Squared Away Blog

A retiree’s sources of money are often described as a three-legged stool: Social Security, pension, and savings. But many seniors’ financial support looks more like a single, sturdy pillar: Social Security. This is shown dramatically in new U.S. Social Security Administration (SSA) estimates of just how critical the federal program is to millions of older Americans.  The data speak for themselves: One in two retired households counts on Social Security for at least 50 percent of their total income. One in four gets virtually all income – 90 percent – from the program. The differences among myriad demographic groups also follow the usual socioeconomic patterns, according to the SSA researchers, Irena Dushi, Howard M. Iams, and Brad Trenkamp. ……

The scary thing about fully retiring is the obvious thing: the ability to earn stops cold. Most retirees live on what they get from Social Security and what they can spend from their savings, if they have any.  So how many older Americans with fixed incomes can accurately be described as being in difficult straits financially? Only about 10 percent of retired people today are being forced to cut back on food and medications to pay their other bills, concludes a summary of recent studies on retirement income by the Center for Retirement Research (CRR), which supports this blog. Tomorrow’s retirees have a more troubling outlook, in part because they will be dramatically more reliant on 401(k)s. The typical middle-incom…

In the two years since starting a series of blogs, “Boomers: Rewriting Retirement,” I’ve profiled five willing baby boomers in various phases of retirement as they grapple with a variety of issues. The individual profiles are again posted here, in the event one of them might be helpful to a reader who missed it the first time. And we’re always looking for more guinea pigs, if anyone has an interesting story to tell! Click on the links at the end of each headline: “A Familiar Dilemma: to Work or Retire.” “Finally retired. Now What?” “Caring for her elderly parents 24/7.” A Californian’s Retirement is Part-time.” “The Ultimate in Travel: Retiring Abroad.”…

Rank-and-file workers’ wages have barely gone up since the 2008-09 recession, despite a U.S. job market firing on all cylinders for several years. Latinos struggle more than most. Take restaurant workers. They are overrepresented in an industry that expanded rapidly post-recession, putting hundreds of thousands of cooks, waiters, and busboys to work. But “those are some of the worst jobs” says Carmen Rojas, who heads The Workers Lab in Oakland, which supports small entrepreneurs. Food-service and other low-paying jobs not only lack benefits and security but typically don’t invest heavily in training and don’t provide upward mobility, “proving what it means to debase the promise of work away from opportunity and toward survival,” said Marie Mora of the University of…

Yup, more than half of college students are using some of their student loan money to pay for spring break. It’s the peak season, and 21st century ingenuity is being applied to the age-old problem of paying for college trips to popular, sunny climates like Miami and Cabos San Lucas in Mexico’s Baja Peninsula.  LendEdu decided to do a survey to answer a question that Mike Brown put so succinctly in his blog: How can “so many students living on a shoestring budget afford to go on a not-so-cheap weeklong getaway”? The mechanism allowing this can be found in college financial aid offices, which funnel loan money directly to students after, wisely, deducting tuition and fees. Fifty-one percent of t…

Australia, Cambodia, Laos, Thailand, Spain, Portugal, Scotland, Ecuador, Belize, Nicaragua – our readers living all over the world, or planning to, shared their experiences in comments posted to a February blog, “The Ultimate Travel: Retiring Abroad.” The article profiled a Houston couple on the verge of retiring who are systematically exploring cities that interest them in Panama and Costa Rica. Few blogs have elicited so many comments – no doubt because thoughts of retiring overseas are more fun than worrying about whether the 401(k) account has enough money in it. The success of retiree Dennis Desmond and his wife’s relocation to Australia makes it hard to resist temptation. “The weather here is incredible, the people are fantastically friendly, and the scenery…

Early last year, a client who was a month away from retiring walked into Matthew Jackson’s office and asked him to manage his money. Then the client started pulling financial statements out of a folder and slid them across the desk. “I’m excited for you,” Jackson recalled was his first reaction. “But let’s talk more about what you want to do with your money, rather than want you want to do for your money.” The client “looked at me and then past me. In 4 or 5 seconds he said, ‘Matt I have no idea.’” To prod others into weighing this critical question for themselves, Jackson wrote a book, “The Retirement Dreammaker: Master the Art of Retirement Abundance.” And t…

When Squared Away first went live almost seven years ago, few reporters in the mainstream media wrote regularly about retirement.  Things have really changed. The Washington Post recently declared a “new reality of old age in America.” The New York Times and The Boston Globe have regular retirement writers. Even The New Yorker – the go-to read for the aging but still hip – dived in and investigated an abhorrent case involving an abused elderly woman. Retirement is a hot topic, because some 10,000 boomers have been retiring daily for years – in fact, the media frequently cite this statistic – and an unprecedented number of the boomers who still work are thinking a lot about whether or when to…

Back in December, the Vanguard Group predicted a stock market that would “remain placidly subdued” in 2018.   What a difference two months has made. A Morgan Stanley analyst, echoing many on Wall Street, has now declared, “The long-anticipated return of [stock market] volatility has arrived.”  The Standard & Poor’s index of 500 stocks slid 10 percent in a few days in late January and early February, bounced back, and then dropped again last week: the S&P declined another 2 percent, and the Dow index was down even more, by 3 percent. No one can predict the future, of course – not Vanguard or Morgan Stanley.  “Time will tell,” the analyst said.  But while baby boomers have been thrown around by…

Most people used to sign up for Social Security when they were fairly young – around 62, which is the earliest age allowed. Not today: fewer than 40 percent are filing for benefits at that age. So what else are we doing differently?  Well, working in retirement is high on the list. About one in three Americans calling themselves retired in a new AARP survey have worked or now work in part-time, seasonal and sporadic jobs or sometimes full-time. Keeping in mind that people don’t always do what they’d planned, boomers’ expectations for work exceed what current retirees are doing. Well over half of workers over 50 plan to find some kind of work after they retire. The seeming oxymoron – working “retirees” –…

Family harmony and your parent’s desires are the top priorities during their final years of life – not long-simmering sibling arguments or what you may feel is best for him or her. That’s why it’s critical for the entire family to gather around parents for caring and gentle conversations before a crisis occurs, such as a medical emergency or sudden cognitive decline. Jennifer B. Warkentin “These are the kinds of conversations that need to happen while a parent is still able to discuss the options and make their wishes clear,” said Jennifer B. Warkentin, a clinical psychologist specializing in geriatric care. The Conversation. Numerous conversations will actually be required to sort out myriad potential needs as a parent continues to ag…

Staging your parent’s 90th birthday party, accompanying him or her to a doctor’s appointment, or finding the best long-term care facility for the right price – geriatric care managers do all this and much more. Geriatric care managers come into the profession with expertise ranging from gerontology and nursing to social work and psychology, and they bring a unique perspective to caring for the elderly. Their first loyalty is to your parent and her well-being, though they want to work closely with everyone involved – parent and adult children – to meet the parent’s wishes. Suzanne Modigliani Suzanne Modigliani, an aging life care specialist near Boston, handles “all spheres of an individual’s life – physical, cognitive social, emotional, financial, community…