirement is going to be taxed. However, by 
investing in tax-saving retirement accounts, you can 
significantly reduce the amount of taxes you’ll pay.

 Depending on your employment and financial 
situation, there are numerous different plans 
available. From traditional IRAs and 401(k)s to 
Roth IRAs and SEP Plans, you should consider 
using one or more of these investment vehicles to 
ensure you achieve the most tax savings possible. 
What’s more, many employers will match your 
contributions to these accounts, which is basically 
free money. If your employer offers matching 
funds, you should not only use these accounts, but 
contribute the maximum amount allowed—and 
begin doing so as early as possible.

 Since figuring out which of these plans will offer the 
most tax savings can be tricky—and because tax laws 
are constantly changing—you should consult with a 
professional financial advisor to find the one(s) best 
suited for your particular situation. Paying taxes is 
unavoidable, but there’s no reason you should pay 
any more than you absolutely must.

3. Underestimating health-care costs

It’s an inescapable fact that our health naturally 
declines with age, so one of the riskiest things you 
can do is not plan for increased health-care expenses. 

 With many employers eliminating retiree health-
care coverage, Medicare premiums rising, and the 
extremely volatile nature of health insurance law, 
planning for your future health-care expenses is 
critical. And it’s even more important seeing that 
we’re now living longer than ever before. 

 Plus, these considerations are assuming that you 
don’t fall victim to a catastrophic illness or accident. 
The natural aging process is expensive enough to 
manage, but a serious health-care emergency can 
wipe out even the most financially well off. 

 Start preparing for retirement now.

 The best way to maximize your retirement funding 
is to start planning (and saving) as soon as possible. 
In fact, your retirement savings can be exponentially 
increased simply by starting to plan at an early age.

 Let us know if we can help. We’ll be glad to review 
what you have in place now, advise you about what 
you need, introduce you to advisors you can trust, 
and ensure you and your family are well-protected 
and planned for, no matter what.

 Dedicated to empowering your family, building 
your wealth and defining your legacy,

A local attorney and father, Marc Garlett is on a 
mission to help parents protect what they love most. His 
office is located at 55 Auburn Avenue, Sierra Madre, 
CA 91024. Schedule an appointment to sit down and 
talk about ensuring a legacy of love and financial 
security for your family by calling 626.355.4000 or visit 
www.GarlettLaw.com for more information.

The Broken Teaglass: A Novel by 
Emily Arsenault 

A NEW YORK TIMES NOTABLE 
CRIME BOOK OF THE YEAR. In the 
maze of cubicles at Samuelson Company, 
editorial assistant Billy Webb struggles 
to focus while helping to prepare the 
next edition of a dictionary. But there are 
distractions. He senses that something 
suspicious is going on beneath this 
company’s academic façade. What’s 
more, his (possibly) flirtatious co-worker 
Mona Minot has just made a startling 
discovery: a trove of puzzling citations, 
all taken from the same book, The 
Broken Teaglass. Billy and Mona soon 
learn that no such book exists. And the 
quotations read like a confession, coyly 
hinting at a hidden identity, a secret 
liaison, a crime. As Billy and Mona try 
to unearth the truth, the puzzle begins 
to take on bigger meaning for both of 
them, compelling them to redefine their 
notions of themselves and each other. 
The book is at once a literary mystery, 
a cautious love story, and an ingenious 
suspense novel that will delight fans of 
brilliantly inventive fiction

Hitler in Los Angeles: How 
Jews Foiled Nazi Plots Against 
Hollywood and America by 
Steven J. Ross

A 2018 FINALIST FOR THE PULITZER 
PRIZE. The chilling, little-known story 
of the rise of Nazism in Los Angeles, 
and the Jewish leaders and spies they 
recruited who stopped it. No American 
city was more important to the Nazis 
than Los Angeles, home to Hollywood, 
the greatest propaganda machine in the world. The 
Nazis plotted to kill the city’s Jews and to sabotage 
the nation’s military installations: plans existed for 
hanging twenty prominent Hollywood figures such as 
Al Jolson, Charlie Chaplin, and Samuel Goldwyn; for 
driving through Boyle Heights and machine-gunning 
as many Jews as possible; and for blowing up defense 
installations and seizing munitions from National 
Guard armories along the Pacific Coast.U.S. law 
enforcement agencies were not paying close attention-
-preferring to monitor Reds rather than Nazis--and 
only Leon Lewis and his daring ring of spies 
stood in the way. From 1933 until the end 
of World War II, attorney Leon Lewis, the 
man Nazis would come to call “the most 
dangerous Jew in Los Angeles,” ran a spy 
operation comprised of military veterans 
and their wives who infiltrated every 
Nazi and fascist group in Los Angeles. 
Often rising to leadership positions, this 
daring ring of spies uncovered and foiled 
the Nazi’s disturbing plans for death and 
destruction. Featuring a large cast of 
Nazis, undercover agents, and colorful 
supporting players, Hitler in Los Angeles, 
by acclaimed historian Steven J. Ross, tells 
the story of Lewis’s daring spy network in 
a time when hate groups had moved from 
the margins to the mainstream.

