retirement

Many small businesses owners are planning on retiring soon, but finding buyers to keep the businesses going can be a challenge, especially in rural areas.

After 19 seasons, outgoing Kansas City Symphony music director Michael Stern conducted his final concert over the weekend. Plus: One Kansas City opera company is bringing the show to residents of local retirement communities.

The Lyric's Opera To Go program brings live performances to retirement communities across the Kansas City metro. For the residents of these communities, in-person concerts are an experience that can't be replicated by recordings.

Missouri State Treasurer Vivek Malek called on the State Employees Retirement System to sell off its investments in Chinese stocks and other securities as punishment for COVID-19, spy balloons and the fentanyl crisis.

The United States has a patchwork system of long-term medical care that usually leaves elderly people and their families footing most of the bill. Medicaid can cover much of the cost, but in Kansas and Missouri, seniors and people with disabilities have to earn below the poverty level and have less than $2,000 in assets before they can qualify for Medicaid.

The 20-year-old Grain Valley native, who trained in Blue Springs, said on social media last week that a toxic coaching environment at the University of Utah negatively affected her mental health. “The abuse often happened in individual coach-athlete meetings," she wrote.

Many pension-holding public employees in Kansas haven't seen cost-of-living adjustments in decades. Without lawmakers' support, years of higher inflation mean many retirees are seeing the value of their payments vanish. Plus: Climate change is making farming riskier and crop insurance more expensive.

Thousands of retired public employees in Kansas have never seen an increase to their pension pay, and inflation is eating away the value of those payments. Advocates argue the Legislature owes them a boost.

Vanessa Woods, a former professional ballet dancer, suffered an injury that ended her career. So she formed a company, Vitality in Motion, that brings movement classes to retirement communities, while also providing work for dancers when they're not performing.

Cynthia Levin started at the Unicorn Theatre in 1979. Now, 45 years later, she is preparing to step down as the producing artistic director.

The Mid-America Regional Council's "Give 5" program hopes to lessen the effects of the "silver tsunami" by giving retirees a way to contribute their time and talents to the nonprofit sector.

The Kansas Senate has passed several GOP-backed bills that would lower the state’s tax revenue by more than a billion dollars. But Democratic Gov. Laura Kelly has already expressed skepticism.