Millions of Americans are worried about running out of money in retirement. Boomers and Generation Xers are playing catch up to avoid having to drastically reduce their standards of living in retirement. Lowering your taxes on your retirement income and increasing your tax-free retirement income can help stretch those valuable retirement account dollars. Keep reading
Retirement
By Richard Eisenberg, Next Avenue Editor Add this to the list of the many ways Covid-19 is changing our lives: it’s increasing job prospects in certain fields and lowering them for others. What’s more, the pandemic has dramatically heightened prospects for job losses due to automation. The upshot: if you’re over 50 and looking for
By Sarah McKinney Gibson, Next Avenue “I’m usually hesitant to ask for help,” says Mark Fiorito, a 32-year-old Lynbrook, N.Y. jobseeker on the autism spectrum. “But what I was doing wasn’t working, so I was up for trying something new.” That meant creating a profile on the autism-friendly jobs portal Hire Autism, run by the
Everyone knows the poor die sooner than the rich. Some humans can live past 90, but many don’t have access to the health and wealth that lets humans live a normal human life span. In the last 20 years, all longevity gains for Americans have gone to those in the upper half of the income
Generation X has had it rough financially. This group was heading into college as tuition began to skyrocket. They were pummelled by the tech bubble and great recession right when they started earning real money and owning assets that should be appreciating over time. While many people in Gen X are on track for financial
If you can see through these misperceptions about assets, you can be a better investor. Fallacy #1: Price Equals Wealth Say you bought a $500,000 suburban house a while back and now it’s worth $1 million. You have no plans to move. Has your wealth gone up by $500,000? Not exactly. Wealth isn’t just a
During market pull-backs, investors in different generations tend to behave differently. Plan participants close to retirement are more inclined to prematurely exit the market and younger people tend to remain invested. Market, “sequence of returns”1 and longevity risks address those concerns; but longevity risk has likely been the most influential factor over the past several
In the wake of the devastating effects of covid-19 on nursing home residents and their staffs, pressure is building on long-term care facilities from congressional Democrats who are exploring ways to accelerate the shift of Medicaid long-term services and supports from nursing facilities to home and community based services (HCBS). Some states are demanding tougher
Most retirement plans dive deeply into details on the financial factors, but hardly any effort is devoted to the factor that contributes the most to a successful retirement. Since the pandemic began, however, people are spending more time than usual considering the really important retirement questions. As the pandemic forced lifestyle changes on people and
On March 11th, 2021, President Biden signed the latest COVID-19 stimulus package, known as the American Rescue Plan Act of 2021. The Act comes just in time, because many COVID-19 relief measures were set to expire on March 14th. The American Rescue Plan Act authorized and allocated $28.6 billion to the Restaurant Revitalization Fund program.
By Kerry Hannon, Next Avenue It was the shockwave of rejection letters from hiring managers that goaded Guadalupe Hirt and Barbara Brooks to launch SecondActWomen, a Denver-based company designed to help working women in their 50s and older (and also some in their 40s) start companies, pivot careers and stay employed. “They didn’t even give
If you inherited an IRA (individual retirement account), the law says you must take distributions or pay a severe penalty to the U.S. Treasury. How severe? Fifty percent of the amount that should have been withdrawn, but wasn’t. These mandated withdrawals are called required minimum distributions or RMDs; in the case of inheritance, RMDs are
The Employee Retention Credit program was enacted as part of the CARES Act on March 27, 2020, to provide reimbursement of wages for businesses affected by the COVID-19 virus and incentivize employers to maintain a pre-pandemic level workforce. The 2020 Employee Retention Credit was not available for PPP borrowers and required a loss in revenue
Pre-retirees and retirees may be understandably concerned about their exposure to stock market risk, particularly in these uncertain times. Let’s take a look at how a hypothetical 65-year-old couple might think about this decision. Suppose Jack and Mary have $400,000 in retirement savings and they’re invested in a target date fund with the classic “60/40”
When reviewing a client’s 401(k) plan, I get pretty jazzed if I see a decent Target Date Fund (TDF) option within their investment lineup. I firmly believe that a TDF is one of the best default investment vehicles within most corporate retirement plans. The way a TDF works is simple. You pick the fund that
Most people make the wrong decisions about when to claim their Social Security retirement benefits. Only about 4% make the optimum claiming decision, according to a study released a couple of years ago by financial services firm United Capital. The researchers had access to data from a long-term health study of Americans and were able
Included in the $1.9 trillion stimulus bill signed by President Biden on Thursday is an $86 billion aid package for participants of about 185 to over 300 employer-union pension plans. If aid had not been available more than a million retired retail clerks, candy makers, truck drivers, construction workers and others would have faced severe cuts in
The 401(k) has become the go-to retirement plan for many Americans and continues to gain traction. The flexibility, tax savings and scale of 401(k) plans have made it attractive to employers and employees alike. But A 401(k) plan doesn’t need to be just for large corporations. It can be used to help small business owners
Dollar-holders have enjoyed increasing buying power abroad every year since 2013, with each year’s dollar advantage eclipsing the last. Those considering diversifying into real estate overseas but procrastinating on a purchase have been rewarded as they’ve watched properties in key markets become cheaper in dollar terms year after year. Until 2020. Last year, the dollar
By Chris Farrell, Next Avenue Years of grassroots activism led to the new law saving pensions for union members Teamsters for a Democratic Union Good news on the retirement-income front. Some 1.5 million workers and retirees faced the real risk that their pension incomes would be slashed over the next 20 years or significantly sooner.