This book is dramatic wake-up call for a generation of overspent and under-saved Americans who face the very real possibility of outliving their money. Yesterdays retirees were supported by guaranteed income sources. Today, baby boomers are looking at a very different picture, one where they are increasingly responsible for generating their retirement income from personal savings while facing a longer life expectancy and astounding leaps in expenses. Key Selling Points: explores the seven key challenges that stand between baby boomers and a successful retirement; helps baby boomers recognize and address the key challenges to retirement; guides baby boomers to better plan for the income they will need so they can achieve the retirement they deserve.
The United States faces a serious retirement challenge. Many of today's workers will lack the resources to retire at traditional ages and maintain their standard of living in retirement. Solving the problem is a major challenge in today's environment in which risk and responsibility have shifted from government and employers to individuals. For this reason, Charles D. Ellis, Alicia H. Munnell, and Andrew D. Eschtruth have written this concise guide for anyone concerned about their own - and the nation's - retirement security. Falling Short is grounded in sound research yet written in a highly accessible style. The authors provide a vivid picture of the retirement crisis in America. They offer the necessary context for understanding the nature and size of the retirement income shortfall, which is caused by both increasing income needs-due to longer lifespans and rising health costs-and decreasing support from Social Security and employer-sponsored pension plans. The solutions are to work longer and save more by building on the existing retirement system. To work longer, individuals should plan to stay in the labor force until age 70 if possible. To save more, policymakers should shore up Social Security's long-term finances; make all 401(k) plans fully automatic, with workers allowed to opt out; and ensure that everyone has access to a retirement savings plan. Individuals should also recognize that their house is a source of saving, which they can tap in retirement through downsizing or a reverse mortgage.
How 401(k)s have gutted retirement security, from charging exorbitant hidden fees to failing to replace the income of traditional pensions Named one of PW's Top 10 for Business & Economics A retirement crisis is looming. In 2008, as the 401(k) fallout rippled across the country, horrified holders watched 25 percent of their funds evaporate overnight. Average 401(k) balances for those approaching retirement are too small to generate more than $4,000 in annual retirement income, and experts predict that nearly half of middle-class workers will be poor or near poor in retirement. But long before the recession, signs were mounting that few people would ever be able to accumulate enough wealth on their own to ensure financial security later in life. This hasn’t always been the case. Each generation of workers since the nineteenth century has had more retirement security than the previous generation. That is, until 1981, when shaky 401(k) plans began replacing traditional pensions. For the last thirty years, we’ve been advised that the best way to build one’s nest egg is to heavily invest in 401(k)-type programs, even though such plans were originally designed to be a supplement to rather than the basis for retirement. This financial experiment, promoted by neoliberals and aggressively peddled by Wall Street, has now come full circle, with tens of millions of Americans discovering that they would have been better off under traditional pension plans long since replaced. As James W. Russell explains, this do-it-yourself retirement system—in which individuals with modest incomes are expected to invest large sums of capital in order to reap the same rewards as high-end money managers—isn’t working. Social Insecurity tells the story of a massive and international retirement robbery—a substantial transfer of wealth from everyday workers to Wall Street financiers via tremendously costly hidden fees. Russell traces what amounts to a perfect swindle, from its ideological origins at Milton Friedman’s infamous Chicago School to its implementation in Chile under Pinochet’s dictatorship and its adoption in America through Reaganomics. Enraging yet hopeful, Russell offers concrete ideas on how individuals and society can arrest this downward spiral.
