Posts Tagged "high blood pressure"
April 30, 2020
Unexpected Retirement Costs Can be Big
Resourceful retirees usually weather the financial surprises that come their way. But a handful of unexpected health events can really hurt.
The death of a spouse is at the top of the list. Net worth drops by more than $30,000 over a couple of years as retirees pay for the extraordinary medical and other expenses surrounding a spouse’s death.
Two serious health conditions also deplete retirees’ assets: strokes and lung disease, which strike about one in five older Americans during their lifetimes, according to a National Bureau of Economic Research study funded by the U.S. Social Security Administration that tracked changes in the finances of people 65 and over.
Despite the presence of Medicare, a first-time stroke reduces a retired household’s average wealth by more than $25,000 – or 6 percent – and lung disease reduces it by about $29,000.
Net worth in this study includes financial assets and home equity minus debts.
These estimates of the cost of various events provide new information about a few of the many unknowns that go into retirement planning. Workers who may think they are saving enough to cover their routine retirement expenses don’t necessarily factor in medical and related costs that are difficult or impossible to predict.
Taken together, single and married retirees will use anywhere from 3 percent to 14 percent of their wealth to pay these unpredictable expenses. But wealthy retirees, who can afford first-rate care, spend much more than the average, while poor people, who have Medicaid to supplement their Medicare, spend very little. …Learn More
March 10, 2020
Hypertension, Arthritis? Keep Working!
The growing list of effective medications available for managing a variety of chronic conditions seem to be changing the way we work and retire.
For example, older workers at one company who suffer from arthritis and high blood pressure – two relatively easy conditions to treat – are able to keep working just like their healthier co-workers, according to a new study from a research consortium funded by the U.S. Social Security Administration.
In fact, the two specific groups in this study – employees with hypertension or a combination of arthritis and hypertension – actually worked an average of four to 10 months longer, respectively, than the healthy workers. This counterintuitive finding might owe to the fact that people with chronic conditions are motivated to work longer to maintain their employer health insurance. Another possibility is that, because of their condition, they pay closer attention to their overall health and take better care of themselves.
The researchers, who are from Stanford University’s Medical School and Princeton University, had the advantage of access to nearly 4,700 employees’ detailed medical records, which allowed them to track how their health progressed over an 18-year period, until they retired.
A limitation of the study is that the employees aren’t representative of the general working population. They were mainly white men employed in Alcoa smelters and fabrication plants around the country. And because it was very common for them to join the company in their 20s and qualify for a 30-year pension, their average retirement age was only 58.
But older workers in a wide variety of professions are reckoning with the need to work longer than they might have planned so they can afford to retire.
A chronic medical condition doesn’t have to be a barrier to working as long – or even longer – than everyone else. …Learn More
About Squared Away
Learn more about our blog and its writer, Kimberly Blanton, a former Boston Globe reporter.
