Free Republic

It will come as no surprise to the regulars around here that I have soured to the point where I can barely pucker up to the work being done by our corporate, national media these days. My love affair with the profession I gave most of my life to has ended in hurt and disappointment. Our national press too often presents as incompetent fools who are more interested in being led around by the nose than they are in sniffing out stories, including the biggest one of our lives. Our democracy is under attack RIGHT NOW in America, but I...

As of January 1, 2024, Social Security ended a spousal rule that allowed recipients to switch between their benefits and their spouse's to receive the maximum amount. The only people who can still take advantage of this rule are those who turned 70 on January 1, 2024, or were born before January 1, 1954. Under the expired rule, the higher-earning spouse would claim spousal benefits at full retirement age while the other spouse claimed their benefit. The higher earner would then switch to their benefits at age 70, which maximizes the monthly Social Security payment because of the delayed retirement...

Labor economist Teresa Ghilarducci says work is the new retirement. She blames "policymakers who experimented with our retirement system 40 years ago, and they are not saying the experiment failed." That experiment is what is known today as the 401K, named after part of a 1978 law that offered companies an alternative to the traditional pension plan.

A Minnesota retirement system for public school teachers under Gov. Tim Walz is “cooking the books” by vastly underreporting annual fees paid to Wall Street investment managers — and posting near-impossible gains tantamount to a “Madoff miracle,” a top pension investigator said. The state-run Teachers Retirement Association, or TRA, has publicly disclosed less than 10% of an estimated $2.9 billion spent on fees in the past 10 years, said Edward Siedle, a former Security and Exchange Commission lawyer and independent pension investigator. The TRA also posted gains claiming it beat its own custom benchmark over periods of one, five, 10,...

Reports have surfaced that Justice Samuel Alito, a conservative voice on the Supreme Court, is considering retirement. Justice Alito, recognized as one of the more conservative members of the Court, was appointed by President George W. Bush and took his seat in January 2006. At 74, he is the second-oldest justice currently serving on the bench, after Clarence Thomas, who is 76. His alleged reflections on retirement come amidst ongoing attacks by the Democrats.

It seems like we see a new one of these "best and worst places for Americans to retire" analyses every month. They are all different, and all of their conclusions reveal, very plainly, the presumptions and attitudes of the organizations that complete such studies.So when a new piece emerged Saturday on the best and worst states for Americans to retire, I took a look at it. And the conclusions are... mixed.Bankrate, headquartered in New York City, evaluated all 50 states on data points to help determine where people might spend their golden years.Some of the factors include living costs, health...

One southern city has become a boomer boomtown thanks to an influx of older Americans flocking to its age-restricted, bustling community. Georgetown, Texas is officially the fastest-growing city in the country in part due to its wealthy 55-and-older community called Sun City Texas. An analysis of Census Bureau data for cities with populations of at least 50,000 by The Wall Street Journal found Georgetown has now been the top city for population growth for three years in a row. Georgetown grew 11 percent in 2023, 14 percent in 2022 and 11 percent in 2021. The median age in the boomer-rich...

Agnes P. saved every penny she could for retirement. Now at 78, she’s got more money than she knows what to do with, but fewer happy memories than she’d like. “I was so focused on saving that I forgot to actually live,” Agnes said. Her story shows why being too frugal can backfire. Her entire life, Agnes watched what she spent. Growing up without a lot of money instilled the idea that she had to save every penny. She packed lunches, kept her old car, and rarely took time off. While her friends were taking vacations, Agnes put every extra...

Twelve months of heavy resistance training—exercise that makes muscles work against force—around the time of retirement preserves vital leg strength years later, show the follow-up results of a clinical trial, published online. Resistance training can help to counteract this loss, but most of the published research has involved relatively short periods of time (6-9 months) to monitor its effects. The researchers therefore wanted to know whether a year of supervised resistance training with heavy loads would make any difference over the longer term. At the time, participants who had recently retired and were healthy. They were randomly assigned either to...

In the coming years, the retirement-age population will balloon to its largest size yet, drawing down Social Security funds, overwhelming retirement homes, and leaving a labor shortage in its wake. Larry Fink, the 71-year-old CEO of the asset-management behemoth BlackRock, offered a two-part solution to the looming retirement crisis in his annual March letter to shareholders. In order to avoid economic catastrophe, he argued, people should save more money and work longer. "What if the government and the private sector treated 60-plus year-olds as late-career workers with much to offer rather than people who should retire?" Fink wrote. The current...

