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Video: Happiness Experts Provide Advice on Living to 100
Tweet Share on Facebook April 12, 2013 Comment -
Want to Live a Long Time? Pay Attention
Tweet Share on Facebook April 10, 2013 CommentLong before the age of gene therapy and miracle medical treatments, the secrets of long life were being gathered and revealed in a unique study of 1,500 children born about 1910. By studying these people throughout their lives, successive generations of researchers collected nearly 10 million pieces of observable data and have been able to produce solid insights into human longevity.
"Most people who live to an old age do so not because they have beaten cancer, heart disease, diabetes, or lung disease; rather, the long-lived have mostly avoided serious ailments altogether," Howard S. Friedman and Leslie R. Martin said in their 2011 book, "The Longevity Project."
"The best childhood personality predictor of longevity was conscientiousness—the qualities of a prudent, persistent, well-organized person," according to the two professors (he at the University of California—Riverside, and she at La Sierra University). "Conscientiousness ... also turned out to be the best personality predictor of long life when measured in adulthood."
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Long-Term Care Costs Favor Home-Based Treatment
Tweet Share on Facebook April 9, 2013 CommentNursing home and assisted living costs for long-term care continue to rise at rates greater than overall inflation, according to Genworth Financial's 10th annual Cost of Care Survey. However, the cost of in-home care has risen at annual rates of 1 percent or less during the past five years, and this is the place where people overwhelmingly prefer to be treated if possible.
"If you look at national private nursing home costs over the past 10 years that we've done this study, the median annual costs have gone up from $65,200 to $83,950, increasing at more than four percent a year," Pat Foley, Genworth's head of distribution and marketing, said in a prepared statement. "The better news is that costs for homemaker services and home health aides have remained almost flat. Since 70 percent of Genworth's first time long term care claimants choose in-home care, these costs have remained more manageable."
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Affordable Care Act Coverage: 5 Key Numbers
Tweet Share on Facebook April 8, 2013 CommentThe clock is ticking very loudly on the mandatory health coverage demanded by the Affordable Care Act, also known as "Obamacare." These coverage requirements will apply to health insurance in 2014. That may seem a safe distance away, but consider that the rules are supposed to be in place for the annual enrollment process. This will begin as early as July or August at some employers, and later in the fall at most organizations.
By the time the 2014 enrollment season gets underway, employers are supposed to have already communicated clearly what their employees' health insurance options will be, and what these options might cost. They are nowhere close to being able to do this. And the required date set in Washington for this crucial communication has been deferred from an earlier March 31 deadline to an unknown date. Failure to comply with the law could expose employees and employers to financial penalties.
ADP, the big payroll and employment services company, has roughly 600,000 clients and it has surveyed its enormous databases of what these employers pay people and of their historic health-insurance choices. It knows how many employed people now choose to be covered under their employer's group health policies. And because it knows how much wage income these people make, it can take a pretty good stab at whether employers' current health insurance programs are in compliance with the Affordable Care Act.
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Green House Building New Senior Living Model
Tweet Share on Facebook April 4, 2013 CommentFinding a better way to do things doesn't always mean spending more money on the biggest and the best. In the related worlds of senior housing and health care, it turns out that a very small-scale solution can deliver a terrific quality of life for seniors that is not beyond their financial reach.
The Green House Project is backed by the Robert Wood Johnson Foundation and by a nonprofit, NCB Capital Impact, which provides a range of financing, design, operational and training services. The project has spent the past 10 years developing and refining The Green House model for assisted senior living. There are now nearly 150 Green House projects operating in 22 states.
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8 Financial Strategies for a Long Life
Tweet Share on Facebook April 2, 2013 CommentAmericans' continuing longevity gains may be the ultimate good news, bad news story of our time. The longer we live, ironically, the higher our stress levels rise concerning outliving our money, having good retirements and being able to afford long-term care expenses.
Our retirement savings are already inadequate. Health care costs continue to soar. And the major programs that help us afford our later years—Social Security and Medicare—face cuts to help balance the federal budget. No wonder retirement confidence surveys continue to find us largely depressed about our financial futures, even as stocks rally and the economic recovery appears to finally be picking up some steam.
