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Article written by Patricia Mertz Esswein, Kiplinger
We spend the first half of our lives accumulating stuff and the latter half trying to get rid of it, says Barry Izsak, a professional organizer in Austin, Texas.
That’s probably a good bet, but first you need to figure out what to toss. And many baby boomers face a special dilemma: After decades of accumulating their own possessions, they want to simplify their lives even as their parents are dying and leaving behind a tidal wave of stuff, says Julie Hall, director of the American Society of Estate Liquidators.
At the same time, their millennial kids are leaving home and leaving behind many of their possessions. The solution? Dispose of as much as you can, then organize what’s left.
Think of the disposal process as “right-sizing” your stuff, meaning you should have the right amount of stuff at the right time in your life, says Izsak. He advises clients to keep only what they find useful or beautiful and to sell, donate or toss the rest.
“News flash! Your kids grew up with too much stuff and don’t want any of yours,” says Bonnie Kallenberg, owner of Finders Keepers Consignments, in suburban Atlanta. Millennials value mobility and experiences, not stuff. Tastes have changed from formal to informal, from traditional to contemporary and from cluttered to clean.
Mid-Century Modern furnishings and decor are hot, and “brown furniture” (traditional styles in dark stains or woods) and big, heavy pieces (hutches and entertainment centers) are not.
Many twenty- and thirty-somethings don’t like furniture upholstered in floral, plaid or paisley fabric. They don’t want to clutter their space with Hummel figurines or other tchotchkes. They tend to live and entertain informally and don’t want anything they can’t wash in the dishwasher, so they’ll probably take a pass on the crystal, china and silver.
Ask your children what they would like to have, accept their answers, and don’t pressure them into taking more than they want. As for another issue faced by many empty nesters — serving as Mom-and-Pop Storage Inc.—if you like, agree to store your adult children’s belongings until they get settled, but give them a deadline for pickup.
Mass-produced collectibles such as Beanie Babies and Dickens’ Village pieces are “dead, period, everywhere,” says Kallenberg. Older collectors, who amassed large arrays of stuff, are passing away, and younger collectors value quality over quantity. They will want only the best of your 50 cookie jars or the rarest of your Disney figurines.
Fine collectibles are a different matter. In hastily filled trash bags in the home of a client’s parents, Hall found antique fountain pens that sold for more than $1,000, three $20 gold coins that were worth $1,300 apiece at the time, and a turn-of-the-century Louis Vuitton trunk filled with memorabilia from World Wars I and II. The trunk sold for about $5,500 and its contents for about $2,000.
To begin identifying what you have and get a sense of its value, search eBay.com’s listings of sold items. Old appraisals (done more than, say, three to five years ago) may prove helpful for identification but are useless for valuation.
It’s best to hire a personal-property appraiser or an experienced estate liquidator (see below), who may also be certified as an appraiser, to visit your home for a few hours to identify potentially valuable items and give you a ballpark estimate of their fair market value. (A written appraisal report may be needed only for insurance or estate tax purposes or if you claim a tax deduction for donation of property worth more than $5,000.)
The appraiser can tell you where to sell your items or can broker items to private buyers, dealers or auction houses for a commission (the higher the estimated sale price of the item, the lower the commission).
You can find personal-property appraisers at the American Society of Appraisers, the Appraisers Association of America and the International Society of Appraisers. Appraisers’ fees often range from $125 to $300 per hour.
Maybe, but it takes more time and effort than most people expect. However, you could try to sell at least some stuff yourself.
Put it on Craigslist or Facebook Marketplace. You can list items free on one of Craigslist 415 local sites. Or try listing items on Facebook Marketplace.
Auction it online. On eBay, most sellers can list up to about 250 items per month for free. After that, listings typically cost around 35 cents each. When an item sells, eBay takes a final value fee that usually ranges from about 13% to 15% of the total sale price, plus a small per-order fee. Sellers can also print discounted shipping labels through eBay, which can help reduce mailing costs.
Consign it. Consignment shops often specialize in a certain type of merchandise, such as clothing, furniture, electronics or sporting goods. Call ahead to verify that a shop wants what you have. For example, it may not accept clothing or holiday decorations out of season. Ask if you can e-mail or text a photo of items, or if you need to schedule an appointment.
Resale shops like to advertise “nearly new or barely used,” says Adele Meyer, executive director of NARTS, the Association of Resale Professionals. Plus, “if clothing looks like 1990 — and not in a cool way — or the color isn’t popular now, nobody will want it,” says Kallenberg.
