Our daily roundup of retirement news your clients may be thinking about.
New Year's Resolutions for Soon-to-Be Retirees
In this article in The Wall Street Journal, a group of retirement professionals share their thoughts about retirement and their New Year's resolutions. One of the experts, Alicia Munnell, director of Boston College's Center for Retirement Research, advises retirees to start spending their money. Spending a nest egg built through the years can be a big challenge for many retirees, she says. While some commentators say that people are poised to drain their retirement savings, many retirees are actually reluctant to use their savings, Munnell says. Another tip from Marc Agronin, a geriatric psychiatrist and medical director for mental health and clinical research at Miami Jewish Health Systems: Physical activity can benefit an aging clients brain. --The Wall Street Journal
How retirees learn from the costly mistakes of youth
As people age, they realize the mistakes they made in investing when they were younger, and consequently learn valuable lessons from these wrong moves, writes Henry Hebeler, a former executive of the Boeing Co. who offers guidance to people on retirement planning. Retirees also end up learning the importance of knowing a lot about financial products and services, of using broad index funds and bonds, of having simple allocation controls, and of taking note of financial services costs, Hebeler writes. They also realize that it pays to account for the taxes as well as make better decisions about insurance, deductibles, and Medicare. --MarketWatch
The biggest, year-end move for your 401(k) plan
Investing in passively managed index funds is a smart year-end move that 401(k) participants can do to secure their retirement savings in the plan, according to this article on Forbes. These funds charge minimal fees, subsequently reducing the expenses that eat away a substantial amount of the participants' assets. Workers who have no access to passively managed index funds should push their employer to include these funds in their 401(k) plan's investment options. --Forbes
Wealthy investors aren't likely to benefit from myRA
High-income investors are unlikely to benefit from a new savings vehicle dubbed myRA, which generates returns like intermediate-term Treasury bonds but without incurring principal losses, according to an article on Morningstar. Investments in myRa are capped at $15,000, and investors have to transfer the money to a Roth IRA if the limit is reached. Contribution and income limits set for myRA are the same as those for a Roth IRA, while the combined contributions to both myRA and IRA accounts are capped at $5,500 for people under 50 and $6,500 for those over 50. --Morningstar
How Social Security calculates your benefits
Social Security adjusts retirement benefits yearly based on people's wages and not on prices of commodities, according to an article on Time Money. The agency computes the index by getting the amount of all wages earned in a year and dividing the figure by the number of workers. Retirement benefits are based on the Average Indexed Monthly Earnings, which is the average of the 35 years of highest annual income. --Time Money
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