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10 Trends from 2011 We Don't Want to See in 2012
Tweet Share on Facebook December 30, 2011 Comment (2)Looking back on 2011, the New Year can't come fast enough. Will things be better in 2012? Without wanting to tempt fate, rarely has a coming year had such a low bar to being better than the previous year. With all fervent wishes for a great 2012 for everyone, here are 10 things that happened in 2011 that should stay in 2011:
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1. Congress. The petty yet exhausting fights in Congress produced well-deserved ridicule from an ungrateful nation. The Congressional approval rate hit an all-time low of 11 percent earlier this month, according to Gallup's tracking poll. "This month's record-low congressional job approval rating is one of a number of measures of Congress that have reached historical low points this year." Gallup said. "This suggests that 2011 will be remembered as the year in which the American public lost much of any remaining faith in the men and women they elect and send off to Washington to represent them."
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6 Basics for a Solid Retirement Plan
Tweet Share on Facebook December 28, 2011 CommentStandard financial-planning advice often begins with telling consumers to set aside three to six months of their spending needs in liquid assets. This is important, we're told, so that we have money stashed away for an emergency. Otherwise, we might have to sell investments at an inopportune time or dip into retirement funds. The assumption is that consumers have discretionary resources to begin with and thus have the luxury of a studied response to an emergency.
[See Rising Senior Wealth Not True for All.]
In most households, an emergency really means an emergency. Many consumers don't have extra money lying around. Even in normal times, funding the next three to six months' spending needs is a stressful balancing act. How effective it is to tell these households to set aside yet more funds—funds they don't have—for longer-term retirement and old-age health needs?
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Seniors Offer Wise Ways to Achieve Best Lives
Tweet Share on Facebook December 27, 2011 Comment (1)Everyone has their own yardstick for evaluating their lives. Inches and feet are replaced with life goals and achievements. Whatever your yardstick looks like, the odds are that you will use it during the year-end holidays. Good luck on your annual check-up.
[See The 10 Best Places to Retire in 2012.]
It's certainly true that 2011 has been a tough year for material achievements. Measures of well-being—income, home values, and wealth—have eroded for most of us. Jobs and careers have been put on hold if not set back. Consumer confidence is shaky and the consensus economic outlook for 2012 is for a little bit of growth and a lot of uncertainty.
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Release of Medicare Claims Info a Game-Changer
Tweet Share on Facebook December 23, 2011 Comment (4)Healthcare organizations throughout the country are lining up for a race to receive the massive Medicare database of claims data covering the more than 40 million consumers who participate in fee-for-service Medicare and prescription drug plans (Medicare Advantage plans are not included.) It's not clear which organizations will be judged worthy by Medicare to use the data. All must already demonstrate expertise in using healthcare data, promise to build provider ranking tools, and give the public free access to ratings.
[In Pictures: The 10 Best Places to Retire in 2012]
The decision to release the information was announced early in December. While mandated by the healthcare reform law, the ground rules for accessing and using the data were hammered out in negotiations with the healthcare industry and detailed in 100-plus pages of regulatory language. Although private insurers and other healthcare providers already share a lot of information, including Medicare data, the claims data release is expected to enable more detailed evaluations of the services provided by doctors, hospitals, nursing homes, clinics, and other healthcare providers.
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Get Ready for New 2012 Investment Tax Rules
Tweet Share on Facebook December 21, 2011 CommentThe world of mutual funds is getting more complicated. Funds have long been marketed as an easier and more diversified alternative to buying individual stocks, but mutual fund owners may face more complex tax rules for transactions made in 2012. The law triggering these changes was passed way back in 2008 as part of a flurry of economic bailout and stimulus bills.
[See 10 Steps to Fine-Tune Your Retirement Plan.]
Among those 2008 measures was a provision requiring investors to adopt a consistent cost basis for valuing any securities they sold. Further, it required investment brokers to report this cost basis to the IRS on annual 1099-B forms sent to the IRS. The new rule took effect in 2011 for stocks bought and sold this year and will apply to mutual funds bought and sold in 2012.
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How Ready Are You for Long-Term Care?
Tweet Share on Facebook December 20, 2011 Comment (4)MetLife sells insurance, lots of it. So, you probably wouldn't expect its corporate mascot, Snoopy, to tell you the reasons not to buy its products. Still, the company commissions a lot of well-conceived research on consumer knowledge about insurance.
Now, Best Life readers are, like Lake Wobegon children, above average. But most consumers get failing grades for their knowledge about insurance and financial services.
[In Pictures: The 10 Best Places to Retire in 2012]
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Public Still Not Buying Divisive Attacks on Rich
Tweet Share on Facebook December 19, 2011 Comment (2)The Occupy Wall Street movement has pitted the 1 percent against the 99 percent. President Obama, along with much of the liberal Democrat opinion machine, is hammering away to sell the notion that the wealthy, with Republican support, have remade the playing field in their favor. Statistics are widely cited that point to a clear trend of economic inequality in the United States and much of the world.
[See Rising Senior Wealth Not True for All.]
And Americans certainly are unhappy, and poorer. Welfare payments and food-stamp use are soaring. People have little confidence in government or business. They feel someone should be held accountable for the mess that has destroyed millions of jobs and trillions of dollars in housing wealth. And they are clearly weary of living through three years of recessionary conditions.
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Unmet Challenges for an Aging America
Tweet Share on Facebook December 16, 2011 Comment (4)If you look at the major public issues and stories of our times, the only two likely to involve older Americans are the intractable battles over Social Security, Medicare, and other senior benefits, and the general awareness that a lot of us are getting older and approaching a period of life typified by chronic illness, frailty, and Alzheimer's. The most prevalent stereotype of aging: It sucks to be old, dude.
[See Attractive and Functional Design Solutions for Aging Homeowners.]
Within that portion of the communications, research, and policy-making landscape that focuses on aging, however, the story has long been much different. The image of older Americans here is of an increasingly vibrant group of longer-lived people. They are setting off on an expanded journey that can bring them tremendously rich experiences, new careers, and an extremely high quality of life well into their 80s and even 90s. They will be living in age-friendly communities with great mass transit and universal-design homes tailored for older occupants.
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How to Build the Best Retirement Spending Plan
Tweet Share on Facebook December 14, 2011 CommentRetirement experts have long advocated a conservative approach to spending down retirement assets. That's to ensure people don't outlive their funds. The most common rate recommended is 4 percent a year, although rates from 3 percent to as much as 5 percent and even 6 percent are sometimes considered appropriate, depending on individual circumstances. In the real world, however, there are wild variations when it comes to how people spend their money.
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Research on the spend-down patterns of retirees leaves much to be desired. Fidelity Investments says its 18 million customers spend down their assets at a rate slightly above 4 percent. But that's an aggregate average that masks large variations in behavior. And even at Fidelity, which beats the drum of retirement planning loudly and regularly, only 20 to 25 percent of those 18 million customers have ever completed a retirement plan, let alone followed its recommendations.
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Do 401(k)s Match Traditional Pensions?
Tweet Share on Facebook December 13, 2011 CommentThe demise of the traditional pension has been mourned for decades. Beginning in the early 1980s, replacing defined benefit plans with defined contribution plans—401(k)s and IRAs—shifted responsibility for retirement income from employers to employees. Workers were on the hook for saving enough money, making sound investment decisions with those funds, and knowing how to liquidate their portfolios to generate retirement income in their later years. Traditional pensions did all that and promised guaranteed payments until pensioners and, often, their spouses, died. Who wouldn't mourn the disappearance of such a golden retirement benefit?
[In Pictures: The Best Places to Retire in 2012]
