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Steps Women Must Take for Better Retirements
Tweet Share on Facebook January 7, 2011 Comment (1)It's the classic good news-bad news conundrum. While women continue to outlive men, the consequences of their longevity often include serious physical and financial disabilities. Many older women confront chronic illnesses with limited financial resources, according to recent studies. They are also more likely to live alone and, when their husbands die, many widows are unprepared for a likely drop in retirement income.
[See 10 Key Retirement Ages to Plan For.]
"I think we thought that because women have been working more, that the [financial] gap between women and men would have gotten a lot better by now," says Anna Rappaport, an aging and retirement expert and spokesperson for the Society of Actuaries (SOA). "If you asked us 10 or 15 years ago, we would have said that gap was going to go away. But it hasn't."
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Social Security, Medicare a Bargain for Many
Tweet Share on Facebook January 5, 2011 Comment (4)Medicare is a big consumer bargain, while Social Security is more likely to be an even trade-off, according to a recent study by the Urban Institute, a Washington think tank. The study looked at different consumer profiles, and compared the amounts of lifetime Social Security and Medicare payroll taxes with the benefits that typical consumers are likely to receive from each program.
[See 10 Key Retirement Ages to Plan For.]
Both programs have progressive structures and provide relatively higher benefit-to-tax ratios for lower income beneficiaries. For Social Security, households with high incomes pay out more in taxes than they are likely to receive in benefits over their lifetimes. People with low incomes and households with only one working spouse come out ahead on Social Security. Everyone comes out ahead on Medicare, but the largest benefits are seen in lower-income households.
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11 Key Numbers to Watch in 2011
Tweet Share on Facebook January 4, 2011 Comment (3)There is a growing economic spectator sport in this country: When will the U.S. economy get up off the mat and turn the corner? The answer is of more than casual interest to the 308,745,538 residents of our data-driven nation. Here are 11 key numbers you should be watching:
1. Consumer confidence. The most widely watched measure of how consumers feel about the economy is provided each month by the Conference Board, a business policy group. Would you believe that its confidence index stood at 111.9 in the summer of 2007? Now, it's less than half that level—52.5. But if we still have a long way to go before happy times return, at least we've made progress in the past two years. The reading in February 2009 was a dismal 25.3.
