Retirement Blog

There have been many suggestions for repairing the Social Security shortfall. A report offered today by the National Academy of Social Insurance presented some new-to-me ideas: Raise FICA rate by one-twentieth of 1 percent per year over 20 years, up to 7.2 percent in 2035 — 63 percent fix. Dedicate to Social Security a revamped estate tax

Don’t let abuse disrupt your retirement or your retirement planning. Older Americans lose nearly $3 billion per year to elderly financial abuse, according to a MetLife study of the problem. Half of the crimes are perpetrated by strangers, while 34 percent of the abuse is delivered by friends and family. Exploitation by the business sector

The big retirement news last week was the announcement Friday by basketball great Shaquille O’Neal that he’s hanging up his high-tops. He made the announcement via Twitter and later asked his 36 billion followers to help give him a new retirement nickname. If you have a good idea, he says to Tweet it to #shaqname.

Americans are regularly barraged by news about their retirement unpreparedness — courtesy of surveys mostly commissioned by financial firms. The usual conclusion: We need help, desperately. But rarely do we get a glimpse of how people who live in foreign lands perceive their retirement readiness. A new report from HSBC plumbs information from interviews and

T. Rowe Price is offering a new retirement planning tool that will allow its 2 million 401(k) participants to plug in the amount of their savings and how it’s allocated to determine — based on current returns — how much money they are likely to have available to pay themselves a monthly amount at retirement.

If you can’t find a job, consider creating your own. People ages 55 to 64 accounted for about one-quarter of new entrepreneurs in 2010, according to the Kauffman Index of Entrepreneurial Activity. It’s a trend on the upswing. In 1996 — the first year the Kaufman Foundation did this survey –  the over-55 crowd represented

Should Congress put limits or even completely do away with the tax incentives that make saving within a 401(k) or some other tax-advantaged retirement plan attractive in order to cut the deficit? The Congressional Joint Committee on Taxation and the Treasury Department’s Office of Tax Analysis conclude that these retirement planning programs will cost the

Traditional defined benefit pensions, which for most of the last century were a fixture of American life, are about to become a relic of the past. The Standard & Poor’s 500 reported Thursday that among its companies, pensions and other post-employment benefits remain underfunded by $210 billion. “Even with a 15 percent  equity return and

My grandma was 65 when I was born. With her white hair in a bun, black lace-up shoes and an apron covering her cotton house dress, I thought she was ancient. Although she lived to be 94, her retirement was narrowly defined by a meager income and attitudes that kept her close to home. Today’s

At a minimum, most people have some retirement expectations. Higher up are retirement hopes and dreams. At the helm are retirement fantasies, which are like dreams in a runaway car with no brakes to stop them. I asked my husband where in the world he would want to retire outside the U.S., and his answer was