The faster you make up your mind to sell something you will never wear again (such as a mother-of-the-bride dress), the more money you’re likely to make on it, she says.
Shops typically allow a total of 45 to 60 days for an item to sell and begin to mark down the price after 30 days to keep merchandise from getting stale, says Meyer. They typically take a 50% to 60% commission from the final sale price. They’ll ask you to pick up your unsold items at the end of the term, or they’ll donate them.
Whether your house is a bungalow or a mansion, if it’s full of stuff that you need to dispose of quickly, an estate liquidator can help.
Before you hire one, you and your family should take what you want. But don’t donate or trash anything else, lest you fail to meet liquidators’ typical minimum estimated sale value of $5,000 to $10,000.
During a walk-through, liquidators will estimate the value of the sale overall and identify any high-value items that would sell for more at auction.
Maria Masse, an appraiser and owner of Capitol Estate Services, in Olympia, Wash., says items show and sell best in a home, but limited parking or community restrictions may necessitate holding the sale at a warehouse or elsewhere. Ask companies how far in advance they book up; summer slots typically fill faster than winter ones.
The liquidator will sort, price and photograph the home’s contents for online marketing and sales, and it will advertise the sale on a site such as Estatesales.net. Pricier items, such as jewelry, that might attract sticky fingers will be displayed in one case or room, watched over by a staff member.
Estate liquidators typically charge a commission of 35% to 40% of the sale. They may charge additional fees, including an initial deposit of, say, $250, to cover their up-front expenses; a penalty fee if you remove things after signing the contract; and an hourly fee to donate, trash and recycle any leftovers and leave the house swept clean.
You’ll typically receive your final payment, including a refund of any deposit, within a week to 10 days after the sale. To find an estate liquidator, visit Aselonline.com and search by zip code.
Another option is to get help from a member of the National Association of Professional Organizers or the National Association of Senior Move Managers. They typically charge an hourly rate from $35 to more than $100 and may offer various packages of time and services.
If you have valuable collectibles, such as coins, fine art, historical artifacts, timepieces or wine, an auction house is the best way to attract deep-pocketed enthusiasts. Estate liquidators and appraisers can refer you to auction houses, or you can search for auctioneers by location and specialty at Auctioneers.org.
Collectors have a variety of reasons for selling, says Greg Rohan, president of Heritage Auctions, based in Dallas, the third-largest auction house in the world, after Sotheby’s and Christie’s. A collector may lose interest or be pressured by a spouse to downsize the collection. Or a collector may want to avoid burdening his family after he dies. “Way too many times, I’ve seen a collection left to a spouse with no interest or expertise who has said, ‘If he wasn’t already dead, I’d kill him for leaving me with this,’ ” says Rohan.
Heritage conducts live auctions in several locations in the U.S. and abroad, as well as online auctions, in 40 categories. It will provide free “auction estimates” of your items, recommend which of its formats will work best for you and promote your collection to its more than 1 million registered bidders worldwide.
Heritage requires a minimum fair market value of $5,000 per collection, regardless of the number of pieces. It charges a commission of up to 20%, but for high-value items, the company may charge you nothing because it will charge the buyer a premium of 12% to 25% of the buyer’s winning bid.
Decluttering doesn’t have to be overwhelming, but it does require a mindset shift. When you stop letting common myths guide your decisions, it becomes easier to sell, donate or toss items with confidence. The result is a simpler home and potentially more money in your pocket.
Article written by Peter Gratton, Investopedia
For much of what typical Americans leave behind—retirement accounts, life insurance, and bank accounts with a payable-on-death designation—the will means little. What matters is the beneficiary form you filled out and quickly forgot about when you opened those accounts. That’s what dictates who gets what when you die.
More than $48 trillion was held in U.S. retirement accounts—like IRAs and 401(k)s,—and in annuities as of 2025, according to the Investment Company Institute. Not a dollar of it will ever pass through a will.
Instead, the funds will be distributed according to the beneficiary designations who are named on a form that’s on file with your financial institution. The same rule applies to life insurance policies and any bank or brokerage account with a payable-on-death or transfer-on-death designation.
“Beneficiary forms are extremely powerful and trump whatever it might say in the will in most or all circumstances,” said Ari Weisbard, a certified financial planner and attorney at Values Added.
