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Preparing Your Home for an Older You
Tweet Share on Facebook October 31, 2012 CommentIf you want to stay in your home as you age, take a look around and think about whether your home is a suitable place for you to spend your 70s, 80s, and perhaps beyond. If you were in a wheelchair, could you navigate your home without help? Could you cook meals? If you had trouble walking or getting out of bed, how hard would it be for someone to help you? Are there grab bars in the bathrooms? Easily accessible wall switches?
Surveys show that overwhelmingly, people want to grow old in their own homes. But such aging in place, as many experts call it, is often made very difficult by a widespread lack of age-friendly home modifications. As researchers for MetLife's Mature Market Institute have noted, most homes use "Peter Pan" housing designs, because they appear to be built for people who will never grow old.
The basics promoting aging in place are well-known. More of us are getting older and living longer lives. The odds are good that we will need some period of extended care during our later years. Such care is very expensive, and that's assuming we will be able to find it. The rising numbers of seniors means there will be more demand for available institutional care slots. Meanwhile, the number of caregivers may actually decline as smaller numbers of younger workers confront rising demand for senior care.
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How Will Seniors Use Their Rising Political Clout?
Tweet Share on Facebook October 29, 2012 CommentFirst, it's important not to lump everyone older than 50 into a single voter category. Voters age 65 and older backed John McCain over Barack Obama in 2008, 53 percent to 45 percent. Baby boomers ages 50 to 64 voted for the president by a slim 50 percent to 49 percent margin. Recent polls show these tendencies still hold true. Obama's edge with younger voters disappears with age, and Mitt Romney has a decided edge with voters over 65.
Second, the importance of the senior vote has continued to grow as the country turns grayer. In 2008, exit polls found that 16 percent of voters were 65 or older. Demographic research earlier this year put the figure at 21 percent for the 2012 election. An additional 19 percent of the electorate is expected to be between 55 and 64 this year. Nearly half the electorate is eligible to join AARP.
Third, despite all the lip service paid to the youth vote, seniors are the most likely demographic group to make it to the polls. "They're registered to vote, and fully 90 to 95 percent of our members say they plan to vote in all elections," says Nancy LeaMond, executive vice president of 37-million member AARP.
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How to Get Social Security Direct Deposit
Tweet Share on Facebook October 26, 2012 CommentBeginning next March, new federal rules take effect requiring the end of nearly all federal checks to consumers, including Social Security payments. Since May 2011, all new Social Security recipients have had to sign up for direct deposit. But now those rules will apply to all recipients.
At the end of September, more than 94 percent of Social Security recipients and 83 percent of those receiving disability and other supplemental payments were already getting them electronically. But with 61.9 million total beneficiaries, that still leaves several million people who must convert from paper to electronic payments over the next several months.
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Medicare Too Complex for Many Seniors
Tweet Share on Facebook October 24, 2012 CommentMedicare is playing a starring role in the presidential election. The 1965 law providing guaranteed healthcare to older Americans has become a battleground for the issue of whether Obamacare is good for the country and, more broadly, how the nation should rein in its soaring healthcare costs.
While Medicare may be starring in this political drama, it is in many ways a misunderstood actor on the national stage. The program that exists today is far different than it was in 1965, when former President Harry Truman became the nation's first Medicare enrollee. And the pace of change has only accelerated in recent years, due not only to the health reform law itself but also to the explosion of new informational and medical technologies.
Already, many consumers are overwhelmed by the number of available Medicare insurance plans, the complexities within those plans, and the arduous homework needed to determine their prescription drug choices and out-of-pocket costs. Health reform supporters say the new law will eventually make it easier for consumers to understand Medicare and make sensible healthcare choices. But that goal is at least several years away. Until then, Medicare will become more complicated, not less.
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20 Practical Ways Seniors Can Cut Expenses
Tweet Share on Facebook October 23, 2012 CommentNearly four years into our so-called economic recovery, it's clear that frugality is still the prevailing financial trend. Saving money is not only necessary, it's almost patriotic. Here are 20 ways you can do your bit for the savings cause. They work for me. I hope they work for you. Check off the ones that apply to you and then take action.
1. Shop for new Medicare coverage. It is a mistake to assume that last year's Medicare coverage is still the best deal for you. Health reform has accelerated changes that were already affecting Medicare policies and prices. Open enrollment for 2013 plans runs until December 7.
