August 15, 2019

Walk? Yes! But Not 10,000 Steps a Day

A few of my friends who’ve recently retired decided to start walking more, sometimes for an hour or more a day.

Becoming sedentary seems to be a danger in retirement, when life can slow down, and medical research has documented the myriad health benefits of physical activity. To enjoy the benefits from walking – weight loss, heart health, more independence in old age, and even a longer life – medical experts and fitness gurus often recommend that people shoot for 10,000 steps per day.

But what’s the point of a goal if it’s unrealistic? A Centers for Disease Control study that gave middle-aged people a pedometer to record their activity found that “the 10,000-step recommendation for daily exercise was considered too difficult to achieve.”

Here’s new information that should take some of the pressure off: walking about half as many steps still has substantial health benefits.

I. Min Lee at Brigham and Women’s Hospital in Boston tracked 17,000 older women – average age 72 – to determine whether walking regularly would increase their life spans. It turns out that the women’s death rate declined by 40 percent when they walked just 4,400 steps a day.

Walking more than 4,400 steps is even better – but only up to a point. For every 1,000 additional steps beyond 4,400, the mortality rate declined, but the benefits stopped at around 7,500 steps per day, said the study, published in the May issue of the Journal of the American Medical Association.

More good news in the study for retirees is that it’s not necessary to walk vigorously to enjoy the health benefits. …Learn More

May 21, 2019

Retirement Dates Don’t Always Fit Plan

Today, half of U.S. workers say they want to work past age 65 – in the 1990s, only 16 percent did.

Apparently, people are getting the message that, if they want to be comfortable in retirement, they will need to work as long as possible.  However, good intentions don’t pan out for more a third of workers closing in on retirement age. And the older the age they had planned to retire, the more they fall short of the goal.

Researchers at the Center for Retirement Research, which sponsors this blog, wanted to uncover why people do not follow through. Their study was based on a survey that asked people in their late 50s when they planned to retire and then watched them over the next several years to see what they did and why.

Two factors – the researchers call them shocks – play important roles in pushing people to retire early. The big factor is health. One health-related reason is intuitive: when older people develop a new condition, they become more likely to retire earlier than they’d planned. A second reason is that, when setting a date, they over-estimate how long they’ll be able to work if they have already developed health conditions like arthritis, heart disease, or emphysema. …Learn More

May 16, 2019

Social, Economic Inequities Grow with Age

Retirement, as portrayed in TV commercials, is the time to indulge a passion, whether tennis, enjoying more time with a spouse, frequent socializing, or civic engagement.

Boston University sociologist Deborah Carr isn’t buying this idealized picture of aging.

“This gilded existence is not within the grasp of all older adults,” she argues in “Golden Years? Social Inequality in Later Life.” “For those on the lower rungs of the ladder,” she writes, retirement is “marked by daily struggle, physical health challenges and economic scarcity.”

Her book, which mines multidisciplinary research on aging, reaches the distressing conclusion that economic inequality not only exists but that it becomes more pronounced as people age and become vulnerable. And this problem will grow and affect more people as the population gets older.

Poverty has actually declined among retirees since the 1960s. But by every measure – health, money, social and family relationships, mental well-being – seniors who have a lower socioeconomic status are at a big disadvantage. They have more financial problems, which creates stress, and they are more isolated and die younger.

Throughout the book, Carr documents the myriad ways the disparities, which begin at birth, reinforce each other as people grow up and grow old.

“Advantage begets further advantage, and disadvantage begets further disadvantage,” Carr concludes. For the less fortunate, “old age can be the worst of times,” she said. …Learn More

April 30, 2019

Medical Costs Slam a Minority of Seniors

As retirees’ health declines, their medical costs go up. These costs include both everyday healthcare expenses and long-term care costs.

The everyday expenses that Medicare does not cover – Part B and Part D premiums, copayments, eyeglasses, and dental care – consume about 20 percent of the incomes of households ages 75 and over. While not exactly good news, 20 percent is “perhaps manageable” for most, concluded researchers at the Center for Retirement Research in a summary of various studies in this area.

The real problem comes for the unlucky minority – about 5 percent of seniors – who spend more than half of their income out of their own pockets for healthcare.

Turning to long-term care, these services are less frequently required but can be very costly. For example, while many nursing home stays are relatively short, a lengthy stay is a potentially crippling expense. One common trigger for a long-term stay is dementia.

The retirees facing the greatest financial risk from health care expenses tend to be those who earned enough to buy a house and put money away in their employer’s retirement plan. They have more to lose if their wealth is eaten up by exorbitant medical costs. The poor, in contrast, are covered by Medicaid, which often pays for Medicare premiums and long-term care. …Learn More

March 21, 2019

Men Who Work Longer, Live Longer

In 2007, the majority of workers in The Netherlands were retiring by their early sixties to take advantage of the country’s generous pension scheme. Then came a sweeping 2009 policy that rewarded older workers with a tax break if they remained employed and active.