Circumvent the tired and conventional approaches of finding purpose, passion, or happiness to discover a path of fulfillment after 60 by pursuing desires, mastering risk-taking, and expanding horizons with confidence. The crisis of unfulfilled lives unfolds gradually, often with acquiesced boredom and a flimsy search for purpose. Our relevancy comes into question, or we succumb to the idea that the future will be one of slow-moving ambition and then an even slower glide into comfort as the flush of freedom fades. We can change this outcome if we want to. We should want to. The 60-Something Crisis: How to Live an Extraordinary Life in Retirement (a 2023 Nautilus Book Award winner) is the first book to circumvent the tired and conventional approaches of finding purpose, passion, or happiness, or using reinvention to discover a path of fulfillment after 60. It presents a clear, practical framework through four portals—geography of place, yield, kinship, and freedom—to navigate and support future well-being and happiness. Readers will learn how to pursue desires, not roadmaps, to increase self-confidence and master risk-taking, and will discover the power and potential of investing in themselves at this time of life. Barbara L. Pagano provides the foundation for taking on or taking back late-stage growth and shifts the conversation from “What’s next?” to “What do I need to know, what do I need to do now, and how soon can I get started?” This book is more than happy talk. Pre-retirees on the brink of a major life transition or retirees who want more from life will find themselves pulled toward a higher target of well-being that endures. Mature adults, now novices in an unfamiliar, uncharted landscape, will welcome a smart, well-written, practical, and poignant guide to hustle them forward, anchored in an award-winning author’s deeply personal experience, well-researched content, and over 200 interviews with retirees and pre-retires. The 60-Something Crisis offers a powerful message for the last third of life.
In Rescuing Retirement, Teresa Ghilarducci and Tony James offer a comprehensive yet simple plan to help workers save for retirement, increase retirement savings by earning higher returns, and guarantee lifelong income for everyone. It offers a practical guide to the future of secure retirement.
The practical, nonpartisan guide to making our retirement savings systems work for America’s people, our economy, and the nation at large At a time of fierce political divisiveness, From Here to Security is a refreshingly balanced, non-ideological guide to solving what may be our nation’s most pressing policy challenge: achieving retirement security for all. A pioneer of the 401(k) system, Robert L. Reynolds eschews radical calls for throwing out the 401(k) entirely and creating a new government-run savings system. Our best course, he shows, is to build on what we have: a flexible, dynamic private-public system of Social Security and more robust workplace savings. From Here to Security provides a clear, powerful new approach to solving America’s retirement challenge – based on facts, data, and Reynolds’ decades of experience. While fear-mongers claim that the U.S. retirement system is on the verge of collapse; Reynolds shows why our system is actually the envy of the world. But From Here to Security is no status quo book. Reynolds lays out an action agenda to dramatically improve our retirement systems – public and private – lift our savings rate, improve people’s retirement prospects, spur faster growth – and reboot America’s national morale.
Bonus content "What's Your Retirementology I.Q.?" included in this digital edition. Looking ahead to retirement? Depending on your circumstances and your age, you may no longer have any margin for error. And your emotions and irrational behavior could be perpetuating a dangerous cycle of overspending and rising debt that may shatter whatever vision of retirement you still have. Welcome to the world of Retirementology. Retirementology bridges retirement planning with investor psychology and the market Meltdown of 2008 to produce an entirely new way of thinking about how we spend, how we save, how we borrow, and how we invest. Financial mistakes are deeply rooted in human nature, but you may be able to overcome them--if you understand the breakthrough principles of behavioral economics and apply them in your own retirement planning. Dr. Gregory Salsbury identifies some of the classic cognitive biases and behavioral mistakes most of us keep making when it comes to retirement planning. For example: Why will people drive 45 minutes to use a $2.00 coupon? Why won’t people sell a poor performing stock just because they inherited it from grandma? Why do people spend differently with a credit card than they do with cash? Why do people believe that they paid no income taxes because they received a refund? You’ll learn why the financial meltdown has amplified the impact of these all-too-human cognitive mistakes and discover ideas for addressing them. The bottom line for your bottom line is that retirement can no longer be ignored, viewed as a single event, relegated to a “zone,” or romanticized. Instead, you must understand how every spending and financial decision you make from here on can impact the way you will spend your golden years. Retirementology attempts to help you do just that. Retirement planning: right brain versus left brain Why these different areas of the brain impact financial decisions--and what to do about it It’s real money! “De-layering” your finances How to overcome the psychological tricks that separate you from your money Family matters: managing financial support decisions for your extended family Choosing between your family or your retirement Get “long-term smart” How longevity, inflation, volatility, and your own expectations impact your retirement goals
