April 2022

Empleados de EE. UU. podrán tener bitcoins en cuenta de retiro

Empleados de EE. UU. podrán tener bitcoins en cuenta de retiro

Es posible que pronto más trabajadores estadounidenses puedan usar bitcoins para depositar parte de sus ahorros para la jubilación, a medida que las criptomonedas se abren paso en la sociedad. La administradora de activos y fondos de pensiones Fidelity Investments informó el martes que creó una manera para que los trabajadores destinen parte de sus contribuciones y ahorros a sus cuentas para la jubilación, conocidas como 401(k). Fidelity precisó que esa parte podría ser potencialmente hasta del 20%. Fidelity dijo ser...

US. Fidelity Pension Plan Will Allow Employees to Invest in Bitcoin

Fidelity Investments, the United States’ biggest provider of 401(k) pension plans, will let participants choose to keep money in bitcoin (BTC), but only if their employers let them. 401(k) plans are employer-sponsored defined-contribution pension accounts, and Fidelity, per 2020 figures compiled by the researcher Cerulli Associates, has USD 2.4 trillion locked into 401(k) accounts. That figure, the New York Times pointed out, represents over a third of the domestic market. On its website, Fidelity explained that its “new proprietary offering” was...

US. Amazon faces new activism from pension funds in New York over worker safety

A group of New York city and state pension funds that collectively own more than $5 billion of Amazon.com Inc. stock are urging fellow shareholders to vote against re-election of two board members for what the institutions say are failures to adequately protect worker safety. New York City’s pension fund, which represents the teachers, police department, fire department and other unions, has paired up with New York state’s pension fund and the office of the Illinois state treasurer to vote...

US. Inflation is taking a big bite from retirees’ pension income

Most pensions, unlike Social Security payments, don’t offer a cost-of-living adjustment that keeps pace with the current inflation rate. State and local government pensions typically offer up to a 2% or 3% adjustment a year. Private-sector employers that still provide pensions, however, typically don’t offer a COLA at all. There may be a tension between enhancing a pension’s adjustment and maintaining the plan’s longer-term financial health. Inflation is taking a substantial bite from the income retirees get from pensions. Many...

US. 2022 HSA Conference: HSA Education and Communication

Without significant education, many employees do not understand their HSA benefits. They often get them confused with flexible spending accounts, for example, or they fail to see how HSAs could affect their own circumstances with regard to financial wellness and retirement savings. This was the conclusion of a panel of industry experts at the 2022 PLANSPONSOR-PLANADVISER HSA Conference, which discussed the “what,” “how” and “when” for HSA education and communication. The goal of the discussion was to help plan advisers,...

US. The age for required withdrawals from retirement accounts could go higher. Here’s who would benefit

Required minimum distributions, or RMDs, are amounts that must be withdrawn annually from qualified retirement savings accounts. If the RMD age is raised to 75 from 72, it would provide more time to move assets to a Roth individual retirement account, which comes with no RMDs during the owner’s lifetime. There are some instances when you may not want to convert money from a traditional 401(k) plan or IRA to a Roth. Some future retirees could end up getting...

US. Labor Department announces new ERISA Advisory Council members

The Department of Labor on Friday appointed seven members to its ERISA Advisory Council. It also announced that Peter Wiedenbeck, the Joseph H. Zumbalen professor of the law of property at Washington University School of Law, will serve as chairman of the 15-member council in 2022. Megan Broderick, senior director for global retirement and financial well-being at PepsiCo., will serve as vice chairwoman, according to a Labor Department news release. The council's new appointees, who will each serve three-year terms, are: ...

Bad Retirement Savers Expect to Die Young

By Allison Bell What workers think about their retirement savings is closely related to how long they think they will live, according to a new Club Vita life expectancy survey. Workers who said that their savings would be enough to pay for a comfortable retirement agreed with Club Vita about how long they might live. Workers who said their savings would be too small to pay for a comfortable retirement predicted that they would die about 7.1 years earlier than Club Vita would have...

US. Mexican immigrants have to work longer due to inadequate Social Security benefits, study finds

Mexican immigrants are a critical part of the American workforce, but they are also financially vulnerable. As Emma Aguila explains in new research she co-authored in the Journal of Pension Economics and Finance, Mexican immigrants face greater obstacles in securing social security benefits and therefore have to work later into life. Equally important, Aguila and her colleagues, Zeewan Lee and Rebeca Wong, found Mexicans who do receive those benefits are more likely to rely on them compared to non-Hispanic white populations. However, an...

Underfunded Public Sector Pension Plans, Social Security Participation, and the Retirement Decisions of Public Employees

Underfunded Public Sector Pension Plans, Social Security Participation, and the Retirement Decisions of Public Employees

By Leslie E. Papke I analyze the effects of public pension parameters, Social Security coverage, and state pension fund sustainability on the retirement of public employees. I use data from the Health and Retirement Study, including personal early and normal retirement eligibility and state of residence. I develop a state-level measure of effective public pension plan sustainability that reflects both the degree of public plan underfunding and a state’s ability to fund the plan with its own resources. Using the...