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Digital Stories Preserve and Share Memories
Tweet Share on Facebook December 18, 2012 CommentUsing smartphones, iPads, and other digital devices to help us create and preserve our life stories, voices, and legacies for children and grandchildren will one day be commonplace. Along with the hugely popular rise of online genealogy services, we will be able to capture individual and family histories, share them with others, and link them to an increasingly rich digital structure of historical information. In digital terms, living history is a killer app.
A bunch of fledgling efforts to develop such personalized histories already exists, but we're just taking baby steps for the most part. Older people have been slow to embrace much more than the basic capabilities of these powerful digital tools. But as the hardware becomes more common and software tools become easier to use, expect storytelling to grow
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Take a Look at Your Fiscal-Cliff Tax Exposure
Tweet Share on Facebook December 17, 2012 CommentAt the national level, the contentious debate over the fiscal cliff is about figuring out politically acceptable ways to use the tax code to raise federal revenues, slow the growth of healthcare spending, and begin bringing down unsustainable federal deficits. And it also would be nice if we could do this without tipping the nation back into a recession.
Citizens care a lot about these issues, of course. But on a personal level, we really need to know how our taxes might change in 2013. The Tax Policy Center (TPC), a joint program of the Urban Institute and Brookings Institution, has created an online fiscal-cliff tax calculator that does exactly that.
Lower-income taxpayers will not face higher federal income-tax bills because they usually pay no income taxes now and will not face tax bills next year regardless of what happens. They will pay higher Social Security payroll taxes.
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How Proposals to Raise Medicare, Social Security Ages Can Harm Americans
Tweet Share on Facebook December 14, 2012 CommentProposals to raise the eligibility ages for both Medicare and Social Security keep surfacing in news accounts of the ongoing fiscal-cliff negotiations. The idea has "first blush" appeal—Americans are, on average, living longer and societal longevity gains have added 30 more years of life in just the past century. Among mankind's many achievements, this one deserves far more accolades than it receives.
Averages, however, are just that. And there are few places where not being average exacts a higher toll than in looking at human longevity. Social scientists have assembled an increasingly powerful record that shows longevity gains have not been doled out equally. Well-educated and higher-income people of all races are, indeed, living longer. But despite major gains in treating and even preventing life-shortening diseases, lifespans among Americans with low levels of education and income have been moving in the opposite direction.
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Learning How to Make Solid Retirement Choices
Tweet Share on Facebook December 12, 2012 CommentThe purpose of a retirement plan is to live the good life, or at least as much of one as you can. The goals are positive—having enough money to enjoy leisure time, travel, meet new people, and learn new things. Successful retirements should include being able to see family members and friends regularly and help them out if they need it. A successful retirement might include estate plans. And most of all, it should include freedom from fear and stress.
These are the things we strive for, and they should be emphasized heavily in our discussions and plans. Too often, however, they're not. Instead, these positive goals are expressed in terms of our fears should we not achieve them. The language of retirement turns negative. We worry about making poor investment choices, outliving our money, devastating illnesses, healthcare expenses, and being a burden on our families.
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Defensive Money Moves to Counter the Fiscal Cliff
Tweet Share on Facebook December 11, 2012 CommentThere is not enough digital ink to fully explore all the problems with Washington's dysfunctional debate about the fiscal cliff. But websites (and journalists) need to be fed. So we're seeing an outpouring of stories about what might happen, what should happen, and what will happen if nothing happens. Going over Niagara Falls pales in terms of excitement and suspense.
Underneath all the positions and reactions coming from politicians, advocates, and subject-matter experts, it is a safe bet that their public posturing is more extreme than their private negotiating positions. You'd think people would be more reasonable and nuanced in private than their public positions would indicate. I hope that's the case and stand ready for some fiscal shock and awe should workable and bipartisan solutions emerge.
Until those puffs of white smoke are visible over the U.S. Capitol, people have little choice but to play financial defense. Concern that dividends will lose their preferred 15 percent tax treatment and be taxed as ordinary income has already compelled numerous companies to declare special dividends this year, when favorable tax rates are assured.
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How to Build a Fiscal Cliff Scorecard
Tweet Share on Facebook December 10, 2012 CommentAs the fiscal-cliff soap opera reaches its climax, there will be a corresponding surge in partisan spin efforts to frame the debates and results. This exercise in defining winners and losers often obscures more important issues about the actual impact of federal tax and budget changes. Beyond higher tax rates, which no one likes, here are five questions you should be asking to build your own scorecard to evaluate what happens during the next month or two.
