Squared Away Blog

Imagine a married couple. Both work, and their earnings are identical. But one spouse’s employer is matching every dollar of her 401(k) contributions up to a cap. The other spouse’s 401(k) match is only 50 percent. They could increase how much they are saving for retirement by contributing first to the 401(k) with the full match in this simple version of the myriad situations married couples face. But, according to a new study, one in four couples do not prioritize the more generous employer’s 401(k) matching funds. This lack of coordination may have a cost: the average couple who leaves match money on the table could give up nearly $700 in a year. That may not sound like a lot…

A recent blog about advertisements for Medicare Advantage policies brought a torrent of criticisms from our readers that…

There is no end to the websites and phone apps requiring your phone number, email and other personal information as the cost of passage into the products and services they provide. Even some financial companies sell your data to third parties for a profit. But it is virtually impossible to see what happens after the fresh information you’ve handed over is attached to your existing profile in the netherworld of the cloud. New research confirms what many have suspected: some of your data is being used to rip you off. By comparing the fraud complaints filed by Android and iPhone users after Apple added a tough new security feature, the researchers, all business professors, found that the iPhone’s anti-tracking technology…

In our high-tech world, virtually any transaction or communication can be executed online. Yet, despite the range of services that Social Security offers on its website, two-thirds of older Americans thinking about retiring or planning to start up their benefits speak directly to someone at the agency, either by phone or at a field office, at some point during the process. For years, the agency has allowed workers to create an online my Social Security account, which helps with retirement planning by laying out their monthly benefit levels, depending on the age they start. This is very useful information when workers are trying to determine how long they might want to wait before claiming their benefits, which can also b…

The fortunes of Americans whose wealth is in the top 10 percent have soared, leaving the rest of the country trailing in their wake. But let’s focus instead on the unsettling trends that have developed within the middle class. Both the health and finances of older workers have deteriorated in the bottom half of “the forgotten middle” over the past two decades, according to researchers at the University of Southern California and Columbia University. Take one important indication of this. Home equity is typically an older worker’s largest single asset. But homeownership has fallen sharply in the bottom half of what the researchers define as the 60 percent of older Americans in the middle class. The homeownership rate in t…

A third of the people who receive federal disability benefits have no income other than their benefit checks. And given their serious medical conditions, their death rate is much higher than that of the general population. In such a vulnerable group, small increases in their disability checks produce big results, finds a new study funded by Social Security, which administers the federal program. For individuals receiving about $10,400 a year in average benefits, for example, an additional $1,000 per year would cut their mortality rate by up to a third of a percentage point in the first four years after their benefits start. The researchers found similar, positive results for disabled workers with families. When the combined benefits paid to…

Moves by state governments to improve access to food stamps have been very effective in increasing the number of retirees and people with disabilities who get the benefits, a new study finds. The states, given a wide berth to administer the federal Supplemental Nutrition Assistance Program, or SNAP, as they see fit, have responded in recent decades by easing access to food stamps for their low-income residents through a variety of policies. Many states have loosened the eligibility requirements by, for example, increasing the limits on the dollar amount of assets applicants are permitted to have or by automatically qualifying them when they receive other means-tested benefits. A second set of policies aim to reduce so-called transaction costs, which broadly…

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…

To help people through the COVID public health emergency, Congress barred the states from removing people from the Medicaid rolls in return for providing additional funding for their programs. In March, those pandemic-era protections expired and states are returning to the old practice of requiring residents to verify their eligibility to renew the coverage. As a result, many states have begun cutting Medicaid enrollment for reasons ranging from ineligibility to a failure to submit paperwork. KFF, a health research organization that has been tracking Medicaid enrollment post-pandemic, said that about three out of four people have who have lost their coverage were dropped for procedural reasons, such as not completing their paperwork or missing a deadline. This is a concern, KFF…

Juggling a job and being a mother is hard work. It’s much tougher if your child has a disability. And when these mothers look ahead to retiring, the challenges are just as complex as their current situations. One woman whose daughter has a disability predicted in a recent interview with a researcher that she’ll work until she’s at least 72. “I need to be earning up until that point in order to make sure that I have more set aside for my daughter. And I don’t consider my needs primary. I consider hers to be primary,” she said. Another working mother worried, “Is my son going to be living with us? Is he going to be able to go off…

The baby boomers born in the early 1960s, at the tail end of the demographic wave, had about $280,000 in retirement wealth when they reached their early 50s. That’s significantly less – about $50,000 less – than the late-1950s boomers had at the same age. Some of this shortfall might’ve been anticipated for the youngest boomers. Each new crop of boomers has taken a bigger hit in their Social Security checks because the statutory age for collecting the full monthly benefit has been creeping up. The shrinking checks are against the backdrop of dwindling pensions. (Retirement wealth includes the current value of worker’s future Social Security and traditional pension benefits, as well as retirement savings.) But, while Social Security and…

The number of U.S. households ages 70 and over who have written a will has been dropping for at least 20 years, to about two-thirds today. But a new study that looks under the hood of estate planning in this country shows that the matter of whether someone has a will often comes down to race: older Black and Hispanic households are much less likely to have them than non-Hispanic Whites. The researchers also confirm that having a will is crucial to the successful transfer of a meaningful amount of wealth to one’s intended heir or heirs. In this way, wills can be an effective way to ensure that intergenerational wealth is being preserved and passed on within Black and…