Retirement

Peter contacted my company about his situation recently. He is 68 years old and still working. He enrolled in Part A two years ago because his company’s group health plan was terrible. He was probably going to need surgery and the hospital deductible was outrageous (his words). He changed jobs recently and his new employer’s

Imagine having multiple sclerosis and being in a wheelchair for 25 years. That was Eleanor, in Tennessee, feeling trapped. When her neurologist told her she would never improve, she refused to accept this pronouncement. She had a quality of defiance. Her thought: “Don’t tell me I can’t do something. I’m going to prove you wrong”.

You’ve seen the headlines. The United States Postal Service (USPS) has been losing money. (A recent USPS press release said it’s already lost $2.1 billion this year.) So, Congress passed the Postal Service Reform Act of 2022 (PSRA). The Office of Personnel Management (OPM) published the interim final rule on April 6, 2023, and it

Surprisingly, one of the first signs of mild cognitive decline can be suffering a financial loss due to making a mistake, such as not correctly completing an investment transaction, or becoming a victim of fraud or exploitation. In many of these situations, retirees are still highly functioning and don’t have severe symptoms of dementia or

A piece published by the American Bar Association’s Senior Lawyers Division reports on the international conference of the Alzheimer’s Association. The Division consists of lawyers over age 50. Health is a topic of interest to this group, of which I’m a member. A part of the conference focused on a study of the eating habits

“I can’t wait to retire and live on the beach!” In the last thirty years of being a practicing financial planner, I’ve heard some version of this sentiment more times than I can count. It may sound like a throwaway statement or a pie-in-the-sky type dream, but the fact of the matter is that deciding

Maria is a 90 year old, hardworking woman who raised four kids and some grandkids as well. She quit her humble work as a housecleaner when her husband fell ill. She stayed home to care for him. She also helped raise a grandson, when her son and his wife split up and left him to

Have you ever received a piece of news that instantly transported you into the future and changed the way you saw everything in the present? In mid-March, I was checking in with my wife by phone from a hotel room in Atlanta following the first completed day of my new job, and I could tell

The May 2023 jobs report may give the Federal Reserve another reason to pause on interest rate hikes and another reason new graduates should not burst into the interview room asking for a big raise and remote work. Workers may have a harder time getting the pay and perks they saw just last year. Worker

As you make important decisions that affect your retirement, one key step will be to closely examine your retirement beliefs and assumptions. Doing so can help you avoid making serious mistakes and put you on the right path for making more effective decisions. People’s beliefs and assumptions about retirement are often based on examples of

Spousal benefits are probably the most misunderstood Social Security benefit. Ex-spousal benefits may seem even more convoluted. To keep things simple, ex-spousal benefits are basically the same as current spousal benefits with certain exceptions. There are two categories of divorced spouses. If you are divorced two years or less, your ex-spouse must be receiving their

The self-employed and those who run private practices must manage a whole myriad of concerns, which regular employees do not. But there are ways that the self-employed benefit from the status, and there’s no better example of that than with retirement plan options. It’s a tool, however, that those that work for themselves are often

We’re at the halfway point of 2023, and it’s been a year of financial anxiety. The U.S. continues to experience high inflation and rising interest rates and there have been multiple bank collapses, all while layoffs and overall economic uncertainty continue. In fact, the CNBC All-America Economic Survey found that 69 percent of the U.S.

Artificial intelligence is advancing so rapidly, it can be hard to speculate about its effects on elders. What we can see is that applied to healthcare, it could be very positive. For older adults with multiple chronic conditions, there are different doctors with different perspectives, each a specialist in one thing. For anyone who has

After housing, transportation is the second-biggest expense for Americans age 65 and older. This demographic spent a mean of $7,160 on transportation in 2021, according to the U.S. Bureau of Labor Statistics. That’s about $600 per month. Keep in mind that 2021 was a pandemic year. People weren’t driving nearly as much as they would

Twenty-year-olds are saving for retirement. These are Generation Z’s, whose members were born between 1997 and 2012. Their efforts embrace several key points for a successful retirement plan, including the role of mentors. Starting Early By starting young in saving for retirement, Generation Z will greatly benefit from the math of compounding, which will grow

Several years ago, a Cambridge study suggested auto-enrollment alone would not solve the dilemma of too few younger employees saving enough for retirement. More recently, the Society for Human Resource Management’s 2020 Employee Benefits report concluded, “51 percent of respondents automatically enroll new or existing employees into a 401(k)-type plan, up from 39 percent in

According to a new release by the 2020 Census, demographic change has accelerated in the United States in the past 10 years. Especially the group of those aged 65 years and older has grown more quickly, the data shows. While in the year 2010, 12.8% of Americans were 65 years or older, that had jumped

As a retirement writer who is working past his normal retirement age, I’ve witnessed a lot of people transition from work to retirement. And I’ve noticed that a source of stress for many is determining which things have to happen at retirement versus which decisions can wait. While every retirement is unique, these are my

Investors frequently are told that they are long-term investors, so they shouldn’t worry about fluctuations in the markets. They are told to invest and hold for the long-term. But the data show that when you buy stocks makes a big difference in your long-term returns, according to Bespoke Investment Group. An investor who made a