Retirees hit by “longevity risk”
By Tom Brown
MIAMI (Reuters) - Like many other elderly Americans, Edie Stark has been hard hit by the meltdown in U.S. financial markets. She is 84 and has been worried a lot lately about outliving her savings.
A retired nurse, Stark is a prime example of what financial planners coldly call “longevity risk,” a reference to the need for a secure income and lasting savings at a time when growing numbers of Americans can live for 30 years in retirement.
Life expectancy in the United States has already reached a record high of 77.8 years, up from 70.8 in 1970, according to the U.S. National Center for Health Statistics. Fueled by continuing health gains, the U.S. Census Bureau projects life expectancy in the world’s wealthiest country will reach 79.2 years by 2015.
Stark said she and her husband had seen more than 50 percent of their retirement assets wiped out since the stock market started tanking several months ago.
She still plans to see out the end of her days with her 88-year-old husband at the Palace, an upscale retirement complex where they live on the palm-fringed southern outskirts of Miami.
She acknowledges that may not be possible, however, as her life savings vanish.
“I have fixed expenses so I can add it up and tell you how many years we can live unless the market comes up,” said Stark.
“We wanted to have money to leave our children. That’s not possible anymore,” said Stark, whose husband suffers from dementia and is cared for in an assisted living facility at the Palace.
Dorie Ryder, 89, a retired school teacher and neighbor of Stark’s at the Palace, said she had lost about 25 percent of her assets to the recent stock market downturn.
She has fond memories of better times when she and her husband lived just a block away from the home of former President Richard Nixon on nearby Key Biscayne.
But Ryder said she is now contemplating a move into a Miami-area apartment, where she’d live alone but pay less rent than the $3,500 she forks out monthly at the Palace.
“I just do the best I can and I’m worried,” said Ryder, who has a small pension. “I don’t know how long I’ll be able to stay here.”
Coping with financial fears is not unique to the elderly, especially at a time of record home foreclosure filings, crumbling real estate values and rising unemployment.
It can be especially painful for the elderly, however, even for those who are still a long way from being destitute.
“Money anxiety when you’re older is just different than when you are young. You don’t have a chance to recover,” said Teresa Ghilarducci, a retirement expert and professor of economic policy analysis at New York’s New School for Social Research. Continued…
--------------------------------------------------------------------------------------------Related Posts:
By Julie Steenhuysen CHICAGO (Reuters) - Imposing European-style price controls on prescription drugs in the United States would result in modest cost savings that would be more than offset by shortened life spans as the pace of drug innovation slows, U.S. researchers said on Tuesday. They said lowering insurance co-payments would be a better way of attacking
Full Post: Drug price controls may shorten lives: report
--------------------------------------------------------------------------------------------
NEW YORK (Reuters Health) - African Americans are less likely than whites to seek end-of-life hospice care — and a new study suggests that hospice admission criteria may be partially to blame. The researchers found that compared with whites African Americans are more likely to want to continue aggressive treatment and expressed a need for more
Full Post: Hospice rules may deter some African Americans
--------------------------------------------------------------------------------------------
By Ingrid Melander and Lorraine Turner BRUSSELS/LONDON (Reuters) - As the financial crisis hit a climax in Belgium with the split-up of its largest bank Fortis in October, new clients were rushing to a small, “ecologically correct” bank. Triodos — investing not in derivatives but in tangible products such as wind turbines which the general public can
Full Post: Not promising the earth, ethical banks win custom
--------------------------------------------------------------------------------------------
By Phil Stewart ROME (Reuters) - The world’s leading crusaders against hunger voiced frustration on World Food Day on Thursday that the global financial crisis had overshadowed a food crisis tipping millions toward starvation. The World Bank predicts that high food and fuel prices will increase the number of malnourished people in the world by 44 million
Full Post: Hunger eclipsed by financial crisis on World Food Day
--------------------------------------------------------------------------------------------
Before I succeeded with losing 85 pounds and keeping it off, I had tried and failed with so many diets that I lost count. It was discouraging and depressing. I started asking myself…what was different about the last time? What did it finally take for me to succeed? The answer can be applied to weight loss
Full Post: Weight Loss Motivation Tip - How Badly Do You Want It?