March 2021
04Mar

UK Budget: Sunak freezes lifetime allowance for pensions contributions

By Jenna Brown, Christopher Copper-Ind Britain's finance minister, Rishi Sunak, has frozen the lifetime allowance (LTA) for pension contributions at just over £1m for the remainder of this Parliament, and will be keeping IHT at the current level for a further five years. Read also UK. Women retirees win £2.7bn for underpaid pensions The Chancellor said the LTA would remain at its current level of £1,073,100 for 2020/21 rather than increasing in line with inflation. It had been expected to rise by...

March 4, 2021
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04Mar

Fraudsters prey on the fears of China’s aging population.

Shady retirement home and investment schemes have cheated China’s rapidly aging population out of hundreds of millions of dollars, spurring more than a thousand criminal cases in recent years. In a society that traditionally relied on family members to take care of elderly parents, fraudsters have been able to prey on fears that changing social norms and scarce resources will leave older people bereft, report Alexandra Stevenson and Cao Li for The New York Times. By 2025, more than 300 million...

March 4, 2021
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03Mar

South Africa. The battle for pension savings: Between secure retirement and survival

The retirement savings industry keenly follows Finance Minister Tito Mboweni's speech every year, if not for anything else, to advise savers how to maximise their tax benefits when tax rates and bracket adjustments are announced. The 2021 Budget speech, however, had a lot of game changers for the industry. The automatic enrolment of workers into retirement plans that the sector has long been advocating for, and the annuitisation of provident fund benefits – which has been delayed over and over...

March 3, 2021
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February 2021
25Feb

Is COVID-19 a preview of what retirement will be like?

The pandemic has given many folks a taste of what retirement could be like. An abrupt end to work. A loss of social connection. Trying to make ends meet on a much lower income. Many haven’t been happy with the experience. Worried that your retirement could be similar? Here are eight lessons we can learn from the pandemic, all drawn from my new book. 1. Retirement can be a shock. In fact, it’s quite similar to what people experienced during the...

February 25, 2021
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24Feb

Take-home pay in South Africa falls due to COVID-19 lockdown

The average take-home pay in South Africa has declined compared with the same period last year as businesses struggle to cope under national lockdown rules. This is according to the latest BankservAfrica Take-home Pay Index (BTPI), which found that the real average salary fell by 2.4% in the past month. “The real average and overall salary paid contracted in January 2021 after coming under strain from the pandemic and level 3 lockdown, according to the latest BankservAfrica Take-home Pay Index (BTPI),”...

February 24, 2021
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22Feb

U.S. Retirement Crisis Hits Black Americans Hard

Kimberly Owens doesn’t know if retirement will ever be a reality for her. A well-educated project coordinator in her late 40s, she has pulled from her retirement funds for emergencies twice in 20 years. Her 401(k) balance is in the low-five figures. “I’m going to be working until I am 75 at this rate,” said Ms. Owens, who works for the New Haven, Conn., campus of a medical-device company. “I’m not anywhere close to where I thought I was going...

February 22, 2021
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22Feb

Rwanda: ‘Rising Cost of Living’ Worries Pensioners

Pensioners have appealed for a rise in pension benefits, citing the rising cost of living. Dorothée Uwimana, the President of the Rwanda Pensioners' Association, told The New Times that the benefits they receive are not adequately adjusted for inflation and the cost of living in general. For instance, she explained that food prices have been rising steadily while pension benefits continued to be calculated based on the salaries that retirees used to earn many years This, Uwimana said, particularly hurts retirees who...

February 22, 2021
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19Feb

Income and Saving Responses to Tax Incentives for Private Retirement Savings

By Marc K. Chan, Todd Morris, Cain Polidano, Ha Vu Many governments offer tax concessions for retirement contributions to boost retirement savings and alleviate the fiscal pressures of population aging. In this paper, we show that income responses are crucial for understanding these impacts. Using tax-register data, we study large changes in caps on tax-favored contributions to individual retirement accounts in Australia. We find that higher caps increase retirement contributions considerably, with around two-thirds of this response financed by increases...

February 19, 2021
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09Feb

Australia. Retirement Income Review Under Spotlight

The future of retirement income policy – including pensions, superannuation and thee role of housing – will come under the spotlight as the nation’s decision-makers and policy experts canvass the implications of the Retirement Income Review at the Council on the Ageing’s National Policy Forum on 26 February. The full day conference to be held at the National Press Club in Canberra, and streamed virtually, will include: A keynote address by Treasurer John Frydenberg A lunchtime debate between Minister for Superannuation Jane...

February 9, 2021
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08Feb

Simple error can leave Brits with £50,000 less than expected in pension pot

Millions of Brits are at risk of being caught short by over-estimating their state pension payments by up to £50,000, a consumer watchdog has warned. Research by Which? revealed three in 10 believe they will get thousands more through their retirement years because they have got their figures wrong. Only three in 10 knew the average weekly state pension is worth around £150 or £7.800 a year. But with guesses ranging from £175 to £200 a week or up to £10,400 a...

February 8, 2021
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