August 2025
13Aug

US. The Silver Tsunami: Navigating Retirement Risk in a Declining Financial Literacy Landscape

As the global population ages, a quiet crisis is unfolding: financial literacy rates among older adults have plummeted to below 60%, a stark drop from 69.5% in 2020. This decline, driven by cognitive aging, digital disengagement, and inadequate educational resources, is creating a perfect storm for retirement planning. With 78% of retirees underestimating their life expectancy and $28 billion in U.S. scam losses reported in 2023 alone, the stakes for long-term financial resilience have never been higher. The erosion of...

August 13, 2025
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12Aug

One in Three Older Households Is Cost Burdened

The recently released State of the Nation’s Housing 2025 report highlights worrying trends in housing affordability for older households (those led by someone age 65 or over). In 2023, over a third (34 percent) of older households were cost burdened, paying more than 30 percent of their income for housing. This represents a new high of over 12.4 million households and an increase of nearly 2.3 million households just since 2019. More than half of these households, 6.7 million, pay over...

August 12, 2025
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11Aug

Vanguard: Emergency Savings Mean Retirement Savings

Employer-sponsored 401(k) plans help millions of Americans save for retirement, but not all those savings make it to retirement age, according to new research from Vanguard. According to the firm’s June research note, “Emergency Savings Protect Retirement Savings,” one-third of Vanguard plan participants who left their jobs in 2023 withdrew their 401(k) balance as a cash lump sum—often incurring withdrawal penalties and jeopardizing their retirement readiness. For more stories like this, sign up for the PLANSPONSOR NEWSDash daily newsletter.  “It’s really about...

August 11, 2025
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07Aug

US. What’s Driving Early Retirement Plan Withdrawals?

Hourly workers tend to cash out their retirement plan savings more frequently than salaried workers when they leave their job, according to a report from Vanguard. Early cash outs from defined contribution plans normally come with a 10% tax penalty, and far more often than not, represent a sub-optimal savings strategy. About 33% of participants in Vanguard-administered plans took a cash-out when they left their jobs in 2023. This is consistent with data from the Employee Benefit Research Institute (EBRI),...

August 7, 2025
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06Aug

US. Increasing Social Security’s Retirement Age…

By Andrew G. Biggs Without forgetting that some people aren’t living longer. I have a new policy brief co-authored with John Shoven of Stanford looking at how we might address part of Social Security’s funding gap by raising the retirement age, but doing it in a way that account for differential mortality by income — the fact that rich people tend to live longer than the poor, which means that rich people are contributing more to Social Security’s insolvency than are the poor. The trick...

August 6, 2025
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06Aug

70% of Americans Don’t Think They’ll Reach $1 Million for Retirement: 8 Things They Can Do Now

Hitting $1 million for retirement might feel out of reach, and most Americans agree. In fact, 70% say they don’t think they’ll ever get there. How People Feel About Saving for Retirement According to CNBC, a survey that was conducted by Schroders, an investment management company, shows that Americans who have an employer-sponsored retirement plan feel that they will need to have at least $1.28 million put aside for retirement. Only 30% of workers with a retirement plan will expect to have $1 million saved, 48%...

August 6, 2025
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05Aug

US. Republicans want to give Uber workers benefits. There’s a catch.

Should independent contractors get employment benefits? The question has fueled decades of legal and political battles — and it might finally be coming to an end for the roughly 58 million people who currently work as freelancers, contractors and gig workers across America. Three Republican senators — led by Bill Cassidy of Louisiana, who chairs the chamber’s Health, Education, Labor, and Pensions (HELP) Committee — have introduced bills to expand benefits like health insurance and retirement savings for contractors. The legislation...

August 5, 2025
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04Aug

This Bezos-Backed Real Estate Startup Is Quietly Disrupting the 401(k)

For decades, the 401(k) has been the gold standard of retirement planning in the U.S.—a slow-and-steady way to build wealth by investing in stocks, bonds, and mutual funds through your employer. But while that model has worked for millions, it's also left a lot to be desired: limited control, unpredictable returns, and almost no cash flow until you’re well into your 60s. That's why a new real estate investing platform backed by Jeff Bezos is turning heads—and quietly offering...

August 4, 2025
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01Aug

Which U.S. States Have the Most People Aged 85 and Older?

According to the U.S. Census Bureau’s 2020 estimates, over 55 million Americans were aged 65 or older. That figure represents about 16.5% of the total U.S. population at the time. Of this group, over 6.3 million were aged 85 and above, a number projected to rise significantly in the coming decades. By 2050, the number of Americans aged 65+ is expected to grow by 47%, reaching over 82 million, according to the Population Reference Bureau. The fastest growth will occur in the 85+...

August 1, 2025
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July 2025
31Jul

US. Private Equity Delivers High Risk, Low Returns, and Costly Fees

Private equity does not deliver the superior returns that its advocates insist justify pension fund investment in this sector, and such investment would be highly risky for retail investors, according to a new report published by the AFT and Americans for Financial Reform Education Fund. The stakes couldn’t be higher, as the Trump administration is expected to issue a new executive order that would require federal agencies to explore opening up 401(k) plans to risky private market investments. This is something the...

July 31, 2025
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