Tag Archives: Social Security

The Ageless Generation

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Jane Fonda at the Jane Fonda Hand And Foot Print Ceremony as part of the 2013 TCM Classic Film Festival, TCL Chinese Theater, Hollywood, CA 04-27-13
Jane Fonda in 2013

Are the Baby Boomers part of the Ageless Generation?

Many of us seem to act as if that were the case but there’s little doubt most of us feel younger than we appear. To me, the poster child for this ageless generation is Jane Fonda, whose famous workout videos appear to have held her in good stead in her personal twilight career.

(Technically, since she was born in 1937, Jane Fonda is not a post-war baby boomer but her spirit certainly seems to epitomize the zeitgeist of the generation that came soon after her).

If you get Netflix check out the recently released series Grace & Frankie, where  Fonda plays a 70-year old recent divorcee: even though she herself is actually 77! Equally vibrant are her aging costars: Lilly Tomlin, Martin Sheen and Sam Waterston (best known as the prosecutor on Law & Order). Tomlin is 75 and the two male co-stars are 74.

Medical advances will transform the global economy

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Amazon.com

The Ageless Generation also happens to be the title of a recent (2013) book by Dr. Alex Zhavornonkov, director of the Biogerontology Research Foundation and founder of the International Aging Research Portfolio. It’s one of about a dozen books I read in recent months in preparation for a talk on Longevity that I gave on Monday to the National Elder Planning Issues Conference in Niagara Falls.

The book’s subtitle summarizes the gist of it: How advances in biomedicine will transform the global economy. Since the focus is on the United States, it will come as no surprise that  Zhavornonkov believes breakthroughs in extending Longevity can only make a shaky Social Security and Medicare system that much more fragile in the United States, and by extension their equivalent programs in other advanced nations.

Pressure on Social Security & Medicare

Continue Reading…

Weekly Wrap: Voluntary CPP expansion, Social Security fixes, Longevity Insurance, Tontine Annuities

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View of Ottawa on the Grunge Canadian Flag

A lot of coverage this week for the Tories’ floating of a “voluntary” expansion of the Canada Pension Plan (CPP: Canada’s equivalent of Social Security, if you also include its Old Age Security program), especially when you consider the details were pretty scant.

Incidentally, the issue is quite similar with Social Security in the U.S. This week, Reuters ran a piece entitled How to use Social Security to fix Retirement Inequality. It makes the case for “expanding” Social Security benefits “to help people who need it most.”

The Hub ran two pieces on the proposed CPP expansion: an initial one that felt it looked promising, despite the lack of detail: Bring it on!, followed by a guest blog by Retirement Redux’s Sheryl Smolkin: Voluntary CPP contributions will favour high earners.

Time to bring back Tontine Annuities? Continue Reading…

Weekly wrap: Futurepreneurs, seminar ripoffs and millennial homeowners

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businessman and businesswoman outdoorsWe’ve talked on the Hub before about older Boomerpreneurs (Baby Boomer entrepreneurs) but what about younger entrepreneurs? After all, Bill Gates and Steven Jobs made the leap into entrepreneurship while they were barely out of their teens. The Million Dollar Journey blog this week did a good piece on the Futurepreneur Canada programs. 

Beware however some entrepreneurs who may be getting rich on your desire to become an entrepreneur via real estate. Read this Boomer & Echo blog: Free Seminar — Learn How to Get Ripped Off.

And while we’re on the subject of real estate, check out the Broke Millennial’s recent blog on The Compromises Millennials Make to be Homeowners.

In Canada there has long been talk about expanding the CPP, or Canada Pension Plan. But most of the chatter in the United States has been about retrenching on social security benefits. Riding to the rescue is celebrity economist Paul Krugman, who argued this week in the New York Times the Case for Expanding Social Security.

