News

Years ago, a colleague of mine showed me a study about how cognitive ability can start slipping as early as age 50. "I guess that means we only have a limited time left in the money management business," he teased. That study has always haunted me - it's depressing, the idea that my cognitive abilities would begin to fade at about the same time as my tennis game.

Thankfully, a new study examined adults 50 to 79 years of age to determine the connection between cognitive health, aging and decision-making capacity. It found that age alone is not a predictive factor of lower decision-making capacity. The "Healthy Brain, Healthy Decisions" study was a collaboration of the MetLife Mature Market Institute, the Center for BrainHealth at The University of Texas at Dallas and the University of California, San Francisco.

The good news is that people ages 50 to 79 are as logically consistent as younger decision-makers, and they retain their ability to sift through and focus on important information, while ignoring less relevant information. This is referred to as "strategic learning capacity," and it may actually increase with age.