There’s a real benefit to this: your loved ones don’t have to wait for a probate court to rule to get money for your funeral or their own needs. Except in rare instances, the beneficiary form is the final word. For example, if your will names your spouse as the beneficiary of your IRA but the account designates your children, the money will go to your kids, even if your updated your will recently.
Still, if you’ve forgotten about those beneficiary forms, you’re not alone.
“Some people leave retirement accounts in place with old beneficiaries when they leave their job,” Weisbard said. “If they listed their friend or sibling as the beneficiary, that might still govern even if they got married or had kids later.”
Under ERISA, a federal law, the beneficiary form on file controls who inherits an asset. In Egelhoff v. Egelhoff (2001), the U.S. Supreme Court ruled that a man’s ex-wife should receive his employer retirement accounts even though a state law would have revoked her claim after their divorce. Federal law preempted state law, the beneficiary form stood, and his children received nothing.
If you remarry without updating your accounts, your new spouse may face the same outcome. Weisbard says blended families also raise specific estate issues. “When you are remarrying, if you have kids you don’t share with your partner, you want to be thoughtful about who is listed as primary beneficiary and in what percentages,” he said. “Often people want to leave at least some assets in a trust for their kids rather than their new spouse.”
Thinking about your own death is grim enough, but you also need a plan for what happens if your primary beneficiary dies before you do. If they die before you and you haven’t named a contingent beneficiary, the account typically becomes part of your estate—the rare scenario where your will re-enters the picture. That means the funds are routed through probate court rather than by direct transfer, which is what beneficiary forms are designed to avoid.
Since your beneficiary forms handle the heavy lifting for retirement accounts, life insurance, and payable-on-death accounts, your will governs what’s left: real estate that isn’t held in joint ownership, personal property like jewelry and vehicles, and anything else that doesn’t carry a beneficiary form.
You’ll want to ensure your will and beneficiary designations are done together. “If you want to leave some money to a friend in your will and then also leave them a portion of your account via a beneficiary form, they may get both bequests,” Weisbard said. “Make sure your will is very specific if it’s meant to summarize what you’re doing in your beneficiary forms, rather than supplement those forms with additional bequests.”
Besides your retirement accounts, here are three major things estate planning experts say to cut from your will:
Take 10 minutes and pull up all of your accounts that have a beneficiary designation: your 401(k), IRA, Roth IRA, life insurance policies, annuities, and any bank or brokerage accounts that are designated to transfer upon your death. Confirm the names match who you’d want to inherit your funds today.
And don’t forget to update these forms after every major life event: marriage, divorce, remarriage, the birth of a child, or the death of a named beneficiary.
AARP’s Global Council on Brain Health, a collaborative of scientists, health professionals, scholars and policy experts, reviewed decades of research on the ways our habits and choices may affect our cognitive and mental health.
The key is to make a habit of all six pillars. Many of them support each other: Regular exercise can help you sleep, for example, and socializing can ease the effects of stress. No one can promise that following the six pillars will prevent dementia, but we know that lifestyle can profoundly affect the aging process and the risk of chronic illness.
Let’s look at each pillar. As you’ll see, there’s a lot of room for choice — and fun.
You hear a lot about eating for heart health. Well, as it turns out, what’s good for the heart is good for the brain. And the best news: This does not mean endless steamed broccoli and egg whites. The traditional, delicious Mediterranean diet — with a foundation of vegetables and fruit, beans, seafood, olive oil, nuts and whole grains — captured the interest of researchers in the 1960s because of the region’s low rates of chronic illness and high life expectancy.
Scientific support for the Mediterranean diet’s benefits continues to grow. A meta-analysis of 23 studies published in GeroScience in 2025 found that adhering closely to a Mediterranean diet can reduce the risk of Alzheimer’s disease by 30 percent and cognitive decline by 18 percent.
There are other brain-healthy ways of eating, too, such as the traditional Okinawan diet from Japan — which emphasizes purple and orange sweet potatoes, plus other colorful vegetables — as well as offshoots of the Mediterranean diet, like the MIND diet. All of these diets emphasize plant foods, like vegetables, fruit, beans and grains and limit highly processed foods, fried foods, red meat and other foods high in saturated fat, sodium and sugar. In its report “Brain Food,” the GCBH further recommends including fish and seafood, nuts, poultry and low-fat dairy in your diet.
Staying Sharp offers meal plans and food prep videos to help you get started.
The notion that we need less sleep as we get older is bunk. It’s true that some of the changes that accompany aging can make solid shut-eye elusive. But good-quality sleep, and enough of it, is still important as we age.