But just in case you do fall short in saving for retirement, you can take heart from Jonathan Clements’ article in the Wall Street Journal this week, arguing Why you will need less money than you think for Retirement. Of course, we here at the Financial Independence Hub don’t much believe in the outdated concept of Retirement. We prefer the term Findependence, Continue Reading…

Weekly wrap: Social Security a House of Cards?, under-saving Americans & workaholic Boomers

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at the Netflix "House of Cards" Season 2 Special Screening, DGA, Los Angeles, CA 02-13-14
President Underwood wants to take away your Social Security

By Jonathan Chevreau

If you’ve been binge-watching the new third season of House of Cards on Netflix, you’ll know that the nefarious Frank Underwood — now the fictional president of the United States — has decided Social Security is a luxury the nation can no longer afford, as is Medicare and Medicaid.

Instead, a new program dubbed AmWorks (for America Works) aims to provide a job for anyone who wants one. The Washington Post poses the question Could the House of Cards America Works program actually work?

Probably not, but there’s been a lot of online commentary on the very notion of killing the 80-year old Social Security program, given how many Americans have little retirement savings resources other than it. One is this piece from the Independent Women’s Forum, entitled House of Cards gets Social Security policy right, but messaging wrong.

If the prospect of losing Social Security doesn’t frighten you, maybe this will:  New York Times reports that many Americans will run out of money in retirement unless at least two things happen: one, they need to save more, and two, what money they do need to save needs to be invested more wisely, which means avoiding high-fee mutual funds. It blames mutual fund expense ratios of 1.12% of assets and that’s in the United States. Canadian mutual fund MERs are roughly twice that high.

So the solution is to just keep working, perhaps in an Underwoodian variation of AmWorks? Not so fast! Personal finance author and columnist Helaine Olen writes an insightful piece in Slate on what she calls the “Semi-Retirement Myth.” As the online site puts it, “Don’t buy the tales of meaningful work into your 70s. Your retirement is inevitable — and bleaker than the last generation’s.”

Better hope for “Freedom Six Feet Under.” Unfortunately, as the Hub’s Longevity & Aging section continually reminds us, odds are we’re all going to be living longer and healthier than we once may have imagined. Perhaps the canary in the coal mine is Irving Kahn, who passed away last week at age 109. One of the world’s oldest active investors, Kahn was around to experience the crash of 1929. Here’s the obituary from the Telegraph.

On the same subject, sadly comes news of the death of Thomas Stanley, co-author of the groundbreaking bible of personal finance, The Millionaire Next Door. Here’s a good tribute on him from the New York Times.

Globe & Mail on Reforming Retirement

North of the border, the Globe & Mail has been running a series on reforming retirement. Last week it weighed in to the TFSA debate. Continue Reading…

Is the Retirement grass greener in the United States or Canada?

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Depositphotos_40901151_xsBy Jonathan Chevreau

The Financial Independence Hub attempts to be a North American portal running content that may interest readers on either side of the 49th parallel.

This isn’t always easy; sometimes we run blogs from people like Roger Wohlner, The Chicago Financial Planner and perforce the content (like this blog he adapted for the Hub) will be mostly US-specific: touching on topics like IRAs, 401(k)s, Roth IRAs and all the rest of it.

By the same token, our Canadian contributors often write about things like the TFSA or Tax Free Savings Account, which is the equivalent of America’s Roth IRAs and variants of same.

As fate would have it, the Financial Post (my former employer until 2012), asked me to contribute an article comparing the tax and retirement systems of the two countries. You can find it here under the headline Canada vs. the US: Whose Retirement grass is greener?

Findependence is legitimate cross-border topic

I was happy to take the assignment because I’ve been grappling with US/Canadian tax and retirement issues ever since I wrote the book that spawned this and other web sites. The original edition of my 2008 financial novel, Findependence Day, was meant to be a transborder financial love story, covering the tax and retirement topics of both countries through the eyes of characters residing in both countries.

My feeling was then and remains that when you get right down to it, the main lessons of Financial Independence are pretty similar in the two countries. Continue Reading…