Barack Obama’s hair turned a little gray during his 20-month quest for the presidency but he’s hardly the only one showing some age. President-elect Obama will lead a country that is aging rapidly as the huge baby boomer generation heads toward retirement. By the year 2030, there will be 72 million Americans over age 65–about [...] [read full article…]
I’ve just signed on as a contributor to one of my favorite news websites, The Huffington Post. Founded by author and nationally syndicated columnist Arianna Huffington, HuffPost is one of the fastest-growing sites on the web. HuffPost is best known for political and media coverage, but the site also features coverage of business, lifestyle [...] [read full article…]
A coalition of groups including AARP, Elderhostel, and the Vital Aging Network sponsored the First Positive Aging Conference in December 2007. I attended the event, and it was an extraordinary gathering of more than 400 people who came together to learn, talk and network about purpose, meaning and vitality in the second half of life. [...] [read full article…]
At age 71, Bob Schieffer of CBS News isn’t the oldest journalist moderating a presidential debate this election season. Jim Lehrer of PBS is 74. Still, Schieffer may have a more-than-passing interest in issues related to retirement and aging—and I hope you do, too. The challenges facing the next president include the long-term solvency of Social [...] [read full article…]
Barack Obama is hammering John McCain this week on two of McCain’s key vulnerabilities when it comes to policies affecting older Amercians: health care and Social Security. New York Times economics columnist Paul Krugman points to an article McCain just published in the journal of the American Academy of Actuaries [pdf file] touting his [...] [read full article…]
More than half of Americans over age 60 say that today’s economic conditions are the worst they have ever experienced. The tough economy has affected the way they spend money, but not their plans for retirement. That’s the conclusion of a [...] [read full article…]
My recent column on long term care prompted an impassioned response from a reader who became caught in an insurance nightmare after she and her husband purchased a policy some years ago when long term care insurance was a far less mature market than it is today. The couple’s carrier turned over several times and [...] [read full article…]
You’ve done a good job saving for retirement. You’ve got your living expenses covered, with something left over for some travel and fun. Just one thing: Did you remember to plan for long-term care? It’s no fun to talk about, but the unfortunate truth is that many of us will have a need for long-term care [...] [read full article…]
The limits on contributions to Health Savings Accounts (HSAs) make it unlikely that these accounts will play anything more than a minor role in how retirees fund their health care expenses, according to new research by the Employee Benefit Research Institute (EBRI). HSAs were created as part of the Medicare Prescription Drug, Improvement, and Modernization [...] [read full article…]
Think you’ve got a pretty good handle on planning for retirement? I doubt it. The MetLife Mature Market Institute recently published results of its Retirement Income IQ Test, and the results were just awful. Metlife—the insurance company’s research and education arm—surveyed more than 1,200 people who are five years away from retirement age on 15 multiple [...] [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.
