Living 50 Plus Shoals

By Chelsea Retherford | Living 50 Plus Leawaiia Little is proud to call several of her former high school classmates her closest friends. While most friendships tend to naturally dwindle as years go by, the Deshler Class of 1972 seems more tightly knit than ever. Little will argue that at this season in her life, these close friendships mean more

By Chelsea Retherford | Living 50 Plus They say you can’t teach an old dog new tricks, but Charles Spruell Old is here to prove the naysayers wrong. At 64, Old has found a fairly lucrative hobby in woodworking, even as he readies to retire from a 20-year-long career in pipe welding. “Oh, four or five years ago, I decided

By Metro News The value of hobbies is undeniable. A 2014 study published in the Journal of Occupational and Organizational Psychology found that employees who engaged in creative hobbies outside of work were more creative on work projects and had a better attitude on the job, while a separate study published in Psychosomatic Medicine in 2009 reported that individuals who

By Metro News Many older adults choose to trade in the regular hours of 9 to 5 when they retire to delve into a much more personally guided passion: consulting. Generally, consulting is a term loosely given to providing business advice and sharing expertise without working directly for a company. Consultants lend their knowledge and flair for problem-solving to guide

By Metro News People are living longer, a reality that can be traced to a number of factors, including advancements in medicine and greater dissemination of information regarding preventive health care. According to data from the United Nations Population Division, the average life expectancy in the United States is 81.65 for women and 76.61 for men. Canada has even higher

By Chelsea Retherford | Living 50 Plus Each time Belinda Lokey dons a red hat, she’s reminded that she is part of a sisterhood that has supported her for more than two decades. “I’ve thoroughly enjoyed being a Red Hatter,” Lokey said. “It is a sisterhood. It’s having somewhere to go and do things with friends, and it’s been really

By Chelsea Retherford | Living 50 Plus When Mickey and Linda Haddock purchased their first Class A motorhome, the Florence couple had already done an extensive amount of traveling around the country — mostly from their van and mostly with their pets, Lola and Loulou, a tortoiseshell cat and a Pomeranian. Months following Mickey’s retirement from city government in 2016,