Archive for March 9th, 2010

Most of Us Are Still Unprepared for Retirement

Posted on March 9, 2010 by Julius

According to the Employee Benefit Research Institute’s annual Retirement Confidence Survey, the percentage of workers who said they have less than $10,000 in savings grew to 43% in 2010, from 39% in 2009.  Furthermore, workers who said they had less than $1,000 jumped to 27%, from 20% in 2009!!

The survey found that only 46% of workers have tried to calculate what they need for a comfortable standard of living in their golden years. NewRetirement.com, is here to help!!!  You can use our nifty retirement planning calculator to see what you will need to save for retirement, or use our Reverse Mortgage Calculator to see how much money you can receive from a Reverse Mortgage.

Also, there is a new Reverse Mortgage guide on the website that can shed some very interesting light on this product.

I’m a Medicare doctor. Here’s what I make

Posted on March 9, 2010 by Jason

CNN Money, March 6th, 2010

When you think of low-paying jobs, doctor doesn’t usually come to
mind.

But with a 21% cut in Medicare payments slated to take
effect later this month, physicians who say they are making an OK living
may be reduced to income levels that no longer make their profession
viable. That’s especially true for those still paying medical school
costs and other training.

“The cuts will hit me,” said Dr. William Schreiber, a primary care
physician based in North Syracuse, N.Y.

Schreiber sees 120
patients a week. About 30% of them are enrolled directly in Medicare,
while another 65% have private insurance plans that peg their payments
on Medicare’s rates. Only 5% pay on their own.

As a result,
Schreiber expects the cuts to take away $3 out of every $5 he currently
earns. And, as a primary care physician, he already wasn’t earning
anything near the salary of a specialist.

“After the costs of my
own benefits are deducted, that will leave me with the equivalent of a
minimum wage job,” he said.

Unless Congress acts to adjust
Medicare payments without considering the impact of rising health care
costs, Schreiber said he could be forced into bankruptcy or shut his
practice.

Cost of care

Schreiber,
who employs two nurse practitioners, agreed to break down the costs
associated with running his practice.

He spends about $60,000 a
month on “fixed costs” to run his practice. “That’s more or less my
breakeven point,” he said. “If I spend more, I’m in the red for the
month.”

Read more of this article.

Supplemental Medicare Insurance:  With or without the cuts being discussed, it’s unlikely that Medicare will be able to cover all of your medical needs as you move through retirement.  Consider whether purchasing supplemental insurance is the right move at NewRetirement.com

Starting Over at 55

Posted on March 9, 2010 by Jason

The New York Times, March 5th, 2010

AFTER 24 years as a marketing manager for Coors, Cinde Dolphin knew what
was coming — Miller and Coors had just merged their United States beer
operations, and hundreds of jobs were sure to be eliminated.

Worried that these youth-oriented companies might lay off an old-timer
like her, Ms. Dolphin decided to take a buyout and relax. She sunned on
the beaches of New Zealand, went whitewater rafting on the Yampa River
in Colorado and saw friends and Broadway shows in New York.

But after a few months, she realized that she missed working. So at age
55, she began applying for marketing jobs, confident she would be
quickly hired because of her Coors pedigree. “About four months into my
job search, I realized I wasn’t getting many callbacks,” she said.

A Sacramento resident who has survived three bouts with cancer, Ms.
Dolphin is not one to give up easily. She decided on an alternate tack —
she would start her own business and thus join the nation’s
fastest-growing group of entrepreneurs, those age 55 and above.

Mining her decades of experience, she created a marketing and public
relations firm that helps California winemakers get their message out
through Facebook, Twitter and other social
media.

“I’m having a ball,” she said. “I can set up my own hours and work
schedule, and do other things I enjoy.”

More than five million Americans age 55 or older run their own
businesses or are otherwise self-employed, according to the Small
Business Administration. And the number of self-employed people ages
55 to 64 is soaring, the agency says, climbing 52 percent from 2000 to
2007.

Like Ms. Dolphin, some use money from a buyout to finance a new company.
Some of these entrepreneurs were already retired, but after seeing
their 401(k)
retirement plans plunge in value, created a business in a quest for
extra income. Some had lost their jobs and, after months of searching
for work, started a business to make ends meet, perhaps catering,
cabinet making or doing photography.

Read more of this article.

Working in Retirement:  As the above article indicates, many programs exist to help seniors who are looking to make career changes or even resume working after their retirement.  You can investigate the possibilities at NewRetirement.com

Iceland Voters Set to Reject Debt Deal

Posted on March 9, 2010 by Jason

The New York Times, March 5th, 2010

After the dust began to settle last year — after the banks failed, the
currency collapsed, the stock market crashed and the government fell —
the dazed inhabitants of Iceland woke up to
another unpleasant problem:
They owed, it seemed, some $5.3 billion to more than
300,000 angry people in the Netherlands
and Britain.

These were the customers of Icesave, a now notorious online retail
branch of the Icelandic bank Landsbanki, which went bankrupt in October
2008 along with 85 percent of Iceland’s banking system. The British and
Dutch governments reimbursed their citizens, but then demanded that
Iceland repay the money, the equivalent of $65,000 per household here,
plus interest.

To put it in perspective, it is as if American taxpayers were being
forced to pay $5 trillion (plus interest) to reimburse customers of the
Japanese branch of a failed private American bank, said Magnus Arni
Skulason, the head of first national
referendum ever held here on any subject.

The vote raises larger questions about Iceland’s place in the world,
said Silja B. Omarsdottir, a political scientist at the University of
Iceland. “Are we going to be a country that takes our obligations
seriously? Or are we going to say, ‘No, we’re going to do things our
way’ and be an international pariah?”

In the scheme of world debt, $5.3 billion is small potatoes. But it
represents more than 40 percent of Iceland’s gross domestic product. The
interest alone would eat up one-fourth of the country’s revenues, said
Prime Minister Johanna
Sigurdardottir, who called finding a resolution to the Icesave
dispute “a matter of life and death for the Icelandic economy.”

The referendum was prompted on Jan. 5 by the
refusal of Iceland’s president, Olafur Ragnar Grimsson, to sign into
law the latest Icesave agreement, arrived at after months of
bad-tempered negotiations with Britain and the Netherlands and narrowly passed by a divided and
fractious Icelandic Parliament.

Mr. Grimsson’s move was unexpected but widely popular in a place that
feels bullied and ill treated.

The crisis spurred a series of demonstrations from usually phlegmatic
Icelanders, who recited poetry and tossed yogurt pots and rocks at
government buildings to protest what they deemed the greed, ineptitude
and spinelessness of the governing elite. Nearly a quarter of the
electorate signed an Read more of this article.

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