The economic downturn and mortgage crisis are turning a growing number of Americans into retirement account raiders. The number of Americans tapping into their 401(k) savings accounts to pay debts or to fund other immediate financial needs rose sharply last year. The situation worsened during the first quarter this year as the mortgage crisis heated up, [...] [read full article…]
The problem lay buried, unspoken, for many years in the minds of American women. It was a strange stirring, a sense of dissatisfaction, a yearning that women suffered in the middle of the 20th century in the United States. Each suburban wife struggled with it alone. As she made the beds, shopped for groceries, matched [...] [read full article…]
There was a time-not long ago-when we didn’t use computers or digital media players to manage our music collections or watch TV. Now we could be approaching something like an era of iPods for aging. At least, that’s Eric Dishman’s vision of the near-term future. Dishman spearheads a major initiative to develop “personal health technologies” at [...] [read full article…]
Ever feel like you’re on your own when it comes to planning for retirement? Over the last few decades, much of the responsibility-and risk-of on-the-job retirement investing has shifted to employees. Fewer workers have traditional defined benefit pensions. And while many employees still have defined contribution plans, such as matching 401(k) plans, they handle their own [...] [read full article…]
When the going gets tough, the older employees get going-often with a voluntary buyout package in tow. The economy is in its worst shape since the recession of 2001, and that has employers in the mood to cut jobs. Employers eliminated jobs at an accelerating rate through the first three months of the year, and the [...] [read full article…]
The income gender gap is well known. But did you know that the economic gap between men and women spills over into retirement?The largest segment of Americans living in poverty is elderly women. The gender gap in retirement income security is appallingly high, for several reasons. First, women earn about a third less than men make [...] [read full article…]
There’s no shortage of bad news about aging and retirement. Whether it’s ballooning Social Security and Medicare payments or the brain drain of millions of baby boomers leaving the workforce, the headlines all seem to focus on the increasing burdens of an aging population. There’s not much we can do about aging; we’re all doing it. [...] [read full article…]
Benjamin Franklin famously said that “in this world, nothing can be said to be certain, except death and taxes.” With April 15 right around the corner, let’s talk about the more palatable of Franklin’s two certainties. Taxes don’t disappear in retirement-and they can be an important variable in determining your standard of living. Good planning helps, [...] [read full article…]
You plan your retirement savings. You probably have some plans for retirement travel. Maybe you’ve got a plan for the dream retirement home. But are you planning your retirement body? If not, it’s time to get busy. “It’s possible to envision the kind of physical body that we want to have in retirement,” says author John Nelson. [...] [read full article…]
Have you heard this year’s presidential candidates debate the Retirement Health Care Tax? No? Probably because there is no official tax with that name. But it’s out there, just the same. The Retirement Health Care Tax is a collection of expenses you’ll pay for health care after age 65. And it should be a topic within [...] [read full article…]
RetirementRevised.com is the companion website of Retire Smart, a column written by Mark Miller that appears in more than 30 newspapers each week. For millions of Baby Boomers, retirement is an opportunity for reinvention, rather than taking it easy. Mark is helping write the playbook for the new career and personal pursuits of a generation.