There’s research showing a link between poor sleep and dementia in older adults. In a study of 313,248 people ages 50 and older published in BMC Medicine in 2025, those who had the worst quality sleep had a higher risk of dementia than those with the best quality sleep.
Your brain does important work while you sleep, flushing away toxins including a protein that is linked to Alzheimer’s disease. Researchers hypothesize that chronic sleep loss may lead to a buildup of toxins that raises dementia risk.
Be sure you’re setting yourself up for a good night’s sleep, and talk with your doctor if you regularly have trouble sleeping or wake up feeling unrefreshed. A type of therapy called cognitive behavioral therapy for insomnia (CBT-I) has been shown to help people with insomnia. And obstructive sleep apnea, which people often don’t realize they have, is treatable.
Try Staying Sharp’s challenge, Make Sleep Your Superpower, to learn how to get better sleep.
Move your body! And keep it up. That, in a nutshell, is the takeaway from scads of studies linking physical activity to better brain health. If you’re intimidated by visions of spandex and barbells, keep in mind that there are endless ways to be active, from walking a few blocks to taking a Zumba class.
“Physical activity is an effective tool for promoting cognitive well-being,” and can make the brain “more efficient, flexible and adaptive,” wrote the authors of a systematic review of nine studies involving a total of 474 participants over age 60 published in Brain Sciences in 2025. The researchers found that even a single workout can help boost executive function in older adults, and that regular exercise over a period of two months or longer offers even greater brain benefits, such as improved memory. Recent research also points to the power of exercise to increase levels of a brain chemical called BDNF, nicknamed “Miracle Gro for the brain.”
Both formal exercise and everyday activities, like taking the stairs and gardening, can benefit brain health, according to the GCBH. To work on your aerobic fitness, pick activities you enjoy that get your heart rate up, whether it’s walking, swimming, biking, hiking or dancing around your living room. If you can work your way up to 150 minutes of aerobic exercise a week (that’s just 30 minutes a day for five days) and two weekly strength-training sessions, that’s ideal. But remember: Some exercise is better than none.
The brain health benefits of exercise go beyond thinking skills. Regular physical activity is linked to lower rates of depression and anxiety, according to a study published in 2024 in Gerontology and Geriatric Medicine that analyzed data from 526 people ages 65 to 96.
Laughing with friends, gathering with family, chit-chatting with a stranger — these things may seem frivolous, but they’re profoundly important for our health. Too many Americans are lonely and isolated and there are serious health consequences, including a higher risk of premature death, similar to smoking 15 cigarettes a day.
The good news is that social interaction tends to improve well-being, cognitive function and mood. People who reported more loneliness tended to have lower cognitive test scores than those who reported less loneliness in a meta-analysis of seven studies involving more than 20,000 adults ages 50 and older published in Psychological Medicine in 2025.
Strengthening your social ties can start with simple acts, like calling an old friend or doing something kind for a neighbor. By taking small steps to strengthen our relationships and engage with others it’s possible and worthwhile to rebuild social connections.
Stress can be a good thing. It motivates us to climb mountains (metaphorical or literal) and try new things.
The body has an elaborate system to cope with occasional stress. For instance, cortisol — a hormone that’s part of our fight-or-flight reaction — increases in the blood during stressful times. When the stress eases, cortisol levels fall. But chronic stress is a different story. When cortisol stays elevated, it can damage the brain’s hippocampus, which governs learning and memory. Unrelenting stress can also trigger inflammation that can harm the brain, according to a review of research on the link between chronic stress and dementia published in Cureus in 2025.
Among more than a million Swedish men and women ages 18 to 65, chronic stress increased the risk of both mild cognitive impairment and Alzheimer’s disease, according to a 2023 report in Alzheimer’s Research & Therapy.
Frequent worry can contribute to chronic stress as much as bad things actually happening. The upshot: Make stress relief as integral to your routine as brushing your teeth. People who frequently found healthy ways to deal with stress — like humor and seeking out emotional support from others — performed better on cognitive tests than those with the fewest coping strategies in a study of 99 adults with a mean age of 75 published in Alzheimer’s & Dementia in 2025. Other pillars of brain health, like regular exercise and socializing, are healthy ways to manage stress — as are practicing yoga or meditating.
Staying Sharp offers guided meditations here.