2. Try one shopping trip a week. This will limit impulse purchases, force you to do better meal planning, and also cut down on car expenses.
3. Bargain for lower interest rates. Why should everyone benefit from lower rates but you? If you have any debt outstanding, now is the time to seek a better deal.
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10 Glimmers of Light Amidst Economic Gloom
Tweet Share on Facebook October 22, 2012 CommentA bitterly divisive election is three weeks away, and our newly elected and re-elected leaders will then have little time to prevent a perfect economic storm of tax hikes and enforced federal spending cuts. Things don't look any better overseas. Iran may be close to getting the bomb, North Korea says its missiles can hit American soil, and our Afghanistan and Middle East problems remain enormous.
Underneath this drumbeat of bad news, however, are a number of smaller-scale causes for optimism. They often don't make headlines and get lost amidst the din of election-season shouting. But things in the U.S. of A. may actually be getting better, often in spite of ourselves. Time may not heal all wounds, but it has provided needed recovery time for individuals and businesses.
1. Consumer confidence is up. Pollsters report that consumer confidence remains near a five-year high. Given all that's gone wrong in the world over the past five years, it's nothing short of miraculous that people have emerged from their bunkers and like what they see at least a little bit.
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Social Security Makes Even More Public Service Cuts
Tweet Share on Facebook October 19, 2012 CommentCiting budget pressures, the Social Security Administration (SSA) has once again suspended mailing paper statements and will begin next month to close its more than 1,200 field offices 30 minutes earlier each day. Next January, the offices will begin closing at noon each Wednesday.
Most federal agencies began their 2013 fiscal year on October 1 with budgets that were only six-tenths of 1 percent greater than in fiscal 2012. This continuing resolution (CR) was agreed to by President Obama as part of a deal to avoid triggering debt-ceiling problems until next spring. "Under the current CR, we are operating on significantly less funding than either the agency or President Obama requested," Social Security spokeswoman Kia Green told U.S. News in an e-mail.
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Dividend Stocks to Suit All Appetites for Risk
Tweet Share on Facebook October 17, 2012 CommentThe search for decent yet safe yields seems to have turned into a permanent investment goal. The Federal Reserve has repeatedly renewed its commitment to near-zero interest rates. Let's hope this turns out to be good news for the economy, because it has trashed the safest returns for retirement investments.
[Read: Is Your Dividend Safe?]
Advising older folks to not be too risky with their nest eggs is of limited help these days. Everyone takes on more investment risk when short-term yields are zero. And everyone, or so it seems, has been scouring the landscape for solid stocks with attractive dividends and dividend-based mutual funds.
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Social Security COLA to Rise 1.7% in 2013
Tweet Share on Facebook October 16, 2012 CommentSocial Security benefit payments will rise by only 1.7 percent in 2013, down sharply from a 3.6 percent increase in 2012's cost of living adjustment (COLA). That boost followed two years of no COLA increase. The Social Security Administration said next year's COLA would raise the average monthly benefit payment by $21, to $1,261 from $1,240.
For people still working, the COLA increase will also translate into a higher earnings ceiling for Social Security payroll taxes. The ceiling was raised this year to $110,100 and will increase in 2013 to $113,700. Social Security payroll taxes are expected to further increase because of the scheduled lapse of the cut in employee payroll taxes—to 4.2 percent from 6.2 percent of covered wages—that's been in effect in 2011 and 2012.
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Fiscal Cliff or Not, Deep Cuts Must Occur
Tweet Share on Facebook October 15, 2012 CommentMitt Romney and Barack Obama, along with surrogates too numerous to count, constantly accuse each other of not having a specific plan to guide the nation back to prosperity. Voters overwhelmingly would accept a combination of higher taxes and spending cuts that their elected leaders have been incapable of embracing. So the two sides just whale away at each other and hope their respective faithful will turn out in enough numbers in key swing states to carry the day.
Then what?
[Read Top 10 Individual Tax Breaks.]
Despite who wins the White House, the last two months of the 112th Congress are expected to be dominated by continued battling over sizable tax increases and spending cuts set to be automatically triggered when the falling Times Square ball ushers in 2013. Mix in trench warfare over health reform and entitlements programs, and you have a recipe for continued gridlock.
