Squared Away Blog

It’s the time of year when we highlight blogs that attracted the most page views over the previous six months, according to Google analytics. Today, we’re listing a “baker’s dozen” – 13 blogs – popular with our readers, instead of the usual top 10.  This allows us to highlight some interesting themes that were apparently on readers’ minds: Many retirees weighed in with their comments on two blogs about how and why they’re taxed: How Federal Taxation Drops for Retirees Why Most Elderly Pay No Federal Tax A new feature called “Boomers: Rewriting Retirement” that profiles people who are either approaching retirement or recently retired made the list: A Familiar Dilemma: to Work or Retire Squared Away tried something els…

Technology, coffee, investments, beer – most consumers value choice in some aspect of their lives.  But what if having too many choices leads to bad decisions and costly mistakes? Carnegie Mellon University economists Saurabh Bhargava and George Loewenstein, and Justin Sydnor from the University of Wisconsin School of Business, found this to be the case at one company that required employees to select from a menu of options and build their personal health plans from the ground up. The researchers found that the employees typically designed health plans that would cost them more than other plans with similar coverage. The cost of these choices was large for the average employee – about one-quarter of their annual premium payments in t…

Reverse mortgages, health insurance, marital histories, social networks, and even student debt – any or all of these can play a role in the financial security and well-being of America’s retirees. These are among the topics that will be explored during the 18th annual meeting of the Retirement Research Consortium, which features researchers from top universities around the country whose work is supported by the U.S. Social Security Administration. The meeting will be held on Thursday, Aug. 4, and Friday, Aug. 5 in Washington, DC. To learn more about the research papers being presented, click here to read the agenda…

In the late 1990s, six out of ten retirees found retirement “very satisfying.” Today, not even half do, according to a recent analysis of a long-term survey of older Americans. The news isn’t all bad, since the “moderately satisfied” share rose – and moderately satisfied is probably a more realistic goal for most people anyway. But the question of why so few people are very satisfied with their retirement state of mind is difficult to pin down. The survey analysis by the Employee Benefit Research Institute (EBRI) and past academic research provide some clues. Health.  It’s well-established that health and satisfaction are inextricably linked: healthier retirees are happier retirees, according to a 2005 study by the Center for Retirement Research, whic…

When a spouse or parent requires long-term care, quality is the top priority. But a report last year by the US Government Accountability Office (GAO) cited concerns about the quality of the federal data essential for monitoring the quality of care.  For example, three key indicators point to improvements: better nursing staff levels and clinical quality and fewer deficiencies in care that harm residents. Yet consumer complaints jumped 21 percent between 2005 and 2014, even though the number of nursing home beds has remained roughly flat in recent years. Anthony Chicotel, an attorney with the San Francisco non-profit California Advocates for Nursing Home Reform, said care quality is intertwined with affordability, payment sources, and dramatic changes under way in nursing…

These personal finance videos are like sensible shoes: they won’t win any awards, but they can be useful. Produced by the College of Financial Planning, the short videos demystify the fundamentals of personal finance that the planners who teach and take courses at the college rely on in their practices. “Free Money” (above) features Dirk Pantone, a vice president and certified financial planner, interviewing Kristen MacKenzie, who teaches there, about 401(k)s, 403(b)s, 457(b)s and the employer match. “Living on Borrowed Time,” has Pantone and MacKenzie discussing the difference between good debt and bad debt, both of which impact credit scores. “The Road to Investing Your Assets” explains why low fees and portfolio diversification are so important. There are 13 videos. …

Low-income residents are in better financial shape in the 31 states that have expanded their Medicaid health coverage under the Affordable Care Act (ACA). That’s the bottom line in a new study finding that they have fewer unpaid bills being sent to collection agencies and their collection balances are $600 to $1,000 lower than their counterparts in non-expansion states. This contrasts with the years prior to the 2014 Medicaid reform, when residents of would-be expansion and non-expansion states had very similar financial profiles. State decisions about whether or not to expand their Medicaid rolls are having “unambiguous” and “important financial impacts,” concluded researchers at the University of Michigan, the University of Illinois, and the Federal Reserve Bank of Chicago. Medica…

As Squared Away readers scatter to the winds this summer, those going overseas should take a close look at the currencies in their travel destinations. There are some gorgeous currencies out in the world, in places like Sao Tome & Principe off of the coast of Gabon in West Africa. June begins peak season for the island country, which The Lonely Planet says has a relaxed “leve leve” vibe to go with its miles of beaches, “swaths of emerald rainforest, soaring volcanic peaks and mellow fishing villages.” Sao Tomean Dobra Currency as art is a refreshing contrast to U.S. currencies, with their button-down images of presidents and buildings.  Try the red-billed kingfisher bird on Sao Tome & Principe’s 50,000 dobra…

Rather than put his money in a bank, my cousin, who’s in his mid-40s, makes loans in $25 increments on a peer-to-peer lending website.  He decides on the amount of risk he’s willing to take on – and the riskier the borrowers he chooses, the more he earns on his “savings.” My cousin’s $25 investments illustrate how much our consumer finance market has evolved over several decades. We all embrace the convenience. Car loans are a more affordable way to buy a vehicle, Internet banking lets homebuyers get several mortgage quotes at once, and paying with cell phones is much easier than paying with cash or even credit cards. But all this innovation has a downside. One example is t…

This online tool for exploring urban job markets is very cool. It could be a big help for high school and college graduates looking for work, especially those willing to migrate to a new city and trying to figure where to go. What’s unique about it is that it ranks the nation’s large, mid-sized, and small cities based on the user’s personal preferences. To use the tool, created by the American Institute for Economic Research (AIER), the job hunter decides how high to rank the importance – from 5 (most important) to 1 (not important) – of nine different aspects of the job market and lifestyle in their ideal city: low unemployment, high average earnings, high labor force participation, public…

What does it mean to have a sense of financial well-being? Or what does it mean to have its opposite, financial uneasiness? Based on in-depth interviews with dozens of people in focus groups, the federal Consumer Financial Protection Bureau has developed a financial well-being quiz. The quiz is the agency’s attempt to quantify a very subjective concept so that researchers can measure it and integrate this measure into their research, said Genevieve Melford, a senior research analyst for the CFPB. “It’s about creating a tool that allows meaningful research and effective interventions that might help people,” she said. We think regular people can also gain personal insight by taking a short version of the CFPB’s quiz on this blog. After…

If having an adequate income in retirement won’t persuade you to delay that retirement date by a year or two, try this argument: you’ll live longer. A new study in the Journal of Epidemiology and Community Health found strong evidence that older workers who retire even one year later have lower mortality rates.  This held true for both healthy and unhealthy people. The researchers at Oregon State and Colorado State used a survey of older workers to follow some 3,000 people who were employed in 1992 but had retired by 2010.  Since health drives mortality and is a factor in deciding when to retire, they separated their research subjects into two groups – healthy and unhealthy – to see if…