1. How much of the reduction is through higher revenues (more taxes, generally) and how much through reduced spending? Compromise argues for a balance, but those concessions are not yet forthcoming. Liberals lean toward higher taxes; conservatives toward spending cuts. Perhaps the greatest achievement of the extended reform process has been to put serious tax reform on the agenda. Our federal budget may be badly wounded, but our tax system is DOA.
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Encore Careers Visionary Pushes Social Change
Tweet Share on Facebook December 7, 2012 CommentThe idea of older people finding new work passions and careers well into their 60s and even 70s has entered the mainstream. Driven by surging numbers of aging baby boomers and a tough recession, encore careers have become increasingly common. That wasn't the case in 1997, when Marc Freedman founded Civic Ventures and began supporting and celebrating older social entrepreneurs who developed ventures to make the world a little bit better.
The name Civic Ventures was always envisioned as a temporary placeholder that would be replaced with a more specific name, Freedman recalls. "From the get-go, we really felt like the epitome of the encore career is kind of a practical idealism," he says. "It combines the requirement for most of us to continue earning a market income with health insurance, with having a sense of purpose." One of the branding phrases of encore careers, he notes, became "passion, purpose, and a paycheck."
"There are millions of people who are already at this work," he says, describing the sustained trend of new and extended careers for seniors. "For us, it is less of an abstract notion and more of an opportunity to tell the stories of people who are already doing it." Partnering with foundations and corporate supporters, the group began an annual awards program to celebrate inspiring stories of social entrepreneurs. This year, five entrepreneurs received $100,000 prizes for their work and the stories of another 35 finalists were also collected and publicized. All are at least 60 years old.
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What Does Your Retirement Mecca Look Like?
Tweet Share on Facebook December 4, 2012 CommentEconomic conditions have been so bad since the recession that people pretty much stopped moving anywhere for retirement. Millions of older Americans have been among the real estate victims—financially trapped in their homes and unable to even think about a retirement move. But as real estate markets slowly improve, the pace of relocation has begun to pick up as well.
My ground rules for where I want to live in my later years probably differ from yours. (Unfortunately, they also differ from my wife's!) My list includes only places in the United States. Warm climates once played a strong role in my preferences, but not so much anymore. Today, I'm much more interested in the financial condition of state and local governments. I want to live somewhere that has well-funded public services and transit. And I don't want to face upward-spiraling state and local taxes from governments dealing with enormous unfunded pensions and infrastructure needs.
I'm not into small towns much more than 25 miles from a metropolitan area. I want the culture, entertainment, learning, healthcare, and senior-service resources that larger metropolitan areas offer. I also want access to a decent airport and mass-transit resources that will reduce my need for a car. I'm hoping my days behind the wheel will end a long time before I do.
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Social Security Tax Breaks Drive New Retirement Strategy
Tweet Share on Facebook November 30, 2012 CommentThe advantages of delaying Social Security benefits as long as possible have been widely supported by financial experts. While benefits can be claimed as early as age 62, they will grow by roughly 8 percent a year until age 70, and also will increase by the amounts of any cost-of-living increases that occur during this period.
Despite these guaranteed increases, roughly 70 percent of beneficiaries not only don't wait to claim until they turn 70, but actually file to begin receiving Social Security before they reach their full retirement age, which is 66 for current retirees. Their reasons are varied. Some people are physically worn out by demanding jobs and are forced to retire early. Others are ill and don't know that they'll live long enough to make it worth their while to defer benefits. Lastly, lots of early claimants are simply strapped for dollars.
In addition, the conventional retirement wisdom has argued that conserving retirement nest eggs should be the dominant goal of retirement planning. If taking Social Security early helps people avoid depleting their 401(k) and IRA balances, the thinking went, that's what seniors should do.
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7 Planning Steps for Middle-Income Retirements
Tweet Share on Facebook November 27, 2012 CommentAmericans need more retirement planning and investment advice than ever before. We are increasingly responsible for our own retirement investments, courtesy of the move away from traditional pensions to self-directed retirement accounts. We are still trying to recover from the recession. Tax rates could change sharply as Congress wrestles with complex fiscal cliff issues. And according to survey after survey, we don't know enough about investments and personal finance to make good decisions on our own.
There are roughly 110 million middle-class households. According to financial planning research, at most two million, or a bit less than 2 percent, receive financial planning services. The Society of Actuaries (SOA) hardly sounds like the group that would be riding to the rescue of the other 108 million. Yet the SOA has assembled a wealth of research and practical advice aimed at middle-income retirement needs.
In terms of our attitudes about getting professional help, the SOA's research has reached some blunt conclusions:
