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AARP Article

How to Financially Protect Your Spouse

When faced with decisions about pension benefits, shortsighted choices now can cause harm in the future

I had lunch recently with a friend whose husband, a teacher, retired five years ago. “We made a big mistake with his company pension,” she told me. “We took the wrong one.”

Pensions come in two versions — a larger check that covers only the lifetime of the person who earned it, and a smaller check that also covers the lifetime of his or her spouse. They chose the larger check to give themselves more money to spend. Now, they both wish they’d taken the version that covered her, too. The prospect of losing his pension income if he dies first has left her a little scared.

Unfortunately, that’s a common story — and not only for pension decisions. Caring partners each want the other to be financially protected, if left alone. But sometimes they make shortsighted choices or accidentally cut a spouse out of money that he or she needs by failing to submit the right paperwork. Here are four things couples should think about that can save a spouse from financial harm:

Leave a larger income

When will you start taking Social Security? A relative of mine, who retired (with pension) at 60 and now has a different and well-paying job, intended to take his Social Security at 62. When I heard that, I yelped. His wife has savings and a pension of her own, and they don’t need extra money now. If he waits until 66 to collect, his Social Security check will be 33 percent larger (plus inflation adjustments) than if he starts at 62. It will be a fat 76 percent higher if he waits until 70.

Money Matters

It’s common to say, “I’ll take Social Security at 62 so that, if I die early, I won’t have lost income that I should have had.” That could be a two-way mistake. First, if you’re healthy, you’ll probably live longer than you expect. By waiting to file for Social Security, you’re storing up extra income for your retirement’s later years. Second, married people shouldn’t think only of their incomes today. If the husband, say, was the main breadwinner, the longer he waits before collecting, the larger the income he’ll leave to his surviving spouse, if he dies first.

Check your individual retirement account beneficiary

Whoever you name on your IRA’s beneficiary form will get the money, whether it’s fair or not. Say that you divorced and remarried, named your new spouse as your heir in your will, but forgot to take your ex’s name off the IRA form. Your ex will get the money, even if the divorce decree said otherwise. You should clean up all your beneficiary forms when you divorce or marry, to avoid accidentally disinheriting a spouse.

Have the power of “I do”

Who will inherit the savings in your 401(k) or similar plans? Here, spouses have super-protection. When you marry, your spouse is entitled to every penny in your 401(k), from the moment you both say “I do.” That’s federal law. The beneficiary form is irrelevant, and so is your will. If you want a different outcome — for example, to leave part or all of your 401(k) to children of a previous marriage — you can ask your spouse to waive his or her rights. The waiver has to be in writing, notarized or witnessed by a plan representative, and filed with your plan.

This can’t be done in advance of the wedding — only a spouse can waive these rights. If you have a prenuptial agreement, it should include a promise to sign. And get thee to a notary right after the honeymoon or even before. In my personal case, there was a notary at the ceremony. My lovely husband signed even before the music struck up.

Guarantee lifetime benefits from a variable annuity

These annuities combine an investment with a guaranteed lifetime income. But the income normally lasts only for the buyer’s lifetime and ends if he or she dies. Any spousal benefits might cover only the annuity’s current investment value or a death payout, says annuity expert Kevin Loffredi, a vice president of investment research firm Morningstar. If you want the annuity to cover both lives, you generally have to pay more or accept a lower income guarantee. Couples often don’t realize that their annuity cuts out the survivor, says Mark Cortazzo of annuityreview.com, which evaluates variable annuities. Some salespeople also have no idea. If you venture into one of these complex contracts, think “spouse first.”

(Originally published in The AARP Monthly Bulletin.)

AARP Article

Divorce after 50 Will Cost You Money

As gray divorce surges, more 50+ people prepare for a leaner life

Families and friends are often shocked when long marriages — including long, bad marriages — fall apart. You endured each other for 30, even 50, years, so why give up now?

I’d say it’s for all the reasons that younger people divorce. The partners bore each other, harbor grudges, seek a different kind of life or fall in love with someone else. Being surprised at gray divorce strikes me as a form of ageism — as if one or the other of a couple (perhaps both) are somehow too old for disappointment, folly or hope.

Whatever the reason, older couples are definitely doing it. The divorce rate among people 50 and older doubled between 1990 and 2010, at a time when the rate for the general population was pretty flat. As an age group, they accounted for roughly 25 percent of all 2010 divorces, according to a study by Susan Brown and I-Fen Lin of the National Center for Family & Marriage Research at Bowling Green State University in Ohio.

