Squared Away Blog

In a new survey asking retirees what surprised them about being retired, the big winner – for 43 percent – was how much they’re enjoying it. The rest of the survey indicates that the freedom that comes with leaving the labor force often serves to leaven the considerable sacrifices some have to make for financial reasons. One in four retired households, for example, agree they are “forced to live more frugally than we wanted,” and one in 10 said they’re “spending their nest egg too fast,” according to the survey, fielded in 2023 by Hearts & Wallets, which provides data to the financial industry. I also suspect that one pleasant surprise – having more income than when they were working…

Baby boomers love to discuss this age-old question: Should I pay off the mortgage before retiring? Our blog readers fell into two camps in their comments on a recent article. Some made an emotional argument – that a mortgage-free retirement makes them feel secure. The other camp argued that paying off the mortgage does not make financial sense. The article, “Boomers Repairing their Mortgage Finances,” described research showing that boomers have sharply cut what they owe on their mortgages by paying extra in the years since the housing market bust. People naturally pay more of this debt as they age. But the boomers’ rapid payoffs partly explain why 40 percent to 50 percent of Americans in their 60s no longer…

Retired parents who have a child with a disability say the income they and their children receive from Social Security is critical to their survival. Yet, for some, it still falls short of what they need after years of financial struggles, career tradeoffs, and premature retirements stemming from years of caregiving.  Without Social Security’s monthly check, “I’d probably be out on the street,” one parent told University of Wisconsin researchers in one of 12 interviews they conducted with the retired parents of children with disabilities. An older mother who fears her daughter’s disability benefits will be stopped when she turns 18 worries they might have to give up their two-bedroom apartment. “Am I going to be able to afford it,”…

Sumat Lam, a recent college graduate, was skeptical when his Silicon Valley employer transferred him to Austin, Texas. What he found was a high-tech mecca that defies the stereotypes of 10-gallon hats and Southern drawls. Google, Apple and Amazon have established outposts in the “Silicon Hills” of Texas’ Hill Country. The young workers moving there are “bringing in their culture and influences from Boston and New York,” Lam told VOA News. Taylor Hardy lives in Dayton, Ohio, but she might as well be living on a different planet. This young nursing assistant can barely eke out a living. Her plight is shared by too many others in this former industrial hub that has been in a downward spiral that accelerated after…

Most workers quickly realize that the best solution to low earnings in a job with scant or non-existent benefits is to move on to something better. But this is increasingly difficult to pull off, because technology and other powerful forces are reshaping the 21st century economy – and degrading the quality of the jobs that are available.  As companies seek to cut labor costs, technologies like scheduling software for retail and fast-food workers and platforms like Uber and Task Rabbit are making it easier to do. The result has been a rapidly growing contingent labor force of temp-agency workers, freelancers, independent contractors, workers for contract companies, and on-call workers with unpredictable schedules, according to a recent study by prominent Harvard…

When a marriage ends in divorce, there are no fewer than seven ways that it could damage a person’s finances. Divorce can rack up costly legal fees; force a house or stock sale in a down market; increase living expenses; increase tax rates; hamper the ability of the primary caregiver – mothers – to earn money; require fathers to pay alimony; and reduce each partner’s access to credit. A new study looking at their impact on workers’ future finances concludes that divorce – the fate of four in 10 marriages – “substantially increases the likelihood” that their standard of living will decline after they retire. ……

Planning the Normandy invasion seems like a good comparison with the layers of logistics, to-do lists, emails, phone calls, and documentation required to move my mother from her Orlando-area home to assisted living near Boston, where I live. She was understandably reluctant to leave her home of 30-plus years. But I’m luckier than many baby boomers because elderly parents often refuse to move out. Mom liked the idea of having people in assisted living who would cook and clean for her and do her laundry. But what I believe finally convinced her that relocating was the best option were two hospital stays within 10 days last March in Orlando for two newly diagnosed conditions. I think she realized I could…

It’s now a given that more people in their 60s and 70s are choosing to keep working. But a related trend rumbling beneath the surface isn’t so well-known: the share of working older people with full-time jobs has increased sharply – to almost 61 percent in 2016 from 40 percent in 1995 – as part-time work has become less popular. The majority of older Americans are retired. But among those who do work, the move from part-time to full-time is “a major shift” in work schedules, concluded the Brookings Institution’s Barry Bosworth and Gary Burtless and George Washington University’s Ken Zhang in a report last year.  This is one aspect of the broader trend of rising labor force participation for…

The seemingly random patterns in low-paid and middle-class workers’ struggles are assembled into a cohesive narrative supplied by people who let the camera in for an intimate look. A few top executives are thrown in to highlight the economy’s inequality, which lower-paid workers like Randi recognize as deeply unfair. Randi, a health care aide in rural Mississippi, explains in a new documentary that her job “pays little and works you to the bone.” Produced by Netflix, “Working: What We Do All Day,” is narrated by former President Barak Obama, who occasionally talks about his middle-class family, interviews some of the featured workers, and explains the economic shifts – globalization and the explosion in Wall Street wealth in the 1980s –…

When once-simple financial tasks become difficult or confusing, it can be the canary in the coal mine signaling that an elderly person is developing dementia. Financial problems will soon follow once people with cognitive impairment start miscalculating and missing payments, forgetting and misplacing accounts, or falling victim to fraud. But some good news has come out of a new study of Medicare recipients: the vast majority of the 5.5 million people over 65 with established dementia – usually, though not, always Alzheimer’s disease – are receiving help from family and other caregivers with balancing their checkbooks, depositing and withdrawing money, and conducting transactions. Even better, they are actually benefitting from it. The seniors who receive assistance are more likely to be ab…

J.D. Vance’s rural Kentucky roots, described in his book, “Hillbilly Elegy,” differ from my father’s family in southern Indiana in one important way. Vance’s violent, angry mother was a substance abuser with a trail of failed relationships in her wake. Vance carries the childhood scars. My dad’s family was a bunch of kind, reticent, teetotaling farmers. Alvin and Lena Belle Blanton and sons Gerald and Leland, 1966. But the similarities between our families struck me too – Vance called his grandfather Blanton “Papaw,” which I’d always thought was unique to my own Papaw Blanton but, I now know, is an endearment. And believe me, the corn fields and hills of southern Indiana and contiguous Kentucky are more southern than Midwestern…

When older workers change occupations, many of them move into a lower-status version of the work they’ve done for years, according to a new study by University of Michigan researchers who tracked the workers’ movements among some 200 different occupations. Aging computer scientists were likely to become programmers or computer support staff.  And veteran high school teachers started tutoring, financial managers transitioned to bookkeepers, and office supervisors became secretaries. Late-career transitions need to be put into some context: a majority of Americans who were still working in their 60s were in the same occupations they held at age 55, the study found.  And these occupations ran the gamut from clergy to life scientists to cooks. Interestingly, while teachers, thanks to…