-
8 Travel Tips for the Summer
Tweet Share on Facebook April 30, 2010 Comment (3)Consumers are spending again and hitting the road for travel. Cruise and tour operators are seeing much healthier bookings. It's hardly a return to glory days for the travel industry. But it is the beginning of the end for the buyer's market travelers have been enjoying since the global economy tanked. Here are some travel truisms.
Airfares Up, Hotel Rates Down. Bing Travel, a Microsoft company, trolls the Internet every day looking at airline and hotel rates. It consistently finds airfares up more than 20 percent from last year, while hotel rates are much softer, and are lower by 8-10 percent. The reason is that airlines have reduced costs by cutting flights and equipment use, so any uptick in demand flows through to higher rates much more quickly. Closing hotels is not such a winning strategy, so room rates are recovering more slowly until occupancy trends improve.
[See Best Mutual Funds 2010.] -
Long Term Care Costs Cheapest at Home
Tweet Share on Facebook April 27, 2010 Comment (2)Institutional costs for long term care continued to post big increases last year even as the economy sputtered along, according to the seventh annual Cost of Care survey from Genworth Financial, a major seller of long term care insurance. The good news in the survey is that costs for in-home care -- where nearly 80 percent of people prefer being cared for -- have risen very little during the past five years.
At some point, two-thirds of us over the age of 65 will need someone or someplace to take care of us. Illness or physical disabilities will make it impossible to perform what are called the activities of daily living (ADL) by ourselves. These include dressing, eating, bathing, and using the bathroom.
[Use our Mutual Fund Score to find the best investments for you.]
-
Healthy Mind at 90 Seeks Healthy Body at 60
Tweet Share on Facebook April 25, 2010 Comment (2)Study after study, including some recent research, documents the common sense we all know. If you take good care of your body today, it "may" reward you in the future with good health, an extended life span and, of special importance, extended years free of Alzherimer's Disease or early dementia. I say "may" because we all know there are no sure bets here. People get on a treadmill every day for 20 years and then keel over with a heart attack from some undiagnosed malady. It happens.
[Use our Mutual Fund Score to find the best investments for you.] -
10 Steps to View the Internet on Your TV
Tweet Share on Facebook April 23, 2010 Comment (2)The dominant interface for communications has moved from print -- books, magazines, newspapers -- to digital devices, fixed and mobile. These tools are Internet-enabled and their outputs are increasingly moving from text to visual displays. It's an icon-driven world.
A big issue for many older people is whether they want to make this shift or think the learning and adjustment curve is just too steep. Today's computer technologies and tools have become mainstream communications platforms. If you don't adapt to use them, you will increasingly be unable to communicate with family, friends, and colleagues. You risk becoming isolated, and with economic and lifestyle trends strongly favoring what's come to be called aging in place, you may be stuck as the star of a senior version of Home Alone. Remaining connected to the community and social activities is one of the main reasons to look forward to those extra years that medical and wellness breakthroughs have brought us. New communications technologies are becoming essential to that process.[Use our Mutual Fund Score to fine the best investments for you.]
-
Anger is High but Tax Rates Aren't
Tweet Share on Facebook April 21, 2010 Comment (6)I am an equal opportunity tax basher. Watching Democrats and Republicans claim any mantle of fiscal responsibility is like viewing a two-man race whose contestants are running backwards to the starting line. How can you declare anyone a winner when they've never been in the race?
Still, it is scary to see people at Tea Party rallies and other meetings rant on about intolerable levels of taxation from Washington. First, the facts don't support that position. Second, we will need to figure out a way to raise taxes, not lower them, if we're going to make any serious dent in our horrendous budget deficits.
[See U.S. News's list of the Best Mutual Funds for 2010.] -
Pension Relief Delay May Harm Private Plans
Tweet Share on Facebook April 19, 2010 CommentMany private pension plans are nervously awaiting Congressional action to give them more breathing room to adequately fund their plans. The Senate passed a relief version; the House has not. A House measure, however, may include provisions forcing employers to submit to increased government oversight of their compensation and some other financial practices. The Senate-passed bill did not include such measures and the odds of their being approved in that chamber are minuscule. It's possible the Labor Department can impose some of these oversight requirements under current authority but it probably would prefer to have any controversial rules imposed by lawmakers. Meanwhile, April 15 has come and gone. It marked a key funding date for pension contributions and requires public notices from pension plans that determined they were unable to make the contributions required under current rules.
[See U.S. News's list of the Best Mutual Funds for 2010, and use our Mutual Fund Score to find the best investments for you.] -
Ways to Boost Income on Retirement Holdings
Tweet Share on Facebook April 16, 2010 Comment (2)Finding decent yields when many interest rates are near zero is tough. That's especially the case with people who are retired or nearing retirement. Stocks are doing well these days and lots of money has flowed into bond mutual funds as well. But older investors are especially vulnerable to another hit on their portfolios. Many want to begin locking in their recovery gains from the market's recent surge, and make the transition from investment growth to investment preservation. To help in this process, U.S. News spoke with several investment advisers.
The most striking outcome of these discussions was the dramatic differences in the recommended retirement investment vehicles cited by the advisers. So perhaps the first message to anyone seeking retirement investment advice is to think seriously about your retirement needs before you even sit down with an adviser. They have strong views about the right paths for the people they advise. You need to develop your own strong views. -
Health Stocks Should Prosper Under Reforms
Tweet Share on Facebook April 15, 2010 CommentBig pharma, big insurers, big hospital chains, big pharmacy benefit managers, and big lab testing companies are projected to benefit from the recently passed health reform law. Did you catch the common word there? Big. Even if the legislation's efforts to reduce healthcare spending trim profits in some sectors, analysts say there will be just an enormous upside as 32 million consumers gain health insurance beginning in 2014.
[See U.S. News's list of the Best Mutual Funds for 2010, and use our Mutual Fund Score to find the best investments for you.]
-
Target Date Funds Gain Despite Critics
Tweet Share on Facebook April 14, 2010 CommentTarget date funds are being provided in a growing number of employer retirement programs, and are being chosen more and more often by employees in these programs, Vanguard said in a new study. Its report summarized 2009 activity among 3.2 million participants in 2,200 defined contribution plans administered by the company.
[See U.S. News's list of the Best Mutual Funds for 2010, and use our Mutual Fund Score to find the best investments for you.] -
Appeal of Overseas Retirement Grows for Many
Tweet Share on Facebook April 11, 2010 Comment (4)What do Japanese-American retirees know that we don't? Over the past decade, more and more Social Security payments are being forwarded to people in Japan. And while their nationalities are not disclosed, it's likely most are of Japanese ancestry. At the end of 2008, the most recent report on foreign recipients of Social Security payments recorded nearly 510,000 monthly payments were being made to persons outside the United States, up nearly a third from about 385,000 overseas recipients nine years earlier.
[See U.S. News's list of the Best Mutual Funds for 2010, and use our Mutual Fund Score to find the best investments for you.]
advertisement
The Best Life
Philip Moeller, contributing editor for U.S. News Money, writes about achieving success and happiness in older age. He also is a research fellow at the Sloan Center on Aging & Work at Boston College.
Follow U.S. News Money
Like Us On Facebook
Our retirement readiness calculator will provide a rough idea of how long your retirement savings and income will last.
advertisement
