Over 65 blog

Tag: retirement

  • Retirement, 20 years from now

    A national organization recently asked me to write a brief piece on the future of retirement.  Here’s how I responded. I know what retirement will–or at least should–look like 20 years from now. I’m just not sure how we will get from here to there. Unfortunately, my best guess is that we will have to…

  • Aging with Purpose

    Near the end of my clinical career as a psychiatrist, I, like so many other psychiatrists, was required to do more in less time. In order to use that precious time as best as possible, I wondered if there was anything else I could do to offset that limitation. Soon, I recalled the landmark book…

  • Shift Retirement Plans Away from Employers

    Lots of proposals have been put forth for a new and better retirement system, but they don’t answer the question of how we get from here to there. (For examples of proposals, see the SAFE plan or the Guaranteed Retirement Accounts proposal.) We have a fairly extensive – albeit far from perfect – 401(k) system…

  • Is 70 the “Right” Retirement Age?

    I keep thinking about this notion that 70 is the “real” Social Security retirement age.  It is the age at which people get maximum monthly benefits, and if they work beyond this age they see their lifetime benefits decline.  But is 70 the right age?  “Right” can mean a number of things.  One issue is…

  • Activism by the Elderly

    As a group, we over 65ers have substantial non-working time. According to the US Census Bureau, in 2011 16.2% of us participated in the labor force. The participation rate falls off steeply with age. Among 65 – 69 year old men (2010 data), 35.8% were working. For 70 – 74 year olds 20.9% were employed,…

  • The Elderly not Resting on their Laurels

    On the morning of Wednesday, November 20th, 2013, I was beginning to peruse the article by Dan Gorenstein in the New York Times, “How Doctors Die: In Coming to Grips With Their Own Mortality, They Are Showing the Way for Others”. CNN was on the TV in the background. On came the presentation of the…

  • Retirement and Dementia

    On Monday, July 15, at 4:00 PM at the Alzheimer’s Association International Conference in Boston, Carole Dufouil, director of research in neuroepidemiology at the Institut National de la santé et de la recherché médicale at the Bordeaux School of Public Health in France, presented her research on the relationship between retirement and dementia. In less…

  • More are retiring with mortgages and credit card debt

    Alicia H. Munnell  With a contracting retirement income system, rapidly rising health-care costs, and the prospect of long-term care expenses, one would have thought that people approaching retirement would be paying off their credit card debt and closing out their mortgages.  But surveys suggest that people are entering retirement with more debt than ever before…

  • The Benefits of Phased Retirement

    Until relatively recently, employees in the U.S. typically transitioned directly from full time work to full time retirement. That practice had at least four major drawbacks: Some employees wanted to stop working full time but for financial reasons felt a need to continue earning. Some employees found their work meaningful apart from the income it…

  • Regulation of Long-Term Care Insurance in Massachusetts

    The time may come when any one of us will need outside help with certain basic activities, referred to collectively as the activities of daily living or ADLs.   Long-term care insurance (LTCI) is a resource for covering some or all of the costs of providing the care needed in that unfortunate situation.  It is not…