A greater willingness to end unhappy marriages suggests that older couples today have more financial resources to fall back on. People usually have to see a way forward financially, no matter how slim, before splitting up. Women, in particular, are more apt to have paychecks and 401(k)s.

How the property is divided depends on state law and your personal negotiation. The starting place, after long marriages, is half the money for each. You can roll your share of your ex’s individual retirement account into an IRA of your own, tax-free. The same is true of a 401(k) or similar plan. If there’s a traditional pension, you can choose a lump sum or a portion of each monthly lifetime payment when your ex retires. Attorney Maria Cognetti, president of the American Academy of Matrimonial Lawyers with a practice in Camp Hill, Pa., advises dependent spouses to take the monthly payments if they don’t know much about investing. The lump sum might not last as long as they thought.

If the amount of property is modest, dependent spouses, usually wives, will probably get alimony. Cognetti advises women to try to settle their claim in negotiation, even if it’s for a little less money than they want. That provides certainty. You don’t know what a judge will decide in court.

When estimating your budget as a single person, take a deep dive into your Social Security options. If the marriage lasted at least 10 years, you can collect on your ex’s account. Spousal benefits can be claimed as early as age 62, provided that your ex has filed for benefits, too. If not, you can claim if your spouse is eligible for benefits and you’ve been divorced for at least two years, says Robin Brewton of SocialSecuritySolutions.com. Note that filing at 62 locks you into a lower check. You’d do better by waiting until your full retirement age, probably 66. If your ex dies, you can collect survivor’s benefits.

However you slice it, life will likely be financially leaner for you both. That’s divorce’s bottom line — at any age.

(Originally published in The AARP Monthly Bulletin.)

AARP Article

Is an Annuity Right for You?

The challenge: Making your money last for life

Here’s the single most important question for people who are planning for — or already into — their retirement years: How are you going to make your money last for life? With good health and good cheer, you’re likely to be among the half of your age group that dances past your official life-expectancy age.

Social Security lasts for life, and so does an employer pension. If you don’t have a pension, annuities can serve as a pension substitute. Increasingly, financial planners are paying attention to this option as a way of ensuring that their clients don’t run out of money.

Annuities are sold by insurance companies. Some come with bells and whistles that aren’t worth their price. The safest policies are “immediate pay” annuities, in which you put up a sum of money and your insurer starts paying you a certain percentage of that for life. The payments can also cover the lifetimes of you and a beneficiary, such as your partner or spouse.

Choosing the right type of annuity

These pension substitutes come in three main varieties. An “immediate fixed” annuity provides a fixed number of dollars per month. An “immediate variable” annuity, invested in a mix of stock and bond mutual funds, pays you a fixed percentage of the portfolio’s value, which will rise and fall. An “inflation-linked” annuity adjusts your payments for inflation every year (you can also pick a fixed annual adjustment, such as 2 or 3 percent).

You generally get the largest initial payout from the immediate fixed annuity. The others might start smaller but can increase your payouts over time.

What has always bothered people about annuities is what I call the sucker factor. If you put $100,000 into the plan today and die next year, you’ll think (from the grave) that you were a sucker because the insurance company retained the money you didn’t receive.

Escaping the sucker factor

But it’s this very sucker factor that makes annuities so attractive. Because some people will die early, the insurer can afford to pay you more per month than you could prudently draw out of personal investments.

For example, take a 65-year-old woman who has $100,000 in savings. If she puts half of it into stock mutual funds and half into bond funds, and withdraws the traditional 4 percent in the first year, she’ll get $333 a month. If she raises that amount by inflation each year, the money could last for 30 years (but with no guarantee).

If she puts $100,000 into a Principal Life Insurance Co. inflation-adjusted annuity, she’ll start higher — with $379 a month (at this writing), plus guaranteed lifetime inflation protection. The fixed-payment annuity gives her $531. If she dies after just a few years, “So what?” says Miami financial planner Harold Evensky. “The annuity served its purpose. It paid her more than she could take from systematic withdrawals from savings and insured her in case she lived too long.”

Weighing benefits and risks

If you can manage payments that change, consider an immediate variable annuity, says annuities expert Moshe Milevsky of York University in Toronto. You choose the percentage of the total portfolio that you’ll want paid out, in monthly amounts. Starting with a lower percentage sets you up for higher payments in the future, as long-term stock values grow. “The potential upside seems to compensate for the downside risk,” he says.

