Our daily roundup of retirement news your clients may be thinking about.
Fully half of renters aged 65 and older were "rent burdened" in 2015, up from 43% in 2001, according to this article on MarketWatch, citing a report from Pew Charitable Trusts. Pew defines rent-burdened as spending 30% or more of income on rent. The subset of people who are “severely rent burdened” increased to 23% from 15% in that same time fame (2015 was the latest available data.) “Older Americans are disproportionately likely to be rent burdened,” says an expert, adding that the number of older renters rose the fastest. “Unlike in the 1970s, when young families drove the increasing share of households that rent, the spike since 2001 has been driven by those 55 and older.”
Data from Wilshire Trust Universe Comparison Service show that public pension funds saw the value of their investments decreased last quarter by 0.23%, according to this article on The Wall Street Journal. “With all of the major asset classes falling, it was pretty tough for investors to have any positive returns. They didn’t have much of a chance to make money,” says an expert.
Clients have two types of life insurance to choose from: term or permanent, according to this article on Kiplinger. A term life insurance covers policyholders up to a certain period, and they lose the coverage once they live past the predefined period. A permanent life insurance offers lifetime coverage, with cash value component that grows on tax-deferred basis, which means that the returns will not be subject to capital gains tax.
A report from the Social Security Trustees shows that the program is expected to exhaust its asset reserves estimated at $3 trillion by 2034, according to this article on Motley Fool. This means that benefit payouts for future retirees would be reduced by up to 23%. These reserve assets are among the funding sources of Social Security, aside from payroll taxes and taxation of benefits of certain retirees.