[Read: How to Add Real Diversity to Your Portfolio.]
For folks already at retirement age, life expectancies have continued to increase. A 65-year-old man is expected to live, on average, another 17.6 years. A 65-year-old woman would live, on average, another 20.3. In recent years, these figures have been rising by one or two tenths of a percent each year. It should be stressed that these are averages. The ranks of the "old old"—people age 85 and up—are soaring.
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How to Improve Social Security at No Cost
Tweet Share on Facebook April 1, 2013 CommentSocial Security is by far the nation's most important retirement program. And while the decision about when to claim benefits seems clear enough, it is anything but simple.
You can begin benefits as early as age 62 or wait until turning 70. The difference in monthly benefit payments is huge. For each $1 in benefits you'd get when claiming at age 66 (the so-called full retirement age for most people right now), you'd receive only 75 cents if you claimed at age 62, but $1.32 if you waited until age 70. Big difference.
If you're married, you and your spouse can do what's called "claim and suspend" benefits so that one of you can collect spousal benefits based on the benefit entitlements of the other spouse. Properly executed, these benefit payments will not reduce your own benefits or those of your spouse when they are claimed at a later date.
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Employer Health and Retirement Plans Converging
Tweet Share on Facebook March 28, 2013 CommentDriven by rising costs and the Affordable Care Act, employee health programs are beginning to look like employee retirement plans. Using 401(k)s and other tools, administrators of those plans have spent decades trying to influence employees to save more money and make better retirement investment decisions.
Employers increasingly are approaching their health plans in similar ways, according to a recent survey. The result is a convergence that finds both types of plans trying to use incentives to change employee behavior even as they offload more key decisions and financial responsibility onto employees.
Beginning in the 1970s, employers began shedding traditional defined benefit pensions in favor of defined contribution plans. These newer plans limited employers' financial liability and shifted costs and responsibilities to employees. Federal tax breaks were approved to encourage employees to contribute pre-tax dollars to the plans and shield any investment gains from taxes until funds were withdrawn from the plan.
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7 Tips for Coping With a Smaller Government
Tweet Share on Facebook March 26, 2013 CommentReality has a way of tempering ideological views. So it is with the fierce debate over government spending. For the anti-spending hawks, the uncomfortable message from the implementation of sequestration cuts is that they really hurt, that much of government spending is not at all wasteful and that there is a real human cost here. For the crowd that continues to favor economic stimulus, often by stressing the anti-growth consequences of European austerity measures, it is notable that businesses and investment markets have continued to grow in the face of reduced government spending. What do they know that we don't?
Meanwhile, countless senior organizations and social service nonprofits are howling over possible cuts. The House of Representatives has passed another version of tough budget love from Rep. Paul Ryan (R-Wis.). The Senate passed its first budget in four years but just barely. Now that the boundaries of these opposing political views have been defined, the volume knob will be turned up in coming months. But the illusion that we can somehow afford to continue spending at anything near current levels is disappearing. Smaller government is inevitable.
[Read: The Big Tax Shelter Many Financial Planners Overlook.]
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Should Long-Term Care Be an Entitlement?
Tweet Share on Facebook March 25, 2013 CommentThe elderly have always needed help in their later years. It has come mainly from family members, and this continues to be the case. But today's family is far smaller and more likely to be geographically scattered than in the past. These trends are expected to become more pronounced. Add in rising numbers of older Americans and the outlook is for a nation increasingly unable to have the time or money to take care of its older citizens.
Obamacare recognized this problem. Led by efforts of the late Sen. Ted Kennedy, the law included an employer-based long-term care insurance program. Employees would have paid the premiums and the level of coverage was modest. But it would have added a layer of protection that does not exist for most people.
To get votes to pass the program, however, it was approved as a voluntary benefit and not as coverage everyone had to get. This universal aspect of insurance is crucial to health care reform. If only sicker people had to get health insurance, their costs would be very high. Healthy people would not feel the need to buy it and would not offset the expenses incurred by those most likely to use the product.