The facts are plain: Social Security is headed for massive, unsustainable deficits in the next century. Politicians talk of a Social security "trust fund" but there are no hard assets in it--only government bonds. The reality is that Social Security is really a "pay as you go" system, with benefits to current retirees paid not out any saved trust funds but out of taxes on the payroll of today; s workforce. But what will happen when these employees retire; when, in less than fifteen years, the 76 million members of the baby boom generation -- the largest in our history -- stop paying in and start taking money out? And what can we as individuals and as citizens do now to prevent these catastrophic deficits. The crises towards which we are careening (by 2025, 1 American in 5 will be 65 or older and it will take an already overloaded 1.6 working Americans to support each retired person) will not only be felt personally by the many millions stranded with no savings and without benefits, but will shiver the country's economy as a whole as well as the world financial system. With courage, clarity and incontrovertible evidence, Peterson spells out this huge -- if politically unmentionable -- problem more clearly than ever before and tells us what we must do now for our personal survival and that of our children. According to recent polls, more young Americans believe in UFOs than think they will ever receive a Social Security check. Yet most Baby Boomers, as they approach retirement age, believe they will continue to live their present lifestyle in retirement -- without a fraction of the personal savings or pensions necessary to pay for the future they expect. This agingpopulation -- double today's load -- will depend on as few as 1.6 working Americans to support each retired person. Who will support this nation of Floridas? In this short, powerful book, Peter G. Peterson, one of American's top investment bankers and a leading critic of our entitlement policy, spells out in the clearest possible language, with unmistakable numbers and easy-to-read charts, the disaster that lies ahead if we continue to ignore our low saving rate, our ballooning federal deficits, and our enormous unfunded and unsustainable commitments to retirees. Peterson reveals what politicians are afraid to admit: trillions of dollars of promised benefits for which no funds have been provided. Shattering the myths surrounding this subject with hard facts and eye-opening views of the future, Peterson gives the most comprehensive and candid plan for a gradual, humane, fair, and realistic answer to the greatest challenge of the next century: transforming our political, economic, cultural, and social assumptions to adapt to the realities of the graying of America.
Retirement does not have to be stressful and scary. With proper planning, Americans can not only retire comfortably: They can also prosper. Cindy Couyoumjian’s third book explores the silent retirement crisis that will impact millions of Americans. She uses the term silent to convey the idea that the majority of those who are about to retire, or are in retirement, share a common and unspoken fear—running out of money. Couyoumjian asserts that the anxiety people have about their retirement is not a misdirected emotion. We are led to believe that the fear (silent as it is) is due to our lack of financial literacy or not having a financial plan in place. While some of this is true, it’s not totally our fault: Her book addresses the big-picture, systemic problems that conspire against average Americans while favoring the wealthy few. The first third of the book explores how broken capitalism has contributed to our broken retirement system. The second third offers us a new way of thinking and investing, underscoring how university endowments have achieved extraordinary return by using a multi-asset class investment approach. Part III offers meaningful solutions to the retirement crisis. The author introduces us to her flexible and customizable REALM model designed to potentially protect clients from sudden market losses. Also included is other valuable information such as estate planning, tax strategies, 401(k) rollover options, life insurance, and long-term care initiatives. Couyoumjian shows us that retirement planning isn’t just savings and investing. With an umbrella of other planning items, we can take action to make the difference between an anxious retirement defined by uncertainty and a comfortable one, grounded in prosperity. Founder of Cinergy Financial, Cindy Couyoumjian believes financial literacy is a moral imperative and has dedicated her professional life to helping people understand the constantly evolving financial and economic landscape. With 37 years of industry experience, she is a leader in the financial industry, managing over $200,000,000 in assets. She is the author of two previous best-selling books, Redefining Financial Literacy, (2021) and The Rise of Women and Wealth (2022). She has appeared on NBC, CBS, FOX 40, talk radio AM870 and 790 KABC, and was a brand contributor to Forbes in 2020. Her dedication and commitment to empower with facts, not fear, are unwavering as she continues to educate and guide her clients toward their individualized financial goals and objectives.
