Category Archives: Retirement
At a truck stop diner along Interstate 5 near Tigard, Ore., Daniel and Becky Ford were fueling up on pancakes and black coffee for the 2,200-mile run to Dallas they were about to make in a Freightliner tractor-trailer stuffed with auto parts. It was the 10th week on the open road for Mr. Ford, 57 years old, and his 51-year-old wife, who chucked their old life in rural Pennsylvania in May for a cramped truck cab that keeps them moving 22 hours a day.
If your older parents insist on driving and they still can safely, it’s a good thing because they are far less likely to enter a nursing home or an assisted living center…. Giving Up Driving May be Express Lane to Long-Term Care “The independence that accompanies a driver’s license and car has long been linked anecdotally to a better quality of life for seniors.”
legitimately earned pension benefits go unclaimed because companies have been bought or sold, because surviving family members are unaware of the benefits due them, or because records go lost or missing and survivors can’t muster the resources to collect. The Pension Action Center is part of the Gerontology Institute at UMass and offers its services free of charge to New England residents.
The Financial Planning Association and the National Endowment for Financial Education have teamed up to create an online life-stages financial planning tool. Life Events & Financial Decisions is definitely a site to bookmark if only for as a checklist for the Business of Life™.
And according to a survey by AARP, the top U.S. lobbying and advocacy group for senior citizens, half of working-age Americans now expect to work into their 70s, whether by financial necessity or by lifestyle choice…. After all, the roots of the modern concept of retirement go all the way back to the era of Germany’s “Iron Chancellor” Otto von Bismarck, who founded the first welfare state in the 1880s.
“Social Security is a real problem and we need to fix it and that involves pain,” says Jeffrey Brown lead author of a paper which seeks to critically examine the “The Top 10 Myths of Social Security Reform.”– A constructive debate about the future of Social Security should accept that a problem exists and focus on alternative methods of restoring long-run, sustainable fiscal balance to the program,” he says. “Simply denying that the problem exists will not make it go away.—- “We shouldn’t kick the problem down the road for 10 years for others to deal with it nor should we pursue policies that don’t fix the problem but appear to,” he says.
Facing age discrimination in searching for a job, the 55-Plus Crowd takes to eBAy Auctions.Many people age 55 and older are turning to the online marketplace…. Others have uncovered a latent entrepreneurial streak in themselves or simply see eBay as a creative outlet; they enjoy the sales process and the interaction an eBay business gives them with people around the world.
The debacle of Enron, with hundreds of thousands losing their entire retirement savings is the lesson in point. Given the recent rash of lawsuits against Merck & Co, Krispy Kreme, General Motors, AIG, EDS and others alleging that company executives breached their fiduciary duty by NOT getting workers out of company stock, things are changing More and more companies are hiring outside consultants to oversee the handling of company stock in employee retirement plans.
On March 4, Kiplinger’s Personal Finance Magazine and the National Association of Personal Financial Advisors are offering free financial advice to help people jump start their retirement planning. The number to call is 1-888-919-2345.
Here’s a blog many of us can relate to – What Retirement?… I find I need a brand new category that I’m sure will fill up quickly as the social security debate goes on. What to do?
