Squared Away Blog

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…

As the nation was emerging from the pandemic, rents exploded. Two years later, the pressure on rents is starting to ease in response to an increase in multifamily construction, including apartment buildings. But the COVID-era surge continues to haunt renters, who are paying about 20 percent more than they did in 2019, though healthy wage increases in recent years offset some of that. The nation is in the grips of “an unprecedented affordability crisis,” Harvard’s Joint Center for Housing Studies concludes in its new report. The center estimates that about half of U.S. renters – some 22 million households – spent at least 30 percent of their income on rental housing in 2022. That’s the highest share in over a…

The Supplemental Security Income program supports more than 1 million disabled children nationwide. Poor and low-income families receive monthly cash payments of up to $943 to help with their care. In most states, automatic Medicaid eligibility for the child is part of the SSI package. New research finds that the pandemic disrupted a natural channel for families to get information about this critical financial support: the schools. All but two states – rural Montana and Wyoming – immediately shut down the schools in the spring of 2020 to control the spread of the deadly virus. Applications to federal Supplemental Security Income, or SSI, plunged after parents lost that connection to information about the program. In early 2020, applications submitted on…

Critics of temporary rental assistance argue that it gives people the financial leeway to work less. But that was not the case for low-income workers in Chicago. The workers, who received up to $1,000 to get them out of a jam, had more stable employment than the people who did not receive any help, according to University of Notre Dame research. The earnings of the lowest-income families who received the assistance even increased a little bit. Stable housing is crucial to remaining employed. When a family is unable to make a month’s rent, a downward spiral can result from a relocation or even homelessness that makes it difficult to keep their jobs. Rental assistance, by preventing calamity, stabilizes a family’s…

Paul and Sandra McCrossan live on such high ground in Toronto that their neighborhood is a popular rest stop for migrating birds. But sodden ground affected their aerie when the city experienced its highest rainfall in recorded history in August. For the first time, their basement showed traces of moisture. And for Paul McCrossan, unusually heavy rainfall due to climate change was a risk to his home that he wasn’t willing to tolerate. The couple spent $10,000 coating the outside walls of their basement to protect them from water and making sure the drains in the widow wells were clear. “These were unanticipated but not unmanageable expenses,” McCrossan, who had a long career in insurance as a risk manager, said…

Workers who contracted long COVID or suffered the most severe symptoms of the virus felt a big impact on their families’ finances from the resulting disruptions to their work, researchers at the University of South Carolina and Montana State University found. When the adults in families with children experienced long COVID or got so sick they were hospitalized, they were nearly twice as likely to report having financial difficulty in 2020 and 2021 in an analysis that compared them with parents who had mild symptoms or did not contract COVID. The workers with severe cases were also laid off or furloughed at higher rates. As a result, the families with severe COVID cases were nearly twice as likely to los…

“Unless we act now,” President Jimmy Carter warned in 1977, Social Security’s retirement trust fund will run out of money in 1983. That statement triggered several reforms that put the program on a firmer footing. Social Security is once again nearing a critical point. The day of reckoning is expected to come in 2033 if nothing is done to repair its finances. Retirees’ benefits would have to be cut by 21 percent, according to the agency’s May report on the trust fund’s fiscal status. In this NewsHour video, Alicia Munnell, director of the Center for Retirement Research, which publishes this blog, says reform is long overdue and discusses options for repairing the program. The changes required aren’t complicated but w…

The Medicaid expansion in 41 states that began a decade ago has helped low-income workers in numerous ways. Millions have gained health insurance for the first time under the program, which saves lives, stabilizes family finances, and adds a second layer of insurance to poor retirees’ Medicare coverage. The expansion has also benefited the disabled, and particularly people of color, new research finds. This is an important finding for Blacks, Hispanics, and Native Americans, who have higher levels of disability and poverty, which federal disability benefits and cash payments under Supplemental Security Income (SSI) were designed to alleviate. Expanding Medicaid so that it covers more lower-income workers has had a dramatic impact on the SSI and disability programs – in…

2025 will be a banner year for retirees. In January, a hard $2,000 cap on how much they spend out of their own pockets for medications kicks in. Retirees should welcome the new, much lower spending limit, which will protect them from extraordinary costs, especially if they develop an illness that requires an expensive medication like the rheumatoid arthritis drug Humira or the cancer drug Revlimid. But the monthly premiums on stand-alone Part D plans could cause some sticker shock. The premiums, which average $43, increase modestly in a typical year. But 2025 looks different because the Inflation Reduction Act of 2022 that reduced retirees’ out-of-pocket spending will also require insurance companies to pick up more of the total cost of…

The purpose of federal disability benefits is to provide financial support to people who are impaired and can’t earn a living. But if they can work, the government wants to encourage them. Striking the right balance is tricky when setting a limit on how much a beneficiary who works is permitted to earn under the program rules. If it’s too low, for example, some people with disabilities might work fewer hours or stop working altogether to get or keep the disability benefit. But a low limit might have the opposite effect if fairly productive workers with moderate disabilities stay in the labor force because there is such a low ceiling on what they’re permitted to earn to supplement the sma…

The minority of Americans who have a financial adviser say they feel pretty good about where they are. It’s everyone else who is largely dissatisfied with their finances. Among the workers and retirees who consult a financial adviser, two out of three describe themselves as financially secure, and the others are presumably working on it. Only one of three people who do not use an adviser are feeling secure, according to Northwestern Mutual’s January survey of more than 4,500 adults over age 18. About 80 percent of those with an adviser also have a plan for how they will pay off debt, whether members of Gen Y and Gen Z with student loans or baby boomers with a mortgage. Only…

For all the suffering the pandemic caused, it also showcased what federal social programs can do to improve disadvantaged people’s lives. The assistance passed by Congress – all of it temporary – fell short of the ambitious New Deal spending of the 1930s but was more generous than the Great Recession bailout, much of which went to teetering financial institutions rather than individuals. As the pandemic has waned, researchers are assessing an array of policies, including but not limited to relief checks deposited directly into bank accounts, automatic renewal of Medicaid eligibility, and a more generous child tax credit. This blog has already featured research analyzing these COVID-era programs. But it’s worth taking a step back and thinking about t…