Squared Away Blog

Manuel Carvallo immigrated from Mexico at age 40 and became a U.S. citizen at 51.  The Georgia pension consultant just reached another milestone, accumulating the 10 years of U.S. work experience required to receive a small Social Security pension when he retires. Millions of immigrants from around the world who work here illegally could get the same opportunity as Carvallo under President Obama’s executive actions on immigration, which propose to give many of them temporary legal work papers and Social Security numbers.  Great uncertainty remains about where U.S. immigration policy is heading as Congress actively seeks to reverse the president’s administrative actions What is clear is that when undocumented immigrants – farm workers, hotel workers, and household and restaurant staff…

Two times more widows than widowers say their spouse’s death carried significant negative financial consequences during the first year after their loss. This sharp contrast recurred in numerous financial questions recently posed to widows and widowers by New York Life.  The contrast also seemed to persist across various income levels, in questions revolving around both essential needs and luxuries.  Here’s a sampling of answers given by nearly 900 Americans whose spouses have died sometime in the past decade: Their answers beg the question: Why the divergence? One reason is certainly that two-thirds of the widows surveyed reported their income was under $35,000, while a majority of the widowers earned more than that. Adults over age 18 were canvassed, so working…

The more the Great Recession recedes in the rearview mirror, the clearer is the damage sustained by the workers born in the final years of the baby boom. These so-called late boomers were between 42- and 47-years-old when the recession hit. Their careers were just hitting their stride when they were slammed by the downturn. The 50 percent stock market plunge and spike in unemployment did particular damage to their 401(k)s and their retirement prospects generally. A study totaling up the damage was the subject of one blog of particular interest to our readers last year.   By the time they reached their early 50s, late boomers had accumulated only about $280,000 in retirement wealth in the form of 401(k)…

U.S. stock market performance has implications for our entire retirement system – not just your 401(k). Three studies addressing the big-picture relationships between the market and retirees’ financial security were produced in 2017 by the Center for Retirement Research, which sponsors this blog. Here are summaries of each one: State and Local Pension Plan Funding Sputters in FY2016 – Public pension plan returns were very weak in fiscal year 2016. But even though stock market performance improved in 2017, it will be difficult to compensate for the plans’ funding shortfalls over the long-term: “To achieve more meaningful progress,” the researchers concluded, state and local governments “need to establish contribution levels that will actually reduce unfunded liabilities.” How Will More Retirees Affect…

A dramatic decline in widow’s poverty over a quarter century has been a positive outcome of more women going to college and moving into the labor force. Yet 15 percent of widows are still poor – three times the poverty rate for married women. A new study by the Center for Retirement Research takes a fresh look at Social Security’s widow benefits and finds that increasing them “could be a well-targeted way” to further reduce poverty. Widows are vulnerable to being poor for several reasons. The main reason is that the income coming into a household declines when the husband dies.  The number of Social Security checks drops from two to one, and any employer pension the husband received is…

When nursing home care uses up a widow’s savings, the federal Medicaid program will kick in and cover her bills for care. But it’s more complicated for couples. If one spouse moves into a nursing home and the bills start piling up, the person who is still living in their home can face serious financial hardship and even poverty. This is a significant risk facing the one in three married people in their early 70s whose spouse will eventually wind up in a nursing home, researchers at RAND found in a study on the financial impact on couples rather than individuals. It’s not unusual to pay roughly $90,000 for a year for a semi-private in a nursing home, though many people have relatively short stays…

The best reason to set up a power of attorney for yourself or an elderly family member is to avoid a far more contentious and expensive alternative later: guardianship. A power of attorney becomes urgent if an elderly family member is showing early signs of dementia. “You want to run, not walk, to get that done because capacity tends not to get better,” said Jonathan Williams, an attorney with the Clarity Legal Group in the Raleigh-Durham, N.C., area. “Having good legal documents in place, if the person has the ability to execute them, can be helpful later on,” he said. In a power of attorney, the person signing the document agrees to name an agent, usually a trusted family member…

About half of the nation’s private-sector employees do not have a retirement savings plan at work, and that hasn’t changed in at least 40 years. Some states are trying to fix this coverage gap in the absence of substantial progress by the federal government in solving the problem.  And the state reforms are gaining momentum. In the past year alone, Maine, Virginia, and Colorado have passed bills requiring private employers without a retirement plan to automatically enroll their workers in IRAs, with workers allowed to opt out. New York City, which is more populous than most states, approved its program in May. And other states are either starting to implement programs or looking at their options. Auto-IRAs are already u…

For most of the 20th century, life expectancy was on the rise. Yet older Americans were retiring at younger and younger ages. That changed in the 1990s. Life expectancy continued to rise, but retirement ages started increasing too. Many significant developments are behind the dramatic shift in retirement habits, including the decline of private-sector pensions, changing attitudes about working women, and bigger financial incentives from Social Security for people who remain in the labor force in order to get a larger monthly check when they finally retire. Given all of these changes, Urban Institute researchers wondered whether the dramatic longevity gains experienced by the people who make it to their 50s and 60s could be counted as another reason for…

Half of the workers who have an employer retirement plan haven’t saved enough to ensure they can retire comfortably. This 17-minute video might be just the ticket for them. Kevin Bracker, a finance professor at Pittsburg State University in Kansas, presents a solid retirement strategy to workers with limited resources who need to get smart about saving and investing. While not exactly a lively speaker, Bracker explains the most important concepts clearly – why starting to save early is important, why index funds are often better than actively managed investments, the difference between Roth and traditional IRAs, etc. Some of his figures are somewhat different than the data generated by the Center for Retirement Research, which sponsors this blog. But…

The older people who either consider a reverse mortgage or actually get one don’t have much else to fall back on.  Their primary assets – outside of their homes – are a car worth no more than $7,000 and about $2,000 in a checking account. This was one salient fact unearthed about reverse mortgage users – or people who’ve looked into them – in a 2014-2015 survey led by Stephanie Moulton at Ohio State University. This supports a later study by Moulton that found that people who take out the loans tend to be in worse shape financially than other homeowners. The survey provides a more complete picture of who is turning to reverse mortgages – and why other people find…

Resourceful retirees usually weather the financial surprises that come their way. But a handful of unexpected health events can really hurt. The death of a spouse is at the top of the list. Net worth drops by more than $30,000 over a couple of years as retirees pay for the extraordinary medical and other expenses surrounding a spouse’s death. Two serious health conditions also deplete retirees’ assets: strokes and lung disease, which strike about one in five older Americans during their lifetimes, according to a National Bureau of Economic Research study funded by the U.S. Social Security Administration that tracked changes in the finances of people 65 and over. Despite the presence of Medicare, a first-time stroke reduces a retired…