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Older Workers Remain Unemployed Longer
Tweet Share on Facebook June 15, 2009 Comment (3)Older workers continue to enjoy more job security than their younger counterparts. While the unemployment rate for the total labor force was 9.4 percent in May, only 6.7 percent of workers age 55 and older were out of work. But the ranks of unemployed older workers have been swelling faster than those of younger employees over the past month. The unemployment rate increased 6.1 percent for the senior workers, compared to 5.7 percent for those under age 55, according to an AARP Public Policy Institute analysis.
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A Retirement Timeline
Tweet Share on Facebook June 12, 2009 Comment (15)The aging milestones for young people are well known: At age 16 you can drive and 18-year-olds can vote. But the rights and privileges of aging don’t end after your first legitimate drink in a bar on your 21st birthday. There are variety of retirement rights of passage you should take advantage of at different ages. Here’s a retirement timeline.
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Study: Work-Related Stress Could Impact Your Health in Retirement
Tweet Share on Facebook June 11, 2009 Comment (3)You might think that after you retire, the stresses of the working world would fade into memories. But the damaging health effects of work-related tension could follow you long into your retirement years, suggests new research. "People's occupations during their working years can clearly be a risk for hypertension after they retire," says Paul Leigh, a professor at the Center for Healthcare Policy and Research at University of California at Davis and coauthor of the study. "The body seems to have built up a stress reaction that takes years to ramp down and may last well beyond age 75."
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Baby Boomer Couples Disagree About Retirement Plans
Tweet Share on Facebook June 10, 2009 Comment (1)When baby boomer couples vowed to stay together for richer or for poorer, few were thinking about a 30-year retirement that began during a recession. Husbands and wives don’t always agree about their retirement plans, and deflated investments have only made matters worse. A new survey found that married couples are often out of synch when planning for retirement. Here’s a look at how retirement strategies differ within couples.
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Caring for Grandchildren in Retirement
Tweet Share on Facebook June 9, 2009 Comment (12)While I attended a 4-day National Press Foundation conference for retirement writers last week, my husband’s parents graciously provided child care for my daughter. As it turned out, grandparents providing childcare was one of the many hot retirement topics I discussed with 18 other writers selected to participate in the conference. Some of the other writers with young children, like me, welcomed the help with child care. The confidence that comes from knowing that you left your offspring with someone you trust completely is immeasurable. The actual cost savings doesn’t hurt either. About 61 percent of grandparents babysit on a regular basis and 11 percent are primary caregivers, says Georgia Hope Witkin, a psychologist and contributing editor to Grandparents.com, who spoke at the NPF conference. Among the 11.3 million children younger than 5 whose mothers are employed, 30 percent are cared for on a regular basis by a grandparent during their mother’s working hours, according to the Census Bureau.
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Will Your Retirement Be Worse Than Your Parent’s Was?
Tweet Share on Facebook June 8, 2009 Comment (10)It’s nice to think that there were good old days when grandma and grandpa retired to Florida with enough income to pay all their bills and even travel. But that idyllic retirement only existed for a minority of Americans. “The conventional wisdom that in the good old days everybody worked for one employer and got a pension and a gold watch is bunk and does not fit the history of the American nation at any point since the Indians were displaced,” says Dallas Salisbury, president and CEO of the Employee Benefit Research Institute. There never was a time when the majority of Americans had a single life-long employer either. Industrious Americans have been job hopping as long as the country has existed. “The notion that the modern baby boom age is the first time that most people have had multiple jobs is flat out false when one looks at the data,” says Salisbury, who has held 7 jobs since he graduated from college. The median job tenure of Americans peaked in 1983 at 15.3 years, but has been lower both before and since.
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Save for Retirement, Win a Prize
Tweet Share on Facebook June 5, 2009 Comment (2)Lottery tickets sell hope to millions of people who will never become millionaires. For a dollar or two you get the chance to dream about what it would be like to kick back in a nice house, drive around town in a fancy car, or retire on a tropical island. Many people who play the lottery know deep down that none of these things will ever happen to them. But it’s a cheap way to envision a quick exit from the working world.
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Should Saving for Retirement be Required?
Tweet Share on Facebook June 5, 2009 Comment (34)It’s no surprise that it is difficult for Americans to save for retirement. Only roughly half the population even has any sort of retirement plan. One of the new proposals to get workers to save is an automatic IRA. Under this plan, as proposed in President Obama’s 2010 government budget, most employers that don’t already offer a retirement plan would be required to enroll their workers in a direct-deposit IRA. Employees could opt out if they choose. The existing saver’s tax credit would also be modified to provide a 50 percent match on the first $1,000 of retirement savings for families that earn less than $65,000 and be fully refundable.
