Financial advisers often encourage older workers to delay signing up for their Social Security as long as possible to maximize their monthly income. But several of our blog’s readers point out, rightly, that this isn’t always possible for people in physically taxing jobs. Blue-collar workers are in a real Catch-22, caught between the unforgiving financial demands of retiring and a body that can’t take any more work. “That’s me,” a reader named George L. commented on a recent blog, “The Psychology Behind Starting Social Security at 62.” Psychology had little to do with his decision to start S ..read more

The first year of the pandemic, a period of great uncertainty, was even more fraught for older workers, who were at higher risk of serious illness or death if they contracted the virus. The second year brought more uncertainty. Older Americans were embracing the new vaccine as variants of the virus continued to evolve. Unemployment, after spiking at nearly 15 percent the previous year, was coming back down. In September, the generous cash assistance approved in Congress that had kept many Americans afloat expired. Despite the job market recovery in Year 2 of COVID – April 2021 through March 20 ..read more

The conventional wisdom for older workers heading into retirement is that owning a house is a good thing. The property has no doubt appreciated over many years, adding to their wealth.  But new research finds that homeowners often strain to a pay a mortgage that is larger than what they can realistically afford. The essence of the problem for retirees, who usually rely on savings to help with living expenses, is that many do not have enough to make their monthly payments comfortably. This problem has become more pressing over the years. Half of the retired homeowners who were born in the ..read more

Every year for 24 years straight, the number of people receiving federal disability benefits increased, nearly tripling to around 9 million. In 2015, that trend suddenly reversed. The reversal is due both to more people exiting the program as the population ages and to fewer new people joining the rolls. The drivers behind this latter trend are less clear, so they were the focus of a new study. Siyan Liu and Laura Quinby at the Center for Retirement Research find that two factors accounted for the bulk of the recent drop in the number of new recipients of disability benefits. One factor is al ..read more

The fortunes of Americans whose wealth is in the top 10 percent have soared, leaving the rest of the country trailing in their wake. But let’s focus instead on the unsettling trends that have developed within the middle class. Both the health and finances of older workers have deteriorated in the bottom half of “the forgotten middle” over the past two decades, according to researchers at the University of Southern California and Columbia University. Take one important indication of this. Home equity is typically an older worker’s largest single asset. But homeownership has fallen sharply in th ..read more

The baby boomers born in the early 1960s, at the tail end of the demographic wave, had about $280,000 in retirement wealth when they reached their early 50s. That’s significantly less – about $50,000 less – than the late-1950s boomers had at the same age. Some of this shortfall might’ve been anticipated for the youngest boomers. Each new crop of boomers has taken a bigger hit in their Social Security checks because the statutory age for collecting the full monthly benefit has been creeping up. The shrinking checks are against the backdrop of dwindling pensions. (Retirement wealth includes the ..read more

Rendering of The Pryde project in Boston’s Hyde Park neighborhood.  Society increasingly has accepted the LGBTQ community as part of the broader diversity of 21st century life. This was decidedly not the case when baby boomers were coming of age in the 1960s and 1970s. Even today, their peers and family members aren’t always accepting of their lifestyles. A senior housing project for them is now under construction in Boston’s Hyde Park neighborhood. It’s the city’s first and one of perhaps a few dozen around the country: The Pryde. The project will transform a Boston middle school built ..read more

Resilience – financial, emotional, and in the form of family and community support – was sorely tested when COVID-19 turned lives upside down. In a study of workers and retirees 50 and older, the people who lived alone or with extended family struggled the most in the first year of COVID to make the financial adjustments required to get through the economic slump. And due to their age, they had the added challenge of dealing with chronic health conditions or physical impairments when medical and personal services were out of reach. Researchers at Harvard’s Joint Center for Housing Studies used ..read more

This is a fact of retirement life: older Americans haven’t paid as much into Medicare and Medicaid as government spends on their healthcare and nursing home stays. But it is middle-class retirees who get the most out of the system, according to a new study. Middle-income households receive about $230,000 to $260,000 more in Medicare and Medicaid benefits, on average, during their retirement years than the total amount they’ve paid in. Their contributions consist of the Medicare payroll and income taxes deducted from workers’ paychecks, the portion of their federal and state income taxes ..read more

The economy expanded smartly in the years before the Great Recession, just as it did before the COVID downturn. But the two recessions were markedly different, with opposite effects on when older workers signed up for Social Security, a new study finds. In 2008, the stock market slid nearly 40 percent. Older Americans with retirement accounts, wanting to recoup their losses, were more likely to keep working or looking for a new job during the protracted downturn. But skyrocketing unemployment pushed many older workers in the other direction. Social Security became an obvious fallback ..read more