Milwaukee financial planner Paula Hogan encourages clients to consider inflation-protected annuities, to preserve their lifetime purchasing power. But don’t annuitize all your money, she warns. You need ready cash for unexpected expenses, such as health costs. If you’re living on Social Security plus modest savings, annuities may not be for you. They’re best suited to people who use them as the safe part of their investment mix, with the rest of their money invested for long-term growth.

Financial planner Michael Kitces of Columbia, Md., has a smart idea for people who’d rather keep their cash and take systematic 4 percent withdrawals adjusted for inflation. Split your savings evenly between stock funds and bond funds, and take the withdrawals mostly from bonds for the first 10 years. The value of your equities should more than beat your gains from inflation-adjusted annuities, his research shows. Of course, there’s no guarantee. If you live well into your 90s, Kitces says, the annuities will win.

(Originally published in The AARP Monthly Bulletin.)

AARP Article

Giving Money to Your Grandchildren

Tips for protecting your financial stability as you help others

Let’s hear it for grandparents! Financial planners tell me that, increasingly, you’re stepping up to help your grandchildren, especially with higher education expenses.

“There’s more of this going on than in the past, because more of the parents are hurting financially,” says Westwood, N.J., planner Tom Orecchio. Also, “Grandparents have a soft spot for giving to grandkids,” says Columbus, Ohio, planner Gary Vawter, “all the more so if the parents need less.”

Before you start writing checks, however, be sure that you have enough saved for yourself — to get through a business downturn or cover the potential cost of long-term care. God forbid you should have to ask for the money back.

You risk spending too much by making fixed, future promises, such as “$5,000 a year for each grandchild for college.” That might become an albatross around your neck in your older age. Instead, stay flexible, says planner Courtney Weber of Cincinnati. Your family should understand that one year’s gift may be larger or smaller than the gift the year before, or may not come at all.

Charitable Giving

One approach is to vary your generosity by the size of your investment portfolio, Vawter says. Establish the floor amount you feel that you need for your own security and make gifts only in years that your nest egg is worth more than that. Alternatively, you might help with specific bills, such as braces or medical expenses not covered by insurance. If you pay the doctors directly, it won’t affect the annual amount you can give that same grandchild, gift-tax-free ($14,000 in 2013; $28,000 for married couples filing jointly).

Tax-favored 529 plans for college — a common grandparent choice for young children — are flexible, too. Make an initial contribution to open the plan (as little as $5 to $15, but you’ll probably want to start with more), then add money as you can afford it. The plan is invested in mutual funds. There’s usually a state tax credit or deduction for your contributions. The funds can grow tax-free if used for higher education, as planned. If the parents live in another state, and start a 529 for the same child there, they might get a tax credit or deduction, too.

What’s more, 529s hold a unique place on the shelf of estate-planning tricks for people with substantial wealth. Any money you put into these plans is out of your estate, so it escapes the estate tax. But if you find that you’re low on cash, you can take the money back, subject only to a 10 percent penalty on the money your contribution earned.

All the states except Wyoming have 529s. To see what they offer and how good they are, go to savingforcollege.com. If there’s no state tax deduction, or a low one, consider a low-cost plan from another state. Buy a “direct-sold plan” online, rather than a plan sold by a commission-based financial adviser. The states charge higher 529 program fees for adviser-sold plans, the advisers themselves put you into more expensive, actively managed mutual funds, and there may be sales commissions. A high total expense fee would be 1.5 percent a year and up. The lowest-cost plans that accept residents from other states — Virginia, New York, California and Ohio — mostly come in under 0.25 percent.

If you don’t want to limit your giving to education, or don’t care about tax breaks, you might simply set up a separate account marked “grandchildren,” says planner George Middleton of Vancouver, Wash. You maintain control of the money and can dole it out at will.

Your grandchild can use 529 money for tuition and fees at any accredited school in the country, including community colleges, trade schools and professional schools. All 529 plans permit students to attend selected colleges abroad. If he or she decides not to start, or finish, school, or need all the money, you can transfer what’s left in the plan to another family member, tax-free.

If you’ve been making regular year-end gifts to your adult children, they might not take kindly to your switching some of that money to the grandchildren. Your children might rely on those gifts to pay their property taxes, rather than saving in advance, says Houston planner Larry Maddox. That goes to my point about maintaining flexibility. It doesn’t sit well for children to depend on your generosity for their style of life.

More grandparents are also leaving money directly to grandchildren in their wills, if they think the parents are living above their means. In Kansas, the thinking goes like this, says planner Randy Clayton of Topeka: “I want to be sure that my grandchild can get an education. If I leave all the money to my kids, I’m not sure my grandchildren will get anything, because the kids will spend it all.” Besides, adds Middleton, mischievously, “Grandchildren are young and lovable with no apparent flaws — yet.”

Consult your financial or tax adviser for advice regarding your personal situation.

(Originally published in The AARP Monthly Bulletin.)

AARP Article

Is a Roth IRA Right for You?

Tax-free income and flexibility make this a secure and sensible retirement savings plan

With income taxes rising, the Roth individual retirement account is looking better and better. It not only offers tax-free income in the future, it gives you more flexibility than any other kind of retirement account, including traditional IRAs.

Like so many savings plans, Roths work best when you start them young. Happily, “young,” by my age scale, includes working people in their early 50s. Older working people should consider them, too.

Both Roths and traditional IRAs are basically savings accounts with good tax breaks, which makes them an excellent place to stash cash for your retirement. You can sock away up to $5,500 in an IRA this year — $6,500 if you’re 50 or older.

You can make the full annual contribution up to a certain income level. For traditional IRAs, that’s currently $59,000 for singles and $95,000 for marrieds. For Roths, it’s better — $112,000 for singles and $178,000 for marrieds. After that, the allowed contributions gradually decrease to zero.

Here’s what Roths offer compared with traditional IRAs:

1. Easy access to your money, at any age.

You’re allowed to withdraw your personal contributions whenever you want, without paying taxes or penalties. If you put $1,000 into a Roth on Monday and suddenly need some cash on Tuesday, you can take that $1,000 right out again. So your Roth can be both a retirement account and a ready savings account. Traditional IRAs don’t allow free withdrawals.

2. Retirement income, tax-free.

There’s no tax deduction for the money you put into a Roth. Instead, the money you earn on your investments comes tax-free when you retire. To get this tax break, you generally have to hold the Roth for at least five years and be older than 59-1/2. If you’re in a high tax bracket and expect to drop to a lower one when you retire, you might prefer the traditional IRA. In a traditional plan, your contribution is deductible on your current tax return. On the other hand, you might be in a high bracket when you retire, especially after age 70-1/2 — the age when people who hold traditional IRAs begin mandatory withdrawals. Future tax rates are a guessing game. They’re one factor, but not the only one, that enters into the Roth decision.

3. Tax-free wealth for your heirs.

Roth accounts are terrific for people who expect to leave at least some of their IRA savings to their heirs. People who inherit traditional IRAs owe income taxes on the money. Roth IRAs come income tax-free and could grow, tax-free, for two or three generations.

4. Opportunity to increase your wealth at older ages.

You don’t have to make withdrawals from a Roth. Traditional IRAs force you to start withdrawals at 70-1/2. If you work past 70-1/2, you can continue contributing to a Roth but not to a traditional IRA.

5. Potential savings on future Social Security taxes and Medicare premiums.

You owe income taxes on part of your Social Security benefits if you’re single with an adjusted income of at least $25,000, or married with $32,000. Your “income” includes withdrawals from a traditional IRA, which — at 70-1/2 — could be large. Money withdrawn from a Roth, however, is exempt from this calculation, which holds future taxes down. Roth withdrawals also are exempt from the calculation that charges wealthy people higher premiums for Medicare. In this context, “wealthy” means adjusted incomes over $85,000 for singles and over $170,000 for married couples.

6. Larger annual contributions.

If Roths are offered within a company 401(k) plan, you can contribute up to $17,500 this year and $23,000 at 50 and older.

7. An option to roll over any amount of money from a traditional IRA or 401(k) into a Roth.

You might not want to do this because you’ll owe income taxes on the amount transferred. But James Lange of the Lange Financial Group says the switch makes sense if you think your tax rate will be about the same or higher when you retire and you can pay the tax with non-IRA funds. Paying with IRA funds would deplete your “tax-favored” savings. So you might consider rolling over a modest amount each year.

8. A great gift for kids.

If your children or grandchildren can’t afford to contribute to a retirement plan, you can start a Roth for them.

