Social Security and a pension–there was a time when they went together like coffee and cream. Together, they provided a guaranteed source of automatic retirement income–no management by retirees required. According to The Urban Institute, 38 percent of private sector American workers had traditional pension plans as recently as 1980–funded and managed by employers and [...] [...more]
Let’s say you won’t have a defined benefit pension in retirement, or that you have a pension that won’t pay much. One option is a do-it-yourself pension–better known as an income annuity. An income annuity is something like the mirror opposite of life insurance. A life insurance policy protects you and your family from the [...] [...more]
Here’s some bad news for men: We don’t live as long as women. But there’s bad news for women, too: you might live too long–financially speaking. Women face a greater longevity risk–the danger of outliving their assets and experiencing poverty in old age. The average life expectancy for a 65-year-old American woman is 20 years, [...] [...more]
I spent last week with some of the nation’s top experts on retirement security at a fellowship program hosted by the National Press Foundation (NPF) and underwritten by Prudential. Our group of 17 journalists heard presentations on Social Security, pensions, health care, annuities, retirement housing and the federal budget deficit. All the sessions were on [...] [...more]
