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A whopping 84 percent of Americans say everyone should have a pension. Wouldn’t that be nice?
The retirement industry provides good and bad news this week. Let’s focus on the good news.
New rules require local public entities to make clear to taxpayers how much they owe for pensions vs. how much money is available. Get ready for the shortfall.
Influential policymakers and execs in the retirement industry say America is in a retirement crisis.
If you’re lucky enough to work for state or local government, you might think you don’t have to worry so much about retirement planning since you’ve likely been promised a pension. But in recent years, troubles have been brewing among public pension plans all around the country.
In the last week alone, Plansponsor.com reported problems with three state plans:
New Hampshire: The House of Representatives approved a proposal to put an end to pension plans for public workers and instead offers a 401(k)-type plan. Facing a funding shortfall of $4.1 billion-plus for retirement and medical benefits, last year the legislature raised the retirement age at which future workers would qualify for benefits and increased employee contributions to their pension.
Pensions have been in the news a lot lately, from reports about lackadaisical planning to the continued erosion of defined benefit plans to the prospect of federal pensions being entangled in the debt ceiling/budget-cutting drama in Washington. On the lighter side, Fidelity Investments released a survey this week highlighting the problem of ignorance among pension
Keeping up financially with our retired parents could prove to be an impossible challenge for many Americans, especially as we swallow the reforms that will help the country avoid default. Look at it this way, let’s say your parents have a $40,000 per year pension — not an unusual, or even particularly generous, number for many
The disappearance of old-fashioned pensions is changing the way we think about retirement and how we pay for it. Prudential Retirement examined the financial impact of having a defined-contribution plan like a 401(k) compared to having a defined-benefit pension, which is the old-fashioned kind. I found Prudential’s conclusions troubling because they confirm the difficulty that
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
What’s worse? Dying young, or living well into a second century? Without question, the latter scenario presents a retirement planning conundrum. Last week, on April 14, Walter Breuning of Montana passed away. He had the distinction of being the world’s oldest man at age 114. His philosophy was to embrace change, according to a wonderful