(Originally published in The AARP Monthly Bulletin.)

AARP Article

Looking for a Job? Why You Need to Go Social

Your profile is your calling card to the new generation of recruiters

When you apply for a job today, here’s what the recruiter is likely to do to get a more rounded view of your accomplishments: Check your profile on LinkedIn. Browse your Facebook page. Look for a blog or a website. And see if you’re tweeting, which shows that you at least know what it is.

If you look competent online, you might get a response to the résumé that you emailed to the company. If you have no digital footprint, you’re likely to get a pass. The only exceptions might be jobs at very small companies or nonprofits, or lower-level jobs, for which résumés are enough.

All this might come as a shock to job seekers over age 50, who have been happy to leave tweeting to the birds. But employers today need people who are comfortable online, and digital recruiting is the way to find them.

I recently recommended an editor who was over age 60 for a job, and the first question I got from the recruiter was, “Is she good at social?” — meaning social media. A job seeker over age 55 told me that even temp agencies want you to have a website as part of your job portfolio. “Seasoned, mature workers look young online, if they show they can communicate in the digital world,” says James John, chief operating officer of Beyond.com, a job search site.

Get Social!

1. Make yourself visible

If you’re just browsing company job boards — boomers’ favorite sources of job openings — and sending résumés online, you’re not doing enough: Employers need proof that you’re up-to-date. Even if you network the old-fashioned way, by calling friends and having lunches, the employment decision will probably be funneled through the hiring office, which will search for you online.

So before you even begin a job search, you should set up a digital profile or improve the profile you have. It’s your calling card to the new generation of recruiters.

Begin with LinkedIn. Last year, AARP launched a program on LinkedIn — now called Life Reimagined for Work — that brings together workers, employers and career management experts. On LinkedIn, there’s a profile page where you present yourself — showing your employment history, skills, certifications, honors, volunteer work and anything else you’d like a recruiter to know. Don’t hesitate to brag — your competition does. Post an appropriate head shot. Recruiters won’t look at profiles without one.

Then search for friends and business colleagues on LinkedIn. If they have profiles, send a request to connect with them online, and ask key people to post a written recommendation on your page. See if the companies you’d like to work for have LinkedIn pages. You’ll find job postings there, as well as company news.

“Some companies don’t even ask for an emailed résumé anymore,” one young job seeker told me. “When you’re on their job site, they ask you to apply by clicking a LinkedIn button and uploading your profile.” Don’t even think of faxing. That’s so yesterday, and a sign that you’re out-of-date. Snail mail just wastes a stamp.

2. ‘Friend’ someone (lots of someones)

Use Facebook to set up a free profile page. Again, search for friends and business colleagues and send them a “friend” request to link to their pages. You can ask them about the job market or about the companies where they work. This is another place to inform your community about the work you’re doing, such as consulting, writing or developing a part-time business. Companies have Facebook pages, too.

To step up your game, consider a personal website under your own name — for example, JaneDoe.com. You want the site to come up if a recruiter searches for you specifically.

A website is the place to demonstrate professional expertise. You can expand on your accomplishments and link to any work that already appears online, such as papers, articles or professional awards. (Enter your name into an online search engine to see what shows up.) Keep up with the news in your field and post commentaries — that section of your site is called a blog. Every couple of days, write something on the subject, under a headline that will attract attention.

(As an example of how this can work, take Mitchell Hirsch of Wilton, Conn. When he was out of work, he blogged regularly on unemployment data and issues. His posts were discovered and he was asked to add commentary to other websites. “At first, I was writing for $25 a post,” Hirsch says. “But I told my wife that something would come of this, and it did.” Today, he advocates for the unemployed at the National Employment Law Project in Washington.)

3. Learn the joys of tweeting

Then there’s Twitter — the place where you summarize the world in no more than 140 characters. Each post is called a tweet, and it’s delivered as a text message. You can follow the tweets not only of colleagues who might be on Twitter, but also of recruiters or important people in your field. You also can follow companies that tweet job openings. Twitter doesn’t carry the heft of LinkedIn, but it shows employers that you’re keeping up with the digital world.

Once you’ve set up your digital presence, you have to feed the beast with regular posts, comments and links to interesting developments, which is a job in itself. But the modern job hunter can’t avoid it.

“The online world is the new talent pool,” says Dan Schawbel, founder of Millennial Branding. “If you aren’t in that pool, because you don’t have profiles on the networks, then you won’t be found and aren’t as employable.”