A senior from Montana has delivered a viral speech about the sorry state of property taxes in the Treasure State. “I’m on Social Security, I’m 68-years-old and working just to pay my taxes,” says Kurt, in a clip shared on TikTok by Ryan Busse, who is running to be the next governor of Montana. Kurt claims that over the last couple of years, his annual property taxes have soared from $895 to almost $8,000 — an increase of around 790% — which he says is like paying almost “$700 a month rent to the state to live in our own...

We are living through what is being called the silver tsunami. According to Legal Jobs, “about 10,000 baby boomers turn 65 each day, and the entire generation is expected to reach retirement age by 2030.” While many people spend their working years aiming to eventually retire, there are reasons why complete retirement should not be a primary goal. For my book, Leading with Wisdom: Sage Advice from 100 Experts, I interviewed more than 100 top authorities about leadership and life. A recurring theme during these conversations was the idea that complete and total retirement should not be anyone’s end goal....

Lillian Zhang wasn’t even out of college before she started planning for retirement. Zhang was 20 years old when she opened her first retirement account, a Roth IRA, after learning about them from personal finance Youtube channels. She maxed it out for two years using money from her savings and summer internships, and when she got a job after college, switched her focus to maxing out her 401(k). Zhang, now 24, now has six figures stashed across three different retirement funds. (She recently opened a Simplified Employee Pension, or SEP, IRA for her side hustle as a content creator.) And...

What happens when one of the major political parties suggests the most modest of reforms to the benefits future Social Security beneficiaries will receive?The other major political party goes ballistic.Such were the atmospherics when the Republican Study Committee (RSC) played against the prevailing type with the GOP so far and issued a plan that included tweaking the retirement age.According to the RSC plan, the changes are intended to “prevent Biden's cuts to Social Security.” Setting aside who would be responsible for any future benefits cuts – which are all but assured if no one does anything now to avert them...

Liberals are mounting a pressure campaign to force liberal Supreme Court Justice Sonia Sotomayor to retire from the bench so President Joe Biden, who faces a tough reelection fight in November, can appoint a younger liberal successor before the election.Democrats fear that the 6–3 conservative majority on the nation’s highest court could become a 7–2 conservative majority if President Donald Trump wins the election in November and she dies during his second term of office.They point out that President Trump was able to replace liberal Justice Ruth Bader Ginsburg, who died of pancreatic cancer complications on Sept. 18, 2020, at...

Twilight zone‍With markets rising, consumer confidence holding up, and a wave of companies enforcing return-to-office mandates, for many Americans, it seems like the perfect time to finally hang up their hats. Indeed, the US recorded 2.7 million more retirees in December than were predicted in models from economists at the St. Louis Federal Reserve, as reported by Bloomberg.The recent upswing mirrors the ‘Great Retirement’ wave of 2020, when the pandemic saw the actual share of retirements swell and the labor force participation rate fall by 3.2% in the space of 2 months, the largest drop on record. However, rather than...

The average American 65 years of age and up earns an annual pre-tax income of $55,335, and that same group spends $52,141 yearly, or $4,345 a month, according to the Bureau of Labor Statistics (BLS). That income doesn’t leave a lot of extra cash for unexpected expenses or emergencies. The average American aged 65-69 has about $200,000 in retirement savings, according to an analysis of Federal Reserve data, and might still need to work even when they reach retirement age. High expenses often play a role. These four categories of spending tend to eat into monthly expenses — here’s how...

Before anybody can claim that I am circulating a conspiracy theory, or citing an unreliable “news” source, I am going to quote President Biden’s State of the Union address and his own website (whitehouse.gov) as the sources of this information. I will then encourage readers to circulate this information as widely as possible via social media, letters to the editor, and talk radio to educate the public between now and Election Day. The State of the Union address says in part, “Under my plan nobody earning less than $400,000 will pay an additional penny in federal taxes. ... It’s time...

Here’s a look at average retirement incomes and how much people spend during their golden years. According to data from the Bureau of Labor Statistics, U.S. households led by someone age 65 or older spent an average of $57,818 in 2022. Key Takeaways: * Sources of retirement income include Social Security, retirement accounts, pensions, dividends and employment wages. * Retirees can expect to spend 70% to 80% of their pre-retirement income in retirement, according to one rule of thumb. * Older Americans spent an average of $57,818 in 2022, but about 40% of households led by someone age 65 or...

Although it sounds too far-fetched to be true, Americans don’t actually own the stocks, bonds, mutual funds, and other assets held in common retirement vehicles such as Roth IRA and 401(k) accounts. In reality, Americans own what are called “security entitlements.” Back in the old days, before digitalization fundamentally transformed the mechanics of financial transactions, this was not the case. But that was then. This is now. Most Americans have probably never heard of the Uniform Commercial Code (UCC), which is “a comprehensive set of laws governing all commercial transactions in the United States.” Even fewer Americans are familiar with...