September 20, 2012
Social Security: There is a Better Way
Married couples have up to 567 options for deciding when and how to file for their Social Security benefits. Yes, 567!
“They are faced with a bewildering array” of choices, said David Freitag, vice president of Impact Technologies Group Inc. in Charlotte, North Carolina, which just released a spiffy, user-friendly Social Security calculator to help.
No wonder people just throw up their hands and claim their benefits at 62, when they first become eligible. But in the midst of the baby boomer retirement tsunami, oodles of calculators are coming online to simplify the decision for couples. Impact is offering a 14-day free trial to anyone who wants to test its calculator.
Couples’ strategies have become more complex, because today’s boomer wives have spent a lifetime working and because they may earn wages rivaling or exceeding their husband’s, said Jim Blankenship, a financial planner in New Berlin in central Illinois. There is also more money at stake in making the right decision, he said.
“Before, it was much easier to have a rule of thumb to go by,” he said. “The decisions are different than what they used to be.” …Learn More
August 30, 2012
What You May Have Missed
A few articles Squared Away readers might’ve missed while they were on vacation are listed below.
A link to each article appears at the end of these summer headlines:
Couple Reach Across Financial Divide
Little Thought Put Into Retirement Date
How Can Debt Enhance Self-Esteem?
Progress Stalls for Young Adults
Free Financial Advice Goes Online
10 Student Loan Prevention Strategies
To support our blog, readers may want to sign up for our unobtrusive alerts – just one per week – by clicking here. And there’s always Facebook and Twitter!
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July 17, 2012
Free Financial Advice Goes Online
The summer slowdown might be a good opportunity for some readers to jump start a long-overdue review of their personal finances.
This summer and fall, the National Association of Personal Financial Advisors is throwing out a lifeline. NAPFA selects members from its national roster of fee-only advisers to give free financial advice online. In mid-June, advisers in Vermont, North Carolina, and Georgia answered questions from participants.
NAPFA’s next session is this Thursday, July 19, with three more sessions scheduled for August, September, and October. Click here to find out how to participate.
Another free resource is a new website with a comprehensive program to help individuals put together a financial plan. Developed by the Financial Security Project, an initiative of Boston College’s Center for Retirement Research, which sponsors this blog, the website has tools based on solid academic research. Personal financial information entered into the website is confidential.
To read a prior blog post about the site, click here. Since it’s still operating as a beta test site, users are welcome to send in their comments for how to improve it.
June 21, 2012
Set Priorities to Limit Travel Spending
The world seems like a small place for young adults, thanks to college internships abroad, the Web, and some boomer parents who took their children to Paris as effortlessly as 1950s parents hit the road in a Chevrolet.
While surveys have predicted that Americans plan to spend more on their 2012 vacations than they did last summer, that may not apply to young globetrotters on a budget.
In this 2010 video, Matt Gross, a free-lance travel writer for The New York Times, provides great advice that never gets stale for young adults with far-flung travel horizons. Gross’s tips amount to more than money savers – he puts forth a travel-spending philosophy:
Learn More
May 22, 2012
New Financial Tools Backed by Research
The Center for Retirement Research at Boston College has created a prototype personal finance website with tools and information on topics ranging from how to reduce spending or refinance a mortgage to the best way to draw down savings during retirement.
The website offers a comprehensive set of tools backed by impartial academic research – not sales pitches. Individuals can use each calculator, “Learn More” lesson, or “How To” guide individually or as the building blocks for an overall financial plan, which they can construct in a step-by-step process that begins on the homepage.
The website, also called Squared Away, was created by the Financial Security Project (FSP), a financial education initiative of the Center. It was funded (also like this blog) by the Social Security Administration.
The Center plans to distribute the site through various organizations, such as credit counselors, financial planners, employers, credit unions, and non-profits involved in helping low-income people build up their savings.
The website is still in the “beta” phase and will be improved over the coming months. We invite readers to try out the tools and comment on them by clicking “Learn More” below. All comments – good and bad – are welcome.Learn More
May 10, 2012
Mysterious Math Fuels Financial Markets
The stock market is on a downward jag, reminding us that financial events and products not in our control often determine our well-being. Thriller writer Robert Harris calls the markets an “alien force that slips human control.”
In today’s featured video, a California entrepreneur discusses how complex math, beyond our ability to comprehend, increasingly shapes the financial markets. He’s referring to various developments on Wall Street: the rise of computerized trading; Wall Street firms hiring math and engineering PhDs to design investing strategies; and institutional investors that use formulas to break multibillion-dollar stock trades into smaller transactions to evade detection by their competitors.
These are accomplished using “algorithms,” which are a bit like formulas but are far more complex mathematical progressions. Nobody really understands it, including narrator, Kevin Slavin, an independent tech consultant. And that’s the point.
He explains the mysteries of Wall Street’s “black box” in an simplified and elegant way that will wow viewers as he educates them.
“We’re writing these things we can no longer read,” Slavin said. “We’ve lost the sense of what’s actually happening in this world that we’ve made.” He adds, we are “only starting to make our way” to understanding it.Learn More
April 2, 2012
Young Adults Face Unique Money Issues
Many young adults right out of college are planning career moves or marriage – while grappling with complex financial issues.
Student loans weigh them down. And despite the improving job market, it’s still tough to find a job. Wages and salaries for those who are employed are stagnant in many industries. Thanks to the proliferating opportunities for e-shopping, young adults also face more temptations to buy than any previous generation.
“I feel like I’m definitely in the lion’s den,” said Eric Bell, who, at 28, is trying to get his financial education website for 20-somethings, YoBucko, off the ground. A former private banker, he is also looking for a job in his field, paying off student loans, and cheering on his girlfriend in her attempt to buy her first home.
Below are a few previous Squared Away posts written with young adults in mind. A link is provided at the end of each article’s title, or you can join the conversation on Facebook.
- Young Adults Adrift in E-Spending Ocean
PayPal, Groupon, smartphone apps that pay for store purchases, online retailers galore – technology has made shopping a breeze. Young adults unfamiliar with the old-fashioned cash economy may not realize how damaging electronic commerce can be to their budgets. …
About Squared Away
Learn more about our blog and its writer, Kimberly Blanton, a former Boston Globe reporter.
