Aging, Caregiving, & Financial Costs Finding Resources & Improving the Pathways Forward April 10, 2024 Hosted by WISER and the Consumer Financial Protection Bureau (CFPB) AGENDA SPEAKER BIOS Speaker Presentations: [Download presentation slides individually below or click here for a copy of all presentations combined.] Lightening Rounds – The financial impact of caregiving Longevity Report: Increasing Age Has Increased Need for Family Caregiving, Anne Ollen, TIAA Institute Financial Literacy Needs for Older Women, Amy Hinojosa, MANA, A National Latina Organization Key Challenges & I ..read more

Link to the online article Wondering how to overcome retirement obstacles? While the journey may bring setbacks, with careful planning, you can surmount them. If you’ve ever embarked on a big undertaking, whether it’s running a marathon or cleaning out your garage, you have probably encountered impediments that delayed or derailed your progress. Some — a knee injury, for example — are significant. Others are more accurately characterized as excuses; you’re not sure what to do with those old cans of paint, so you decide to watch Netflix instead. Similarly, you’ll likely face barriers ..read more

Link to the original article Lower pay, fewer promotions and career breaks to have children make saving difficult; as a result, the poverty rate for older women is rising By Terri Williams for NextAvenue | Women live longer than men after the traditional retirement age of 65 — 18% longer, on average — yet women save less than men do to support themselves in retirement, Census Bureau data shows. About half of all women aged 55 to 66 have no personal retirement savings at all; the same is true for 47% of men, Census says. The difference is greater for people who have saved at least $100,000 ..read more

Link to the article A new survey finds most Americans get an F on understanding key financial aspects of retirement. Kerry Hannon · Senior Columnist, Yahoo!Finance Most Americans between the ages of 50 and 75 flunked a retirement income literacy quiz that tested their knowledge across a dozen areas, including inflation, investments, long-term care costs, and Social Security, according to The American College of Financial Services’ recently published Retirement Income Literacy Study. The average retirement income literacy grade on the exam was 31% — out of a possible score of 100%. Talk a ..read more

Link to this article By Kathy L. Lee, Assistant Professor of Gerontological Social Work, University of Texas at Arlington for The Conversation Millions of Americans have become informal family caregivers: people who provide family members or friends with unpaid assistance in accomplishing daily tasks such as bathing, eating, transportation and managing medications. Driven in part by a preference for home-based care rather than long-term care options such as assisted living facilities, and the limited availability and high cost of formal care services, family caregivers ..read more

Link to the article Most part-time workers in America are women – leaving them with less access to retirement plans and less money to sock away. By Lisa Rabasca Roepe for the News York Times When Robin Giles asks women why they aren’t saving for retirement, they often say the same thing: They don’t make enough money. “It’s hard to convince people who are just scraping by to feel like they have money to put into retirement savings,” said Ms. Giles, a certified financial planner in Katy, Texas. Socking away money in a retirement account that can’t be touched without penalty until age 59 ..read more

People know about the emotional and physical toll on family caregivers, but they often overlook the financial impact. One in five adults now provide uncompensated care to loved ones with health problems, pushing almost half of them to say they’ve suffered financially. Things like housing, health care and transportation add up to an average of more than $7,000 a year. Many people think they have no choice but to withdraw money from savings accounts or retirement nest eggs, take on debt, pay bills late or scale back on their retirement contributions. The burden of caregiving also extend ..read more

Most millennials and Gen Xers have little idea of what’s going to happen when their parents hit retirement age. That’s about to become an increasingly real problem, particularly for those with parents in the middle-income stratum. A retirement affordability crisis is escalating in the U.S. Three out of four middle-income older Americans won’t have enough to pay for assisted living services without selling their homes within a decade, according to data analyzed by NORC at the University of Chicago, supported by a grant from The SCAN Foundation. Baby boomers–a massive generation–are ..read more

New Report: Late-life Gender Disparities in Economic Security According to a new Elder Index report, half of all older women living alone across the nation, compared to 42 percent of older men living alone, have annual incomes below the Elder Index, which is a county-by-county measure of the cost of living for older adults. This level of economic insecurity means not having enough income to afford the local cost of housing, food, transportation, health care and other essentials without assistance. The report, “Late-life Gender Disparities in Economic Security,” is written by UMass Boston ..read more

Citing the results from a report from Goldman Sachs Asset Management, caregivers, especially women caregivers, are getting cheated out of retirement savings thanks to the pandemic — and now the transition back to the office. Here’s why. As many of you know, caregiving duties — kids, elderly parents, lazy husbands — were a major factor that pushed droves of women to exit the workforce during the pandemic. And it’s the reason many are still on the sidelines — or will soon be once again as back-to-office mandates make it impossible to do both. And that has major repercussions on the ability for ..read more