Squared Away Blog

The evidence is clear: fraud causes investors to shed their shares of stock. When the stock market is booming, fraud swirls unnoticed beneath the frothy surface. Only when the market busts, as it did in the fall of 2008, are allegations of fraud and financial shenanigans exposed to the public. When they are, and rattled investors realize what has taken place, they decrease their stock holdings – whether they own shares in any of the fraudulent companies or not – according to researchers in Stockholm and at the University of Minnesota. Their study analyzed changes in equity holdings among U.S. households in response to more than 700 Securities and Exchange Commission charges and other reports of fraud from 1984 throug…

There was a silver lining in the recent housing market collapse: prices dropped to more affordable levels for American families who didn’t already own. Buying still isn’t easy. It’s become more difficult to qualify for a mortgage from banks and other lenders that have tightened up their credit qualifications. But the following chart, which also appears on page 11 of a chartbook released by the Urban Institute’s new Housing Finance Policy Center, shows the dramatic improvement in home affordability in the wake of the market’s recent downturn. The blue line shows actual house prices over time – that’s the median, or middle, price for every single home sold nationwide in a given year. The red line shows the maximum a…

Americans in their 70s and 80s have earned more and are wealthier than the baby boom generation – for the simple reason they were born at the right moment in history. It was easier for members of this older generation to get ahead, because they came of age in the aftermath of World War II, when economic and demographic trends were strongly working in their favor, contends new research by William Emmons and Bryan Noeth of the Federal Reserve Bank of St. Louis. The emergence of a modern social safety net and the rise of unions may’ve also contributed to their relative prosperity, they said. Baby boomers born after about 1950 do not seem to have the same income and…

Enrollment in the federal food stamp program, known as SNAP – for Supplemental Nutrition Assistance Program – has more than doubled over the past decade to 47 million. What’s remarkable is that for the first time the number of Americans receiving food stamps increased even in a period when the economy was growing. During the 2003-2007 expansion, the SNAP case load, in a break with historic trends, rose 24 percent. One explanation is the change in the longstanding correlation between the unemployment rate and poverty, according to research findings by economists Matt Rutledge and April Yanyuan Wu of the Center for Retirement Research, which were presented at the Retirement Research Consortium meeting in August. Poverty used to fall in tandem…

Prithi Gowda’s animated video was one of two winners in a competition among New York University film school students and alums to produce a video that would turn young adults on to mutual funds. The winners were awarded a trip to Monaco to premier their work. The filmmaker practices what she preaches in this short animation, “Frenemies.” Gowda’s freelance work as a website designer and videographer for Wall Street firms has allowed her to build up “a nice, comfortable savings.” Investing, she said, has given her the freedom to start her own company, 21st Street Projects in Manhattan. “I just feel strongly the world could be a much better place if people really understood how to deal with their finances,”…

New research shows the share of Americans who lack enough ready cash on hand for emergencies shot up in the aftermath of the Great Recession. These families do not have access to the liquid assets – cash or funds in their checking or savings account – to cover emergencies like layoffs, health crises, or even car repairs, according to an analysis of federal data by Caroline Ratcliffe of the Urban Institute, who presented the finding to the Congressional Savings and Ownership Caucus in late September. Ratcliffe’s measure of financial fragility was families who did not have enough liquid assets to subsist at federal poverty levels for three months. That amounts to $2,873 for a single person, $4,883 for a family…

Husband, wife, grandmother, uncle, elderly friend – we all need a devoted caregiver when we grow old. But in a not-distant future, according to a new report from the AARP’s Public Policy Institute, the number of family and close friends available to fill this demanding role will decline sharply. It’s unlikely there will be enough of these unpaid caregivers for the multitudes of aging baby boomers. Today, there are seven Americans between the ages of 45 and 64 for each individual who is at least 80 years old. The baby boomers, largely because there are so many of them, have done a good job of caring for their parents born during the Depression era. One surprising result has been a…

Upon retiring, you suddenly have access to a chunk of money that’s been accumulating in your 401(k). It’s easy to make a move that incurs unfamiliar tax consequences or otherwise jeopardizes your hard-earned savings. Based on interviews with financial planners, as well as experts at the Center for Retirement Research, which funds this blog, Squared Away assembled the following check list for imminent and new retirees: At least one year before retiring, collect information from: Social Security – how does your monthly check vary, depending on the filing age you select, and how can you and your spouse determine the best strategy for getting the benefits you’ll need? Your employer – is an annuity an option in your 401(k) plan,…

There’s a bright line between an impulse purchase and compulsive spending. When something new catches her eye, the impulsive buyer snaps it up and enjoys the splurge. There is no such enjoyment for the compulsive buyer. The act of buying temporarily alleviates her anxiety but she inevitably feels guilt or regret. A new study explores the childhood experiences that lie at the root of why some people – women more than men – develop these damaging spending problems, which can lead to enormous debts and derail plans to save for the future. The specific goal of the study, based on surveying 327 college students, was to shed light on the emotional pathways that can lead to compulsive buying, explained researcher…

There are now two reasons to postpone retirement. The financial reason has been covered repeatedly in this blog: working longer increases a retiree’s savings and monthly Social Security income, while shortening the number of retirement years that their savings will have to fund. If that doesn’t convince you, here’s the other reason: working longer may prevent dementia. That’s the conclusion of a study on nearly 430,000 French retirees. After analyzing their health and insurance records, the researcher determined that each additional year an older worker remained in the labor forced further reduced the risk of being diagnosed with various forms of dementia, including Alzheimer’s disease. ……

It’s common for people to begin collecting their Social Security benefits soon after they turn 62, ignoring the financial planners and retirement experts urging them to postpone and increase the size of their monthly checks. A new study has uncovered four powerful psychological traits that influence this decision: the individual’s expected longevity, his fear of loss, whether he perceives the Social Security system as fair, and patience. The study surveyed some 3,000 people, primarily in their 40s and 50s. This is a good age to ask about Social Security, because claiming the benefit is a few years away, “but they’re thinking more about it,” researcher Suzanne Shu said when presenting the findings at an August meeting of the Retirement Researc…

Traditionally, the picture-perfect retirement included a paid-off house. But the Me Generation isn’t sticking to the script. Snapshots of three generations of U.S. households on the cusp of retirement – people born in the Depression, at the beginning of World War II, and after the war – show that more of the most recent generation, the baby boomers, are still carrying mortgages as they head into their retirement years. About 40 percent of households who were between the ages of 56 and 61 in 1992 – the Depression-era parents of baby boomers – held mortgages at that age. This share had increased to 48 percent by 2008, as the front wave of baby boomers were reaching their late 50s and…