Squared Away Blog

Here’s a sobering thought: by the time most workers get into their 50s, their earnings are declining. Although older workers don’t necessarily see smaller paychecks, their earnings are effectively shrinking, because they no longer keep up with inflation, according to a study charting the inflation-adjusted, or “real,” earnings of some 5 million U.S. workers over their lifetimes. The first decade in the labor force, between ages 25 to 35, is crucial – that’s where the wage gains are concentrated, the researchers find. Real earnings plateau sometime between 35 and 45, and this plateau occurs earlier than previous research had indicated. By the time most people move into the oldest age group in the sample – 45 to 55 – their…

Great news for older workers considering a career change – those who’ve done it are happier and less stressed. People who attempted a career change sometime after turning 45 were surveyed last year by the American Institute for Economic Research (AIER) in Massachusetts.  Whatever the reason for making a change – voluntary or forced – the majority of those who did so felt their results were successful. These late-career changers need to be put in a larger perspective.  Older workers are much more likely to stay put in a job than are younger people moving up the ladder, and older people also have a tougher time recovering and finding a new full-time job after becoming unemployed. But when older workers…

The job market is improving, but more than half of baby boomers surveyed felt age discrimination “prevented them from working as much as they would like.” Squared Away interviewed Joanna Lahey, associate professor at Texas A&M University’s Bush School of Government and Public Service, who says age discrimination is extremely difficult to “prove.” Many older workers have legitimate complaints about being discriminated against.  But what does the research tell us about how pervasive it is? Lahey: Before I answer that, let me clarify something.  Older people who are working do well compared to younger workers.  On average, they have more money and stability. It’s the older job seekers whose experiences worry policy makers and researchers. The bottom line is w…

A 1983 reform to Social Security is now in full swing for baby boomers: they must wait at least until their 66th birthday to claim their full pension benefits. But is the gradual increase in the program’s so-called full retirement age – it was 65 for prior generations – having any effect on when boomers retire? Why people decide to retire when they do is complicated, and economists have tried for years to understand this.  Americans are working slightly longer than they did in the mid-1990s, with the average retirement age rising from 62 to 64 for men and from 60 to 62 for women (though this trend may be stalling). Myriad possible explanations for retiring later include the declin…

The nursing profession is predominantly women, but it’s the male nurses who earn more – $5,148 more per year on average. “Male RNs out-earned female RNs across settings, specialties, and positions with no narrowing of the pay gap over time,” according to a salary comparison from 1998 through 2013 in the Journal of the American Medical Association. Other research has revealed pay gaps in teaching, another women-dominated profession. Today is Equal Pay Day, and the media is replete with reminders that American women earn 77 cents for every dollar that men earn. Nursing is the single largest profession in the growing health care sector, and the pay gap affects some 2.5 million women employed in a profession established in 19t…

Parents have spoken: paying for college is affecting their retirement planning. Two new surveys indicate that the surge in college costs is impinging on Americans’ retirement finances.  One survey, by the research firm Hearts & Wallets, found that boomer parents who support their adult children are more likely to delay retirement than parents of financially independent offspring.  The second survey, by the mutual fund manager T. Rowe Price, found that half of parents are willing to delay retirement or dip into their retirement savings to fund college. The surveys included young, idealistic parents as well as parents staring down the barrel of the retirement gun, and parents whose children achieved financial independence years ago. Nevertheless, these responses consistently show a…

Some college graduates are so overburdened with student loan payments that they struggle just to stay afloat.  But for those who can make their payments and even save some money, the logical next question might be: when can I buy a house? This is a weighty question for 20-somethings new to the labor force and carrying unprecedented levels of student debt, which puts them at greater financial risk than previous generations of graduates.  Squared Away asked two financial planners from the sensible Midwest – Danielle Schultz and Mark Zoril – to help young adults work through the difficult financial tradeoffs they’ll face as they juggle student loan and car payments, retirement saving, and homeownership. Here’s their advice: Danielle L. Schultz,…

It’s fairly easy to withdraw money prematurely from 401(k)s and IRAs – a practice that depletes roughly one-fourth of account balances over a worker’s lifetime. U.S. workers on average withdraw 1.5 percent annually from their retirement account assets.  When they do, they forgo years of investment gains they could have earned had they left their money alone. Early withdrawals can pose a problem for many Americans at a time financial security in retirement increasingly hinges on these defined contribution plans.  The potential for leakages has also grown in recent years, in part due to the shift away from traditional employer pensions to 401(k)s that place control in employees’ hands.  Further, the assets being held in IRAs, which have more libera…

The Greek poet Hesiod, circa 700 B.C. Saving for retirement is a modern-day imperative, but even the ancient Greek poet Hesiod – quoted in a new study – advised us not to tarry: Do not put off till tomorrow and the day after; for a sluggish worker does not fill his barn. So what about procrastinators, who place more importance on today’s enjoyment than on preparing for the future?  The new study asked whether people with this personality trait make different decisions about retirement saving than non-procrastinators and found that they do. Up to one in five people were procrastinators in the study’s data base of more than 155,000 workers at numerous employers.  The researchers identified procrastinators in the sam…

My financial adviser is smart. She’s ethical. And her special IRS tax certification has come in handy at tax time. So why did I drop her? Fees. Every year, her firm extracted 1 percent of my modest retirement account balance. This is less than some advisers charge, but on top of that I pay between 0.8 percent and 1.2 percent in fees to various mutual fund firms for the mostly stock funds she selected for my investments. These aren’t exorbitant fees, either, for actively managed funds. But when you add this up, I was shelling out at least 2 percent of my account every year. Thanks to fees and my penchant for some international stocks, which were sluggish or declined…

If so many human characteristics are universal, why does something so basic as the household saving rate vary from 10 percent in Belgium to 4 percent in the United States? Traditional economic explanations point to built-in retirement account defaults, government mandates or financial incentives. But UCLA behavioral economist Keith Chen mines the study of linguistics for an unorthodox explanation of the wide global disparities in saving. Discussing his early findings in this new field in the video above, Chen explains one aspect of grammar that may influence saving. To find out what that is, watch the video. This Ted talk was filmed in Edinburgh, Scotland in 2012. ……

Ken Osborne with his mother. Ken Osborne became vigilant about safeguarding his 81-year-old mother’s savings as her memory loss set in. She often failed to recall what she’d said during frequent, unsolicited phone calls from people prying into her personal life and financial affairs. “She’s vulnerable,” Osborne, a resident of Jacksonville, Florida, says about his mother who lives 140 miles away. Osborne took preventive action. He signed his mother up for a debit card funded by, but segregated from, her primary bank account.  Osborne maintains a $500 balance in the card account, giving his mother the freedom to spend her own money – whether for groceries or a church excursion to North Carolina – while giving him control of t…