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Older Women Face Serious Money Inequality
Tweet Share on Facebook March 30, 2012 Comment (2)Women continue to make enormous gains in the workplace. They are steadily rising in the management ranks and dominate new graduates in many professional fields. Their income gains have been slower to materialize, but it's still safe to say that the economic gap between the sexes will get narrower.
[See How to Save More Now With Savvy Budgeting.]
That's not true, however, for older women. They earned much less than men during their working lives, which has led to lower private pensions and smaller Social Security payments. Because women continue to live, on average, several years longer than men, they must stretch their smaller retirement nest eggs over more years, further weakening their economic positions.
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10 Great Opportunities for Older Volunteers
Tweet Share on Facebook March 28, 2012 Comment (1)If you have time and an interest in volunteering, you can literally create your own program. Aided by Internet sites that match needs and volunteers, along with other do-it-yourself online tools, boomers are rewriting the book on how volunteering works.
[See Top 10 U.S. Places for Healthcare.]
AARP has kicked off a large volunteer effort through its "Create the Good" program and website. "People want more flexibility in their volunteering," says Barb Quaintance, AARP senior vice president for volunteer and civic engagement. There is a preference for self-directed volunteer efforts: More than half of all boomers select this approach, according to AARP, as it allows them to satisfy their needs as well as those of the recipients they help.
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The Easiest Way to Get People to Save More
Tweet Share on Facebook March 27, 2012 Comment (2)In a marriage of financial literacy and behavioral economics, researchers were able to boost retirement-plan contributions simply by telling people the benefits of doing so. Besides reminding people about the general benefits of retirement savings, the large-scale test also showed different groups exactly how much their future assets would grow and how much income those assets would regularly produce during the person's retirement years.
[See 6 Reasons Why You Should Never Retire.]
With the disappearance of traditional pensions, 401(k)s and other self-directed workplace retirement programs have become the primary source of private retirement savings. Recent contribution levels have increased, but not to levels that most experts feel are sufficient to support even modestly comfortable retirements.
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Top 10 Reasons to Hire Older People
Tweet Share on Facebook March 26, 2012 Comment (4)In a world where traditional retirement makes less and less sense, the need and desire of older people to retain or find meaningful jobs depends in part on overcoming bogus attitudes about older employees. Smart and progressive employers get this. Sure, Google is probably not losing any sleep over failing to train septuagenarians about search-engine algorithms. But being uninterested in crowd-sourcing the best taco stand within four blocks of your smartphone is not a disqualification for being an excellent employee.
[See 10 Workplace Myths Debunked.]
Unemployment rates among older workers are lower than that of the general workforce. However, when an older person does lose a job, it has been much harder to find a new one. Older job seekers need to do an honest self-assessment of their skills and upgrade them if needed or set their sights on jobs that better match their current capabilities.
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How Good is Your Community's Healthcare?
Tweet Share on Facebook March 23, 2012 CommentIn terms of health, where you live can make a huge difference, according to a detailed study by the nonprofit Commonwealth Fund.
It looked at 43 indicators of health system performance in four major areas: access, prevention and treatments, costs and potentially avoidable hospital use, and health outcomes. The nation is broken down into 306 local health markets; their boundaries are determined by the service areas of local hospitals.
The list of the nation's top 10 local markets was dominated by Midwestern cities, according to the Fund's Scorecard on Local Health System Performance. Minnesota claimed four of the top spots, and California and Wisconsin each had two. Here are the top 10 local healthcare markets:
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Senior Healthcare and Financial Crisis Returns
Tweet Share on Facebook March 21, 2012 Comment (1)You can almost hear the ideological wagons circling again in Washington these days. Those intense debates about government spending and the "big three" entitlement programs—Medicaid, Medicare, and Social Security—are heating up once more.
[See AARP Moves to Protect Social Security and Medicare.]
The U.S. Supreme Court is set to hold oral arguments next week on the constitutionality of the Affordable Care Act, aka "Obamacare" to non-believers. The court may invalidate portions of the law, particularly its requirement that Americans must buy health insurance. But however it rules, there is no question that government's role in healthcare will be a big topic in the fall elections.
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AARP Moves to Protect Social Security and Medicare
Tweet Share on Facebook March 20, 2012 Comment (12)AARP began to engage its 37 million members Monday in an effort to dissuade Congress from making what they feel would be unfair cuts to Social Security and Medicare benefits. AARP's "You've Earned a Say" program is being promoted through town hall meetings in every state, online member surveys, and national advertising.
[See States with the Best Older Voter Turnout.]
AARP said the program is educational and will not include direct lobbying efforts or be used in this year's elections. But it will build and communicate an extensive record of how individuals are affected by the two programs.
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3 Ways Low Interest Rates Hurt Seniors
Tweet Share on Facebook March 19, 2012 CommentThe Federal Reserve Board has not formally relaxed its intention to keep interest rates low through the end of 2014. And there is little new to say about the way non-existent interest rates on savings accounts, certificates of deposit, and U.S. Treasury securities have hurt all savers, particularly risk-averse investors.
[See 10 Steps to Fine-Tune Your Retirement Plan.]
Retirees are, of course, the poster children for risk-adverse investments, and their nest eggs have been hammered by the Fed's policy. The Fed has said that low rates help the economic recovery. So it argues, in effect, that investors should enjoy the solid stock market returns and that savers should display a stiff upper lip.
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Reverse Mortgage Borrowers Younger and in Debt
Tweet Share on Facebook March 16, 2012 Comment (3)Homeowners are considering reverse mortgages at younger ages, a study says, in part because they are experiencing rising debt levels. And while earlier users of the reverse loans used them to improve the quality of their lives and plan for the future, people today have more immediate and pressing financial worries.
[See Why Reverse Mortgage Delinquencies Are Extensive.]
Reverse mortgages are open to households in which the youngest homeowner is at least 62 years old. The federal government insures nearly all reverse mortgages through its Home Equity Conversion Mortgage (HECM) program. People can access the equity in their homes and receive regular monthly payments, a line of credit, or a lump-sum payment. Proceeds of the loan must first be used to pay off any remaining mortgage a person has on their home, and borrowers are no longer required to make mortgage payments.
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6 Reasons Why You Should Never Retire
Tweet Share on Facebook March 14, 2012 Comment (11)Threats to retirement security are everywhere. The list is topped by the recession-fueled impact on retirement confidence: People haven't set aside nearly enough money to fund their retirements. Next on the list is the regular drumbeat from critics that the Social Security system is running out of money and won't be able to honor its current promises to people nearing retirement. Perhaps the third stake in the heart of retirement is that people are living longer and longer, raising legitimate fears they will outlive their money.
All well and good, perhaps. But these concerns have obscured the compelling arguments against ever retiring, except for physical reasons. The short list of reasons never to retire include:
1. There is no physical reason to retire.
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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.
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