Retiring, for many if not most, is a leap into the unknown. New retirees quickly learn that hard work is required to fill the void created by leaving the workplace. Building and consolidating this new life is the subject of an eye-opening book, “Retiring: Creating a Life That Works for You.” Written by five academics in the field of management, their book is so useful to readers because they interview more than 100 older workers and retirees who have gone through this process. The authors use their unique experiences to explore the emotional and tactical challenges they face in deciding whether to retire and, once they do, how to rebuild lives dominated by decades of work. There is Gene, who…

Exposure to dangerous jobs and work environments over a prolonged period strain older workers’ bodies. The jobs may involve physical occupations like construction, working in cramped spaces or around hazardous chemicals, or stressful shift work. A new study confirms that the disabling conditions that can result from these types of jobs help to explain why Black workers are more likely to retire early and sacrifice future income to preserve what’s left of their health. The researchers were able to explore the impact of doing hazardous work over more than three decades thanks to a new survey that asks Americans over age 50 for detailed job histories. The people who were surveyed listed up to 10 jobs they’d held for at…

Forty percent of U.S. private-sector workers in a 401(k) retirement plan are in plans with automatic enrollment, and the widely agreed-upon story is that these plans work well. Now comes a more nuanced assessment, which finds they aren’t working quite as well as everyone had hoped. The study, conducted by some of the pioneers in auto-enrollment research, shows that numerous dynamics significantly reduce how much is being saved in 401(k)s. Workers often leave the firms before their employer matching contributions have fully vested, withdraw money from savings, or opt out of the automatic increases in contributions designed to accelerate their savings incrementally. Auto-enrollment still results in more saving than when workers are left to their own devices. But their often-overlooked…

This post was written by Harry Margolis, a new contributor to the Squared Away Blog. On my Risking Old Age in America podcast, I discuss healthy aging with Taylor Jansen of the Healthy Aging Data Reports Lab at the University of Massachusetts Boston. They produce studies on the factors contributing to healthy aging in Massachusetts, Connecticut, New Hampshire, Rhode Island, Mississippi, and Wyoming. The reports measure both the health of older residents of the six states and the factors that contribute to their healthy (or unhealthy) aging with the goal of helping communities foster better health among their seniors. Urban vs. Rural Jansen points out that the six states have significantly different patterns of healthy aging. Some states are more urban and others mor…

It does not seem like an exaggeration to say that the difference in older White and Black Americans’ health is shocking. A 51-year-old Black woman has the frailer health of a 69-year-old White woman. A 51-year-old Black man is in the same condition as a 64-year-old White man. Hispanic men and women, at 51, have also aged more than Whites. But older Black Americans still have the worst health. These are just a few of the myriad ways researchers recently documented what they call “enormous health inequality” in this country. The health conditions that affect people as they age are also a driving force in who goes on federal disability, how long they are able to work, and how long…

Oregon is one of the few states that encourages employers to find ways to help employees who sustain on-the-job injuries make a quicker transition back to work. The state pays a generous subsidy to employers that accommodate their injuries or provide them with other tasks they can do until they recover. The subsidies, which are funded through a payroll tax, are equal to half of injured workers’ wages for up to 66 work days. The program is highly effective, a new study found. Workers in the firms that are frequent participants in the program are far more likely to be employed a year after their injuries, and they were earning more per quarter than the injured workers in firms that…

The surge in remote work sparked by the pandemic has opened up new job options to keep older Americans with disabilities employed until they’re ready to retire. Remote work has inherent advantages for them, including easier commutes, flexibility, and access to a wider range of jobs. Older workers took full advantage of this during the pandemic, when telework and hybrid work arrangements took off. From 2018 through 2022, the employment rate increased by 11.6 percent among people between ages 51 and 64 with disabilities due to an increase in employment in occupations that can accommodate telework, according to Siyan Liu and Laura Quinby at the Center for Retirement Research, which supports this blog. Contrast that to stagnant employment during that…

After more than four decades of working – as a rookie reporter in Chicago, then Dallas and Boston, and finally 13-plus years writing this blog at Boston College – I have decided to dramatically reduce my hours of work. I need more time for myself when I’m not taking care of my 88-year-old mother, who moved from Florida to an assisted living facility nearby. But I am not going cold turkey into retirement, and that is the point. I will continue this blog but will write less. The financial and emotional issues I wrestled with in reaching this decision are no different than what many of my baby boomer readers are dealing with as they think about whether and when…

U.S. house prices and rents have been rising for decades, interrupted only by the Great Recession. Rising costs have increased the already considerable burden on low-income people to pay for housing. In 1985, for example, single people who received cash assistance from the federal Supplemental Security Income (SSI) program were paying half of their budgets for rent or a mortgage, according to a new study. Today, housing consumes about two-thirds of their income. The trend is also up, though less dramatically, for families in which one member is getting SSI, with housing expenses growing from 45 percent of the budget to more than half. The maximum monthly SSI benefit is $943 for individuals and $1,415 for couples, and many recipients…

More than one in five older Americans is living with other adults – adult offspring, parents, grandchildren, extended family, friends – who are not their romantic partners. A new study examining the housing costs paid by retirees with these arrangements finds a big gulf in who is being helped. The older adults who are guests in someone else’s home spend about $730 a month less on utilities and rent or a mortgage than the hosts who invite others into their homes to live with them, according to the University of Kentucky and Georgetown researchers. The retired hosts, who are either homeowners or primary renters, are spending no less on housing and utilities than people who live alone or with a…