Squared Away Blog

When workers develop disabilities on the job, it often has some connection to where they live. Musculoskeletal conditions like arthritis and tendinitis can happen anywhere but are especially prevalent in a swath surrounding the Kentucky-West Virginia border and running south to Alabama. Intellectual disabilities and mood disorders like autism and depression are common in Vermont, New Hampshire, Massachusetts, and Rhode Island. The hot spots, described in new research, represent areas that fall in the top 10 percent of all the areas with awards for the specific condition in many of the years studied, 2005 through 2018. New Hampshire is a dramatic example: all 10 designated areas of the state were identified as hot spots for awards based on mental disorders…

Retirees have long been reluctant to spend the money they’ve accumulated in their 401(k) savings plans. But it also used to be common for retirees to have a traditional pension to cover their regular expenses. By the time the baby boomers came along, pensions were available to a dwindling minority of workers, and it isn’t entirely clear how much they’ll tap into their 401(k)s. A new study quantifies the impact of this transformation in the U.S. retirement system, where traditional pensions are now found almost exclusively in the public sector. The conclusion, by the Center for Retirement Research, is that retired boomer households lacking a pension seem more likely to rapidly deplete the 401(k) savings they rely on, “leaving them…

The pandemic has dramatized the grim consequences of Black and Latino Americans having less access to healthcare than whites: disproportionately high death rates from COVID-19. But there has been some progress toward racial equity in an unlikely place: Medicare Advantage plans sold by insurance companies. Enrollment in the plans has increased unabated for years, and minority enrollment more than doubled between 2013 and 2019. During that time, Advantage plans increased from about a third of the various Medicare options purchased by Black, Latino, Asian and other minority retirees to nearly half, according to the non-profit Better Medicare Alliance. Dr. Elena Rios, president of the National Hispanic Medical Association, and Martin Hamlette, executive director of the National Medical Association representing Black…

Paying off the mortgage frees up a lot of money for other things. The homeowners in one study splurged on big-ticket items. Older homeowners, however, are adding another priority: medications. After a mortgage payoff, workers and retirees ages 50 to 64 spent 50 percent more on prescription drugs in a comparison with households who had no major changes in their monthly housing costs, according to a new study by Harvard’s Joint Center for Housing Studies and funded by the U.S Social Security Administration. The mortgage is typically a homeowner’s largest monthly expense. If medication spending rises when this big bill is eliminated, it supports the argument that some aging homeowners who are still carrying a mortgage may be choosing housing…

Early in this new documentary, the director’s message seems to be that retirement finances are messy, elusive, and too complicated for mere mortals to understand. He’s right on all counts. Filmmaker Doug Orchard reminds us in “The Baby Boomer Dilemma: An Exposé on America’s Retirement Experiment” that there are no easy solutions for Social Security, which economists predict will deplete its trust fund reserves around 2034. Closing the shortfall will probably require some combination of benefit cuts and revenue increases. Social Security is “one of the most important problems we face as a nation,” The Wharton School’s Olivia Mitchell says in the documentary. Our other primary program – a 401(k)-style retirement savings plan – seems great when the stock market…

Most workers have never created an online my SocialSecurity account to get an estimate of their future retirement benefits. The people who do use this feature tend to be older or are retired and already receiving their benefits. If only more younger adults would log on. One 31-year-old worker, after looking up his personal estimate for the first time, learned that his future benefit is “not quite nearly enough to survive on.” The estimate – retrieved during an interview with researchers for a new study – prompted him to think about a retirement plan now. A 43-year-old woman realized her spouse’s decision about when to retire would affect her spousal benefit from Social Security. “I had no idea,” she said,…

The Consumer Financial Protection Bureau (CFPB) will host a series of webinars next month for professionals and volunteers who regularly work with low-income clients and want guidance on how to help them with their finances. People who serve this vulnerable population may want to help but don’t always feel comfortable giving advice. CFPB has assembled an online toolkit – a companion to the webinars – filled with simple, practical solutions and suggestions about how to get clients to open up about their finances or overcome the emotional obstacles to change. The agency also supplies professionals with thought-provoking questions for their clients about a range of financial issues. “There are no right or wrong answers,” CFPB explains. The webinars, scheduled for…

One in five babies born in U.S. cities is in poor health, with profound and lasting impacts on their own and their mother’s lives. Researchers reached this conclusion after following nearly 3,700 infants and their mothers through Princeton’s Fragile Families Survey, which checked in on the families six times between the child’s birth and age 15. The survey was fielded in cities with a 200,000-plus population, and the babies’ most common medical conditions were low birth weight, premature birth, and genetic or other abnormalities, such as difficulty breathing. A body of research on the long-run prospects for children with disadvantages – whether medical or socioeconomic – has established that they have far more problems as adults. Consistent with other prior…

Caregivers for loved ones with dementia experience their duties in ways that are unique to the individuals they’re caring for. Some wrestle with the behavioral issues of the people in their care, while others must balance caregiving and work or struggle to navigate the Medicaid system, line up day care, or track down a reliable in-home professional. “There is no one way to care for a loved one who has dementia,” says Amy Goyer, caregiver and author of “Juggling Life, Work and Caregiving.” Goyer feels that every caregiver’s perspective could be useful to someone else going through the same thing. She recently hosted a webinar that opened a window on the lives of three Pennsylvania caregivers – one for a…

For a whole host of pandemic-related reasons, rents dipped in 2020 as millions of Americans lost jobs, stayed home from college, left the cities, or arranged for aging parents to live with them. But the economy has bounced back, and an additional 900,000 households entered the rental market in the first nine months last year. This unusually large surge in demand drove up rents and raised new concerns about housing affordability for the low- and middle-income workers who were already struggling to pay the rent. The market for professionally managed apartments saw an unprecedented rent spike of 11 percent in the third quarter of 2021 compared with a year earlier. Prior to the pandemic, annual rent increases had averaged 2…

Retirement for workers in state, county and municipal government fits a certain picture: a regular monthly pension payment awaits them. But there are important exceptions, which a recent study has filled in. A small minority of public sector workers get some or all of their retirement benefits in the form of a one-time cash payment. Doing so potentially comes at a cost: less financial security in old age. Of particular concern are the 5 million people working in state and local government jobs that are not covered by Social Security. Social Security – like a pension – is a monthly annuity that provides some certainty about retirement income. Still, in the larger scheme of things, the vast majority of stat…

Howard Gantman didn’t exactly have a plan for retirement. Rather, he wandered into it during the early months of COVID chaos. Nevertheless, retirement is going better than he’d expected. Gantman, who read comic books and science fiction voraciously as a child, has rediscovered his passion. He joined a writing group on Zoom and is working on a science fiction novel of his own. (And no, he’s not disclosing the plot yet.) “I’m happier doing this than I would’ve been if I’d continued to work. I really was ready for a change,” the Washington, D.C., resident said in a recent interview. “Aside from a gruesome virus that keeps on whacking us on the head, I feel more in control of my…