If all this sounds daunting — and it flummoxed me when I first set up my profiles — you can find plenty of advice online. Search the Web for answers to your practical questions; buy a book about websites; ask your children and grandchildren for help; or, for help with everything from the most basic Web skills to how to use online organizing tools, hire a computer tutor or attend a continuing education class.

4. Start drilling down

Once you’ve established — or enhanced — your presence online, you’re ready to drill down on jobs. Big companies and many smaller ones have “Careers” pages online. Job boards such as Monster.com, Craigslist.com and CareerBuilder.com list thousands of jobs.

Beyond.com will build a profile from your résumé that can go to any employer who checks you out. There are job boards for particular professions, such as JournalismJobs.com and newspaper want ads.

As in the old days, you still need a cover letter, tailored for the job you’re seeking. Tip: Use the same keywords that the company put in its job posting. It will help the computer find you.

Once you get in the door for an interview, you can sell your experience, contacts and successes. The interviewer will have read your profiles, so he or she already thinks you might be a fit.

“Employers are always going to question the energy and relevancy of older workers,” says Wayne Breitbarth, a social media trainer and author of The Power Formula for LinkedIn Success. “An online ID shows that you’ve already changed with the times.”

(Originally published in The AARP Monthly Bulletin.)

AARP Article

It’s Time to ‘Power Save’ for Your Retirement

Can you really count on working until you’re 70 — or older?

There’s a myth going around that I’d like to swat down. It’s supported by working people — maybe even you — who aren’t saving enough money to live comfortably when their paychecks stop. The myth says you’ll be OK, even if you don’t increase your 401(k) contributions or other savings. You’ll make up for your small nest egg by working longer. The usual phrase is, “I’ll work till I drop.”

Many retirement experts tell the same tale. If everyone works and saves until 70, most of the retirement income problem does go away.

That’s a big “if.” In 2011, only 32.3 percent of men and 18.7 percent of women age 70 or older were still employed in some capacity, the Bureau of Labor Statistics reports.

“It’s terrible public policy to advise people that they can plan on solving their financial problems by working longer,” says Jack VanDerhei, research director of the Employee Benefit Research Institute (EBRI). “You should take control of your retirement now, while you have the chance.” That means reducing expenses and pouring everything you can into savings during the time you have left to work.

You might be able to stay employed until 70 if you’re healthy, lucky, well-off, work for a company that keeps older employees, or run a business of your own. But the more familiar story is that of older workers forced out of jobs they’d hoped to keep.

Half of the people retired today say they left work early and unexpectedly, most because of health problems, disability or changes such as downsizing, according to an EBRI survey. Those aren’t great odds, if you’re counting on working to pay the bills.

You can “power save”

The good news is that you can add a surprising amount to your nest egg in just a few years if you squeeze your spending and make saving money your priority.

Say, for example, you’re 50, earning $70,000. You’ve saved $100,000 in a 401(k) and are contributing 7 percent of your pay — $4,900 a year. If you make no change, and have to leave your job after five years, you’ll have $169,000. But if you double your contribution, you’ll have almost $200,000 — a much more comfortable cushion. If you double your contribution and work for 10 more years, you’ll have $336,700. That could be $531,000 if you make it to 65.

(To estimate the gains, I took the past 10-year returns of Vanguard’s U.S. Balanced Index Fund, which holds 60 percent in stocks and 40 percent in bonds — the classic investment mix. The stock and bond portions each follow a major market index. Over the decade ending last November, that portfolio earned almost 7 percent a year, after fees.)

At retirement, a bigger nest egg is just the start of the saver’s advantage. Even though you’ll be using the money to help pay your bills, the savings that remain in your 401(k) or individual retirement account will keep on making long-term gains. “Roughly half of your total lifetime investment return comes from earnings on your savings after you retire and start withdrawing money,” says Don Ezra, a retirement wealth consultant and co-chair of Global Consulting, Russell Investments.

What if your nest egg is invested more conservatively and doesn’t earn an average of 7 percent over 10 years? “In a low-rate-of-return environment, higher contributions to savings make an even more striking difference” to your retirement finances, VanDerhei says.

EBRI estimates that about half of all boomers will have more than enough income and savings for an adequate retirement. Those falling behind tend to have modest incomes, with single women in more trouble than couples or single men. People without access to a 401(k) or other automatic savings account also are falling behind.

