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How the Health Insurance Mandate Penalty Will Work
Tweet Share on Facebook July 13, 2012 CommentBeginning with their 2014 federal taxes, many consumers who can afford health insurance but decide not to buy it will owe penalties to the IRS when they file their taxes in the spring of 2015. There will be constant efforts to overturn this and other provisions of the Affordable Care Act (ACA), also referred to as Obamacare. But the Supreme Court decision to uphold the law's constitutionality has greatly increased the odds that the so-called individual mandate to have health insurance will be implemented over the next two years.
The nonpartisan Congressional Budget Office (CBO) has estimated that roughly four million people will choose to pay a penalty each year instead of purchasing health insurance. This group is expected to be dominated by younger Americans without children who feel they are healthy enough to forego insurance. Those penalties will be small in 2014 and 2015 before rising to their full levels in 2016.
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How Caregivers Vacation With Dementia Victims
Tweet Share on Facebook July 11, 2012 CommentFew people in America have more challenging days and nights than Pat Weidner. She is in her early 60s and moved to Las Vegas several years ago with her husband, Leo, who is now in his early 70s. Of course, they bought at the top of the market and have watched their home's value sink and sink further underwater. Never financially flush, their modest pensions don't go very far.
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All of this pales next to the odyssey the Weidners have been on since Pat first noticed in late 2008 that Leo, a former math teacher with meticulous habits, was putting family records in the wrong files. Since then, Leo's life has been a series of strokes, frequent hospitalizations, and a roller-coaster ride into and out of dementia. But mostly in.
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8 Retirement Realities in a Stumbling Economy
Tweet Share on Facebook July 10, 2012 CommentFor the third straight year, the economic recovery has stalled in the spring after showing promise early in the year. Job creation is anemic. The stock market seems poised to do nothing—at least nothing good. Interest rates are still so low that lots of so-called "safe" investments are losing money. Whatever you call it, it's bad news for retirees and would-be retirees concerned about living on a fixed income. As economists restart their advisory machines, so are we. Here are the major realities of the new retirement, updated to reflect stronger doses of conservatism and defensive postures.
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Continue employment. Continuing to work is the most recommended strategy of the new retirement. Lots of experts say 70 is the new 65. It keeps a paycheck coming, and if you're lucky, employer-provided health insurance, retirement-account contributions, and other benefits. And for each year you work, you cut a year off the time your retirement nest egg must last. Finally, continuing to work may also provide you the ability to delay claiming your Social Security benefits. Each year you can put off taking Social Security, your benefits will rise by about 8 percent. Benefits do not increase once you've turned 70.
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Annual Social Security Statement: A Key Guide
Tweet Share on Facebook July 9, 2012 CommentMichael J. Astrue, commissioner of Social Security, recently put out a press release trumpeting the agency's belated launch on May 1 of an online Social Security statement. In less than two months, the agency announced, a million people have created an online account and viewed their Social Security statement.
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"The online Social Security Statement is a huge success," Astrue said in the press release. For an agency that provided retirement and disability benefits to 61.6 million people as of May and receives payroll taxes from 208.5 million people, Social Security is particularly reserved in its public statements. Including Astrue's victory lap announcement, the agency has issued a grand total of 10 national press releases so far in 2012.
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Financial Safeguards Needed as Senior Divorces Soar
Tweet Share on Facebook July 6, 2012 CommentSad to report, but divorces among older Americans are surging. That's saying something in a country that is already the world leader in divorces. And with baby boomers—already no strangers to divorce—entering middle age at a fast clip, the divorce trend may well become even more pronounced.
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In their own recent research that included a review of earlier work, Susan L. Brown and I-Fen Lin at Bowling Green State University's National Center for Family & Marriage Research Center found that the divorce rate among Americans at least 50 years old had doubled between 1990 and 2009. The doubling trend held up among those over age 65 as well as among younger boomers, although the numbers of divorces is higher among the younger group.
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10 Must-Have Retirement Needs
Tweet Share on Facebook July 3, 2012 CommentEach day brings new challenges that threaten us, and the Internet often resembles an enormous social megaphone with the volume cranked all the way up. So it's understandably hard to square this persistent outpouring of threats and unhappiness with the reality that the inhabitants of planet earth are living longer than ever before and inflicting less physical violence on one another. What if, God forbid, these turn out to be the best of times?
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So it is with the torrent of negative retirement news. Bad as things often look, people will continue to retire, and many of them will enjoy terrific lives in their later years. They will join millions of other Americans who have managed to do the same. What are their secrets? Here, culled from research studies and retirement experts, are 10 essentials for a successful retirement.
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Consumers Must Be Focus of Recovery Efforts
Tweet Share on Facebook July 2, 2012 CommentConsumer spending generates 70 percent of U.S. economic activity. Say what you like about the fall elections, the deficit, the size of government, the need for stimulus, tax rates and reforms, rising healthcare expenses, immigration, structural vs. cyclical unemployment, and the Federal Reserve. The U.S. economy ain't going nowhere unless consumers, especially the middle class, lead the charge.
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Since World War II, the consumption-driven prowess of the U.S. economy has helped set America apart. We can argue about the costs as well as benefits of an economic system that is so driven by material consumption. But in terms of economic output, wealth creation, and low levels of unemployment, consumption has been the bomb.
