Squared Away Blog

One in four 20-somethings in the Boston metropolitan area said in a recent survey that they are planning to quit urban life. Their biggest reason: high housing costs. South Carolina, on the other hand, is booming. It inched past Florida last year as the fastest-growing state. Unassuming Delaware is also growing rapidly. And it is no coincidence that houses in these two states are among the most affordable in the country, according to a state-by-state analysis. “With a cost of living that is 11.5% lower than the national average, people can move to the Palmetto State and see their housing dollars go a lot farther,” South Carolina’s Office of Employment and Workforce boasts on its website. The state reported strong…

After four years of COVID-imposed Zoom meetings, retirement and disability researchers from around the country will meet again in Washington, DC. The theme running through much of the research they will present at the 2024 meeting involves the economic and financial security of various underserved communities. The three-day event, which starts on Wednesday, Aug. 7, will also return to its usual meeting place: the National Press Club in Washington. The agenda and registration information are posted online. Researchers will discuss their latest studies – most of which are funded by the U.S. Social Security Administration – on topics ranging from wealth inequality in racially segregated Chicago to the particular needs of rural communities, women, older LGBTQ+ workers and retirees, and…

Here is just some of what decades of research has revealed about poverty’s ill effects on children: lower birth weights and more obesity, diabetes, asthma, anxiety, smoking, depression, and intellectual disabilities, as well as lower college attendance and a greater likelihood of entering the criminal justice system. And then there is the negative fallout if parents, stressed out about money, don’t have healthy interactions with their children or don’t have time for them.  In 2021, as COVID raged and the economy struggled to recover, Congress provided some financial security to parents by adding a few thousand dollars to the monthly amount they received from the longstanding child tax credit. For one year, the credit increased from $2,000 to $3,600 per…

In the crucible of COVID, the Medicaid expansion that was part of the Affordable Care Act made a difference to older Americans, who were more vulnerable to becoming seriously ill or hospitalized from the virus. In the states that chose to expand the low- or no-cost Medicaid health insurance program to more of their low-income residents, researchers at the University of Wisconsin found that people between the ages of 45 and 64 were better off financially than similar people in the non-expansion states. “The COVID-19 pandemic highlights the importance of the safety net,” the researchers said, “in improving the economic security of households.” By expanding Medicaid, many states made it easier for individuals to qualify by increasing the income limit…

Enjoy the July 4th holiday, which is the start to a long summer weekend for many of our readers. And safe travels!  Squared Away will return next Tuesday and Thursday with its regular weekly blogs. Sign up here for our free email to receive each week’s blog posts in your inbox…

On Oct. 24, 1975, the women of Iceland went on strike to “demonstrate to ourselves and to others the importance of our role in society.” No going to work. No cooking. No taking care of the children. Stores, fish factories and schools closed as women poured into the streets to demand equality. Some men were forced to take their kids to work or stay home to care for them. Policies enacted over the 50 years since the strike have made Icelandic women’s lives easier. The public day care centers are recognized as among the highest-quality, least expensive in the world, costing single parents and couples only 5 percent of their income, compared with 30 percent here. College is essentially fr…

If other baby boomers and members of Gen-X are like me, they have taken a second, third or even a fifth look at their finances and asked: Will I really be able to retire? The impulse to ruminate over this major decision may be driving the strong interest in recent Squared Away articles on financial topics ranging from whether retirees should continue to be homeowners – not always – to why people sign up for Social Security at age 62 and lock in the smallest monthly check possible under the program’s rules. In “Homeownership in Retirement: an Asset or a Burden?,” researchers found that many retirees carry mortgages they can’t really afford. Having saved so little for their retirement years,…

Developing countries all over the world are struggling with the same looming crisis: an aging population and an acute and worsening shortage of family and paid caregivers. Washington State did something about it. The question now is, will its new program to fund services for seniors survive a ballot initiative that would undermine it? In 2019, state lawmakers approved a Social Security-style insurance system requiring employees to contribute 58 cents for every $100 they earn to the WA Cares Fund. But instead of retirement benefits in old age, they will be eligible for $36,500 to subsidize some of their costs for services like home health aides, wheelchairs, assisted living, or even to pay an hourly wage to a family caregiver…

How well off are Asians in this country? It depends on how you look at it. The wealth of a typical U.S. household of Asian descent is $536,000 – or nearly two times the wealth of a typical White household – according to the Federal Reserve’s 2022 Survey of Consumer Finances, the first in its long-running series to report separately on the national data it collects on Asian-Americans and Asian immigrants.  Prominent examples of the country’s wealthiest Asian-Americans include Steve Chen, who co-founded YouTube, which he sold to Google for $1 billion. Jin Sook-Chang made her first billion after starting the fast-fashion retailer Forever 21. And Andy Fang, a co-founder of DoorDash, is one of the world’s youngest billionaires. But…

Congress has, for decades, tossed around various proposals for a permanent national paid leave program that would give workers time off for an illness or to care for a sick family member. The idea gained traction during COVID when so many Americans became ill. But none of the proposals have passed amid disagreement over the impact of paid-leave policies. Proponents at the state and federal levels argue that compensating injured or sick workers who take time off allows them to recuperate and eventually get back to work. But others worry that paid leave provides just enough income to pay the bills so workers have time to apply for federal disability and drop out of the labor force permanently. So what…

A new study finds that Social Security is more valuable to Black retirees than to Whites – despite the fact that Blacks have shorter lives and receive monthly benefits for fewer years of retirement. The main reason Black retirees get more value from the program boils down to something that is crucial for a true understanding of why Social Security is so important to all retirees: the guarantee of having a monthly payment for life when it’s impossible to predict how long any individual retiree will live. This unpredictability is known as longevity risk, and even though Blacks tend to die younger than Whites, they also have more longevity risk. This simply means there is a bigger dispersion between t…

Workers in the nation’s nursing homes have the inside story, and the staff shortages they describe are not pretty. “Lack of enough staff has put many of my residents at risk for falls, bed sores, and much more,” said a certified nurse’s aide with 20 years of experience, who wrote in support of new federal regulations that set minimum staffing levels. “I truly feel horrible for the [residents] when they have to wait for sometimes over an hour just to get assistance because everybody is so busy,” said another worker. In response to the high death toll in nursing homes during COVID, the Biden administration followed through on its promise to “crack down on nursing homes that endanger resident safety.”…