You know that staying physically active benefits your health. Staying mentally active does, too. Engaging in activities that stimulate your brain may protect against cognitive decline, according to the GCBH. Learning and developing skills may also increase cognitive reserve — the brain’s ability to adapt and cope with challenges.
Older adults who learned a variety of new skills, like Spanish, music composition or drawing, for as little as two hours a week for eight weeks improved their memory skills in a study of 58 people ages 60 and older published in Educational Gerontology in 2025. Similarly, taking adult education classes was associated with a lower risk of dementia in a study that analyzed data from close to 500,000 adults, with a mean age of 57, published in GeroScience in 2024.
This doesn’t mean you have to enroll in a full schedule of classes. But staying mentally active — by playing a musical instrument, reading books or learning photography — may keep your brain in good shape. So follow your interests and stay engaged.
Article written by Elizabeth Rhodes, Travel & Leisure
To help you plan your next scenic adventure, we’ve narrowed it down to the 15 countries with the most spectacular natural landscapes. Prepare to be wowed by majestic mountains, lush rain forests, awe-inspiring waterfalls, breathtaking coastlines, and stunning wildlife.
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Bamboo forests, relaxing hot springs, the iconic Mount Fuji, and serene beaches—you’ll find all this and more on a trip to Japan. Plan your getaway during the spring cherry blossom season to see the country’s famous blooms for yourself.
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Eight of the world’s 10 tallest mountains, including Mount Everest, are in Nepal. The Himalayas are a draw for adventurers hoping to test their climbing skills and endurance. Other visitors can choose to admire these impressive mountains from a distance at viewpoints like the one at Nagarkot. Of course, there’s plenty more to see here, including wildlife like rhinos and tigers.
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Italy is a dream destination; one visit and you’ll be so enchanted by its natural beauty, delicious food, incredible architecture, and friendly people that you’ll be ready to plan your next trip. It’s hard to choose between the vineyard-covered Tuscan hills, the terraced landscapes of the Amalfi Coast, and the soaring peaks of the Dolomites, so we recommend visiting them all.
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When you think of the perfect beach paradise, what images come to mind? We’re guessing sparkling aquamarine waters and sugar-white beaches just like those in the Maldives, the archipelagic nation famous for its luxurious private island resorts. On one of these remote islands, you can gaze at the Indian Ocean from your thatched-roof overwater bungalow or sail off for a diving or snorkeling excursion to explore the vibrant coral reefs and abundant sea life.
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Made up of thousands of islands, Indonesia has everything from green terraced rice fields to beautiful beaches, dense rain forests, and more. The island of Bali is popular among travelers seeking vistas of intricate temples against a backdrop of crashing ocean waves or rolling hills with volcano-summiting hikes.
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From massive waterfalls to black-sand beaches, Iceland is bursting with beauty. It also offers the chance to experience unique natural phenomena, depending on the time of year you visit. During the winter months, go searching for the spectacular northern lights dancing over frozen waterfalls and icy landscapes. Or, in summer, go for a hike followed by a soak in natural hot springs under the midnight sun.
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Not only does France tempt travelers with delicious wine to pair with its decadent cuisine, but its varied landscapes and picturesque towns make it one of the most beautiful countries in the world. Consider the lavender-covered hills of Provence for a pastoral dreamland or the rocky coast of Brittany for something more dramatic. There is also the glamour of the French Riviera and the snowy pistes of the Alps with chic lodges that perfected après-ski.
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From sea to shining sea, the United States is home to so many picturesque landscapes that it would take years to fully explore and discover them all. Not to mention, they’re extraordinarily varied, from the turquoise waters of the Florida Keys and the awe-inspiring scale of the Grand Canyon to the snowcapped peaks of Alaska and the postcard-worthy California coast.
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The breathtaking alpine landscapes of Switzerland—with sparkling lakes and charming small towns and villages—make this a must-visit destination, particularly for outdoorsy types who love to hike and ski. In the winter, the country resembles a living snow globe, while summertime reveals green mountains and fragrant wildflowers.
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Everyone knows Costa Rica has incredible biodiversity, so nature lovers frequently put it at the top of their travel list. Pretty beaches, rain forests, and national parks with volcanoes, waterfalls, and tons of wildlife are just a few of the reasons why it has some of the prettiest landscapes on Earth.
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The Amazon rain forest and Andes Mountains—home to Machu Picchu and Rainbow Mountain—are reason enough to visit Peru, so the delicious ceviche and pisco are bonuses. For something completely different, head to Huacachina—a village set amid the only natural desert oasis in South America.
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