In a new study, researchers used this tax break – the Doorwerkbonus, or continued work bonus – to ask the question: do people who worked longer in response to this policy also live longer?  The short answer is “no” for women but “yes” for men. Delaying retirement increased men’s lifespans by three months, compared with a group that was not eligible for the bonus, possibly because working longer improved their health.

The tax break was the equivalent of a wage increase for all older workers in every sector of the Dutch economy. The bonus started as a 5 percent tax cut for working people in the year they turned 62, increased to 7 percent at 63, and 10 percent at 64. After that, the rewards from work dwindled, falling to 1 percent for everyone over 67. (In 2013, the size of the tax break was reduced.)

Prior to the new study, other researchers had examined whether earlier retirements caused people to die younger. But Alice Zulkarnain and Matthew Rutledge at the Center for Retirement Research took the opposite tack. They asked: were the Dutch living longer because they delayed retirement after the Doorwerkbonus went into effect?

While the policy did increase men’s life spans slightly, women seemed unaffected, because fewer of them responded to it by working longer.

Is there a lesson in the Doorwerkbonus for American boomers?  This study indicates that working longer will not only put more money in retirees’ pockets, it might also add to their life spans. …Learn More

March 14, 2019

Drug Discounts, Other Help Available

Consumers are powerless to control spiraling medication prices, but low-income, uninsured and under-insured individuals can often get help paying for their drugs.

The help, in the form of subsidies or prescription price reductions, comes from four sources. The first is exclusively for seniors on Medicare, but the rest are available to everyone.

Federal aid

Medicare’s Extra Help program provides up to $4,900 to subsidize retirees’ drug copayments and Medicare Part D premiums. Individuals are eligible for this assistance if their income is less than $18,210 and the value of their investments, bank accounts and other assets is under $14,390. The limits for couples are $24,690 in income and $28,720 in assets.  Retirees who own their homes do not have to include the property’s value in this limit. Social Security’s website explains what does and does not count as assets.

Social Security takes the applications for this Medicare program. Applications can be submitted either online (SSA form 1020) or in person by making an appointment at a local Social Security office.  Social Security also notifies seniors about whether they qualify.

Price discounts in an app

If your drug is not covered by your health insurance, Consumer Reports suggests trying two cell phone apps (or go online) to search for the lowest-cost prescriptions at various pharmacies in your area. On the apps – GoodRx and BlinkHealth – search your drug name and dose and enter your zip code to find the discounted prices, which can vary dramatically. These companies act as middlemen between consumers and Pharmacy Benefit Managers, which buy generic and brand-name medications in bulk from manufacturers and pass the volume discounts on to consumers. GoodRx provides a coupon that can be saved on a phone or printed out for the pharmacist. BlinkRx requires consumers to pay for the drug on its website and provides a voucher for the pharmacist. These cash prices will not be run through insurance – and won’t count against your deductible – said Lisa Gill, Consumer Reports deputy editor and a specialist in medication pricing.

Walmart also offers discounts on generic drugs, and Costco has very low retail drug prices. Which option is best for you? “It’s going to depend on which medication you take and probably where you live,” Gill said. Not everyone will have success in reducing their costs but, she added, “if the drug’s not covered by insurance, it’s worth trying.” …

Learn More

October 25, 2018

Longevity Affects Social Security Benefit

It’s long been known that people with high earnings tend to live longer than low earners. But this gap in life expectancy has widened into a gulf.

For example, high-earning men born back in 1912 lived about eight months longer than their counterparts in the bottom half of the income range. This longevity gap increased to five years for men who were born in 1941 and are now in their late 70s. The disparity for women is similar, but not as extreme.

This growing longevity gap has important implications for Social Security. The program’s intent is to be progressive – more generous to lower-income retirees.  But the unequal life spans have significantly reduced that progressivity, concludes Matt Rutledge in a new synopsis of research in this area for the Center for Retirement Research, which sponsors this blog.

The reason low-income workers are losing ground is that they don’t live as long, so they don’t collect Social Security for as many years as high-income workers do.

A study by the National Academy of Sciences, one of several demonstrating the decline in the program’s progressivity, found that the value of lifetime Social Security benefits, adjusted for inflation, increased nearly 30 percent for the highest-income retirees born in 1960, compared with the top earners born 30 years earlier. But benefits either fell or stagnated over that time for retirees on the lowest two tiers of the income scale – the people who rely far more on Social Security. …Learn More