Squared Away Blog

This is a fun TED talk on a topic all of us can relate to: procrastination. It is relevant to a central theme of this blog: retirement. Research shows that procrastination plays at least a small role in why so many U.S. workers haven’t saved enough to retire in the lifestyle they’re accustomed to. The urgency of saving early has never been truer than it is for Millennials and Gen-Z. More on that later. First, let Tim Urban explain his theory about procrastination. He is a master procrastinator, demonstrated by his handling of his senior college thesis, a year-long project jammed into three days that included two all-nighters. He argues that when a deadline is fast approaching, procrastinators panic and…

Single mothers receive three-fourths of the tax refunds the IRS pays out every year through the Earned Income Tax Credit (EITC) for low-income workers. The EITC’s big plus is that it’s fully refundable. In contrast to nonrefundable tax credits that reduce the taxes a worker already owes, the EITC gives refunds even if they don’t owe anything, as is often the case with low-income workers. Another plus is the amount in an EITC refund, which is sizable relative to how much they earn. These advantages are important because they create a financial incentive for new mothers to get back to work quickly so they can claim the credit at tax time. Congress in 1993 enhanced that incentive by hiking t…

The first place most people say they would go for information about Social Security’s various benefits is family and friends. That’s true whether they are Black, White, Asian, or Hispanic. But after family and friends, there are few similarities in whom each group consults. And their preferences, revealed in a new survey, reflect differences in their socioeconomic circumstances and social networks. White workers, who are wealthier overall than Blacks and Hispanics, stand out for being more likely to say they would ask financial advisers and accountants about Social Security. Black and Hispanic workers more often would rely on social services agencies, and Blacks also ask for help at church. It’s crucial that people get accurate information about the Social Security…

Nearly 40 percent of Americans have delayed or skipped necessary medical care in the past year because they couldn’t afford it. How do we stack up to other developed countries? Dead last. Even the lowest-wage workers in places like Australia, New Zealand, and the United Kingdom are better able to afford their care than the average U.S. worker. The cost barriers to U.S. healthcare, laid out in a new report by The Commonwealth Fund, are hardly earth-shattering news. Large deductibles, a sharp rise in 2023 premiums, the high cost of prescriptions, spotty insurance options, and providers’ poor billing practices – the multitude of problems continue. Many Americans, regardless of how much they earn or the quality of their insurance, “hav…

On-the-job injuries, like layoffs, are life-altering events. A worker can lose tens of thousands of dollars in earnings over many years as a result, according to a new RAND study. The researchers used data from California’s workers’ compensation system to investigate what happened to injured workers’ earnings over a 14-year period. They were interested in the people whose injuries were serious enough to prevent them from working for a significant amount of time. These injured workers, who had either a temporary or permanent disability and received workers’ compensation, were compared with workers with minor injuries who didn’t miss any work or were out for fewer than four days. After their injuries, the workers with significant lost time earned $920 less…

Boston’s years-long struggle to deal with the homeless encampment of tents and an open-air drug market near what city residents call “Mass and Cass” – the intersection of Massachusetts Avenue and Melnea Cass Boulevard – is a testament to how intractable homelessness is. But on top of the difficulty of arranging housing in short supply in a high-cost city and addressing addiction, the problems facing the homelessness are compounded by age. One out of every three Americans nationwide who lacks housing is over 50. In Boston, the share of older homeless has been rising over the past decade as the baby boomer population gets older. Samara Scheckler, a researcher at the Harvard Joint Center for Housing Studies, said older peo…

In 1938, President Franklin D. Roosevelt signed the Fair Labor Standards Act establishing the federal minimum wage. Yet Section 14(c) of the act allowed employers to pay people with disabilities less than the minimum wage. Under 14(c), these workers, who often have cognitive or intellectual disabilities, are earning as little as $4 or $5 per hour mainly through non-profit programs created to support them. This seems unfair from the perspective of the 23-year anniversary of the Americans with Disabilities Act giving people with disabilities the same rights as all other Americans. Advocates for the disabled like the Autistic Self Advocacy Network argue 14(c) should be repealed. This seems like the obvious solution until you consider what Laura Kovacovich’s mother has…

In December, North Carolina will become the 40th state to expand its Medicaid program, providing health insurance coverage to some 300,000 more low-income workers, many of them for the first time. It has taken the states a decade to reach that milestone, despite generous funding from the federal government under the Affordable Care Act (ACA) to defray the cost of expanding Medicaid coverage. The states that agreed to expand their programs have added more than 22 million people to their Medicaid rolls. Most of the 10 states that are holdouts are in the South. They are not expanding their programs, despite Medicaid’s beneficial effects on Americans’ health, which have become widely recognized by politicians, policymakers and researchers. The Medicaid expansion provision…

Every year for 24 years straight, the number of people receiving federal disability benefits increased, nearly tripling to around 9 million. In 2015, that trend suddenly reversed. The reversal is due both to more people exiting the program as the population ages and to fewer new people joining the rolls. The drivers behind this latter trend are less clear, so they were the focus of a new study. Siyan Liu and Laura Quinby at the Center for Retirement Research find that two factors accounted for the bulk of the recent drop in the number of new recipients of disability benefits. One factor is already widely recognized: a strong economy, post-Great Recession, provided more job opportunities for workers who have disabilities…

Once a year, Social Security reports on the program’s financial outlook but the bottom line doesn’t change: the reserve in the trust fund is running out of money. Many workers and retirees go straight to the inaccurate worst-case scenario: retirement benefits will cease when the reserve is depleted. In fact, if Congress doesn’t address the looming shortfall – and there’s still time for that – the payroll taxes that fund benefits will keep flowing into the program. But the reserve is shrinking because it is being used to cover part of the benefits being paid to the growing ranks of retiring boomers. Once the reserve depletes, benefits will not be eliminated, though they will have to be reduced if Congress…

Not all borrowing is bad. Someone with a low-rate mortgage of modest size on an appreciating house has a very valuable asset. And some retirees pay off their credit cards every month without breaking a sweat. But about four out of every 10 older U.S. households are falling into the trap of having too much debt, a new study finds. These high-risk households, mostly retirees, tend to be burdened by low incomes or large balances on unsecured debt like credit cards, which accumulate interest at a rapid pace. Some are overleveraged and may be unable to afford their homes. The low-risk borrowers are their mirror image: no unsecured debt and relatively low debt payments and debt-to-asset ratios. The share of…

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…