The Birthday: An Absolutely 
Gripping Crime Thriller (Detective 
Natalie Ward Book 1) by Carol 
Wyer ‘Absolutely stunning!... wow it 
blew me away. Totally my favorite book 
so far of 2018… I loved everything about 
it…’ Bonnie’s Book Talk, 5 stars. One 
hot summer’s afternoon, five-year-old 
Ava Sawyer went to a party. She never 
came home… two years later, Ava’s 
body is found and another little girl, 
Audrey Briggs, goes missing. Audrey 
also attended that party …Leading the 
investigation is Detective Natalie Ward. 
A mother of two teenagers, this case 
chills her to the bone, and is a disturbing 
reminder of the last job she worked on. 
One that still keeps her awake at night…
Natalie soon discovers that Ava’s mother 
has some worrying gaps in her alibi and 
as she digs deeper, she’s sure Ava’s father 
is not telling the full story. And what did the owner of 
the garden centre Elsa see that day? Something that 
she’s not telling Natalie …Just as Natalie is facing 
up to the grim possibility that Ava and Audrey were 
killed by someone close to home, another little girl 
from the party doesn’t come home from her ballet 
lesson. Can Natalie find a way to stop this killer 
before more innocent lives are taken? Gripping, 
fast-paced and nail-bitingly tense, this book will 
keep you flying through the pages long into the 
night. The 3 reviews are from Amazon.com


All Things By Jeff Brown

KIDS AGAINST SMARTPHONES

“Your kids hate your smartphone addiction”said 
Ian Sherr in CNET.com. The average American 
now “spends about 5 hours a day on a mobile 
device,” and a growing body of research suggest 
kids resent competing for attention with the 
gadgets. One Louisiana elementary school asked 
students to write essays “on an invention they 
wished had never been created.” 4 out of 21 choose 
the smartphone. “I hate my mom’s phone, “ a 
second grader wrote,”and I wished she never had 
one.”One student of parental behavior found that 
the more parents use their phones, the more their 
preschool children “whined,sulked, or became 
irritable, easily frustrated, or hyperactive “ even if 
the phone use was well within “normal” level. Most 
troubling: even babies became uncomfortable 
when they saw their parents distracted “phone 
face.”From The Week


HEALTHY LIFESTYLES


YOGIC WISDOM - 

EASE IN MEDITATION

Have you ever said, “Today, 
I will meditate. I’m going 
to sit down, be quiet and 
clear my mind”? I have 
said this exact thing SO 
many times, but when I 
approach meditation this 
way, it is TOUGH. My body 
and mind want to do the exact opposite of being quiet 
and getting clear. My thoughts aren’t easy to turn 
off. So, I watch my thoughts and, boy, are there a lot of 
thoughts. Getting comfortable is also problematic in 
this approach. Some part of me always needs adjusting-
-my feet or knees or clothing. After about three minutes, 
I’m exhausted by the process. My body may feel a little 
calmer just from sitting still, but afterward, I don’t feel 
like my head settled down and I don’t notice a sense of 
quietness inside.

 This was the way I tried meditation for a long time. 
It was an earnest spiritual effort on my part since I 
was taking time to try it, but it didn’t produce the 
sense of transformation or peace that I had heard 
from others. My experience changed when I applied 
technique to my approach. There are many methods 
and styles of meditation which do work well. However, it 
was the approach of the ancient tradition of Tantra that 
changed everything for me. 

 `Let’s define Tantra as ancient teachings that use and 
weave all the tools of yoga to create an experience of joy 
and transformation. There is no impure nature to this 
practice. There’s a focus on shaping each individual’s 
energy. The ancient sages of this method were so smart, 
they said let’s not resist the mind. Give the mind jobs to 
do and keep it active. There’s breath practice, cleansing 
techniques, visualization of specific images, and use of 
sound, or mantra. This is a different approach from many 
styles. While doing these “jobs,” the mind becomes 
trained and focused. It actually reaches a deeper state 
of stillness and absorption. After meditating in this 
systematic way, the experience of stillness is profound. 

 When I began meditation with a Tantric approach, my 
experience during the meditations was transformational. 
I also was able to establish a consistent practice. My 
mind felt calm, my body relaxed and I felt a deep internal 
connection. My awareness of breath and energy shifted. 
I highly recommend a structured approach such as this 
one. There are so many styles which are deeply impactful 
and peace giving as well. At the very least, apply a basic 
breath practice prior to meditation. Use the sound of the 
breath as a focal point. Please contact me if you’d like 
to learn more and find some consistency in your own 
practice: keely@keelytotten.com or find me at www.
keelytotten.com. I hold a meditation group on select 
Wednesday evenings. The next session begins November 
14th. Please email me to join. 

 

Namaste, happy breathing, and sitting. 

Keely Totten

E-RYT 500, Yoga & Meditation Teacher, 

Grateful Meditator


Mountain Views News 80 W Sierra Madre Blvd. No. 327 Sierra Madre, Ca. 91024 Office: 626.355.2737 Fax: 626.609.3285 Email: editor@mtnviewsnews.com Website: www.mtnviewsnews.com