By the way, you were probably surprised to learn that a balanced stock/bond portfolio earned nearly 7 percent over the past 10 years. At the moment, we tend to remember crashing stocks, low interest rates and sluggish growth. But the past decade proves the value of the tried-and-true investment formula: Buy, diversify with mutual funds, hold, reinvest dividends and rebalance to maintain your target allocation of stocks and bonds.

“Power saving” now is the way to go. If you lack money at retirement, you’ll have to lower your spending anyway, and by much more.

Consult your financial adviser regarding your personal situation.

(Originally published in The AARP Monthly Bulletin.)

AARP Article

Can You Really Trust a Financial Adviser?

Here’s what to look for — and what to avoid

It’s the hardest question to answer in personal finance: Who can you trust (or, as my mother would insist, whom can you trust)? There’s a world of self-serving advisers out there, laser-focused on getting a piece of your retirement savings.

I’d say, “Trust no one,” but that’s not practical when you’re trying to manage money to last for life.

The better approach is to understand where your adviser’s self-interest lies and ask yourself whether you can work around it. Surprisingly, the biggest hurdle you might have to overcome is your own polite tendency not to contradict what your adviser says. You might even agree to invest in something you suspect is not altogether good. Yet, as studies consistently show, many advisers often will give poor advice in order to earn more for themselves.

For a great example of both of these propositions, take a look at a recent experiment done by Sunita Sah, assistant professor of business ethics at Georgetown University in Washington, D.C.

She set up two lottery choices, one with much better prizes than the other, and divided groups of volunteers into “advisers” and “advisees” (think of the advisees as “clients”). Some advisers were promised a reward if they recommended the poorer choice and the clients followed their advice. Over three-quarters of these advisers did exactly that.

What especially fascinated me about Sah’s study is that half of the clients decided to follow the poor advice, despite the fact that it was obviously bad. When the adviser’s conflict of interest was specifically disclosed to them in advance, the clients were even more inclined to go along. More than 80 percent of them chose the poorer option, while also reporting that they thought the other choice was more attractive.

Why does this happen? Sah calls it the panhandler effect. Some combination of social pressure, desire to cooperate and awareness that the adviser is asking for a favor (the “panhandle”) can lead us to make a decision that’s against our own financial interests. Clear disclosure of the conflict of interest — supposedly a boon to consumers — actually works against us, emotionally. We don’t want advisers to think we’re mistrustful, so we agree, sometimes reluctantly, to what they want.

The lesson from Sah is that you’re vulnerable in ways that you hadn’t known. Your best defense is to stay away from the kinds of advisers most likely to lead you wrong.

First on my list of risky choices would be people presenting themselves as some sort of “senior specialist.” There are more than 50 different “senior” designations — impressive initials strung after the adviser’s name. They purport to show that the adviser is “chartered,” or “certified,” or “accredited” for seniors due to some special course of study. Mostly, the designations are merely marketing tools that the advisers paid for, with little or no serious study. For actual expertise, look for a CFP (certified financial planner) or RIA (registered investment adviser). For more on senior designations, check the report by the Consumer Financial Protection Board.

Next, stay away from free lunches for seniors, even if you think you’re strong enough to go only for the food. These lunches are purely sales pitches for expensive products, not genuine advice. You can’t even count on getting truthful information.

Third comes the difficult question of financial salespeople at banks, brokerages and financial planning firms who earn commissions. They’re the most common source of advice for people with average earnings and savings. You know that you’re paying for the financial products you buy, which is fine if the advice is good. But is it really, or are you always buying the costliest products in the shop?

To protect themselves, consumers are typically told to ask what the salesperson earns on the product or its total cost. But as Sah’s study shows, disclosure could make you even more vulnerable to a pitch for high-commission investments such as variable annuities and the firm’s own, branded mutual funds. So instead, test your adviser by the products he or she suggests. You want good diversification, lower-cost index mutual funds that follow the market as a whole and a philosophy of buy-and-hold, not buy-and-switch.

The simplest form of protection is to work with advisers who charge only fees, not sales commissions. To find someone local, try the Financial Planning Association (check the fee-only box), Garrett Planning Network (geared toward the average saver) and the National Association of Personal Financial Advisors (generally, for the more affluent). Fee-only is no guarantee of good advice, but it’s much less likely to be bad. That’s a comfort in itself.

(Originally published in The AARP Monthly Bulletin.)