Free Republic

Some 63% of people can't deal with a $500 emergency. Americans are starting 2016 with more job security, but most are still theoretically only one paycheck away from the street. Approximately 63% of Americans have no emergency savings for things such as a $1,000 emergency room visit or a $500 car repair, according to a survey released Wednesday of 1,000 adults by personal finance website Bankrate.com, up slightly from 62% last year. Faced with an emergency, they say they would raise the money by reducing spending elsewhere (23%), borrowing from family and/or friends (15%) or using credit cards to bridge...

At the start of 2015 President Obama had a goal: use the blunt force of taxation to effectively kill 529 college savings plans. With great pride, Americans from all walks of life rely on 529 accounts to help put their kids, grandkids, nieces and nephews through college. Earnings grow tax-free and distributions are tax-free provided the funds are used for qualified college expenses. But this year Obama decided it was time to tax the earnings in 529s while pushing people toward a government program designed by his administration's best and brightest central planners. It was a spectacular failure. The public...

Tony James and Teresa Ghilarducci are unlikely allies. He is president of Blackstone, the giant private equity firm; she’s a labor economist who has long advocated replacing 401(k)’s with a universal, federally managed saving plan.But the two have teamed up to push what they are calling Guaranteed Retirement Accounts, a government-sponsored plan that would require participation and contributions from any employer without its own 401(k). They both view the 401(k) defined contribution retirement system as a faulty experiment that covers too few workers, generates inadequate savings and replaces too little income in retirement.

A new survey of Millennials (those between the ages of 18 and 34) by How Much shows that more than half of them have less than $1,000 in savings.

Only a small percentage of Americans are positioning themselves for a smooth transition to retirement. Based on the composition of the financial media, one may imagine that the bulk of American households are consumed with avoiding psychological investing traps and choosing between the various forms of smart beta. Unfortunately, however, these “challenges” are only applicable to a small segment of the population that has meaningful financial assets (or a realistic plan to acquire them). Below are eight statistics that better illustrate the status of American retirement savings, pulled from multiple recent studies.33.7: Percentage of U.S. Households with an IRA According...

The concept of earning interest on money in the bank is so deeply ingrained into economic life that few people even know that the opposite can happen too: Banks can take a percentage of cash from your account in the form of negative interest rates, under certain conditions. Normally, this doesn't happen. Banks want your cash, and pay you interest on it, because the more deposits they have, the more they can lend it to others who pay them even more on their investments. But interest rates in Europe are so close to zero — and economic activity is so...

The Insured Retirement Institute has concluded, baby boomers "face a dangerous combination of being under-saved and long-lived." The IRI found four in 10 baby boomers have nothing saved for retirement, and 37% of those who do have savings have less than $100,000 put away. This spells trouble for the average 65-year old male and female who have a 50% chance of living until at least 87 and 89, respectively. The IRI says someone who retires at the age of 65 today will need more than $1 million for retirement while someone who waits until age 70 to retire will need...

Aesop would have had a straightforward explanation for why some people just can’t manage to save up for retirement: Some people are born ants—industrious and in possession of great willpower—while others are grasshoppers, living only for today. Millennia later, sorting workers into personality-specific boxes is still the preferred way of thinking about how to get people to put more money into savings. An otherwise thoughtful survey of over 1,000 individuals and interviews with 50 people by the MetLife Mature Markets Institute identifies no fewer than 10 different variations on the grasshopper: There are “Snoozers,” “Oversleepers,” “Stewers,” “Brewers.” And then there...

Only 63 percent of Americans have saved any money for retirement within the past year, according to a Federal Reserve survey released Wednesday.The survey of 5,800 Americans, conducted last fall, found that 31 percent of Americans have no retirement savings or pension plans. And among adults older than 45, almost 25 percent of respondents didn't have retirement savings. Thirty-eight percent of respondents, meanwhile, said they don't plan on retiring and will "keep working as long as possible," USA Today reports.

Got $1 million in your 401(k)? Some savers might be surprised how feasible that savings goal is if they put their mind — and their money — to it. Of course, if you don’t have $1 million saved, you’re definitely not alone. Just 0.42 percent of all 401(k) participants in the Employee Benefit Research Institute’s database had $1 million or more in their account at the end of 2013. EBRI’s data covers 26.4 million savers. Similarly, just a tad more than 72,000 retirement savers, or 0.56 percent of the 13 million plan participants in its database, had $1 million or...

Statewide caps on government employee health insurance have saved Michigan public school districts a total of $1.3 billion since the 2010-11 school year, according to an analysis done by the Mackinac Center for Public Policy. The caps were implemented by a 2011 law. Districts spent $1.91 billion on employee health insurance in 2010-11, the year before Gov. Rick Snyder signed the new law. It imposed either a “hard cap” on how much schools could spend on health insurance, or required employees to pay at least 20 percent of the premiums. The cost to school districts has dropped each year since,...

This could be the scariest chart in the world, from Deutsche Bank's Torsten Sløk. Nearly half of American households don't save any of their money. If it it isn't obvious, this has a broad range of implications. People who don't save won't have any buffer should the economy turn and they lose their jobs. Longer term, people who don't save won't have the capacity to retire. It's not good.

Brother, can you spare a nickel? For roughly half of American households they answer is "barely," according to the results of a new survey by Bankrate.com. About half reported they are setting aside no more than 5 percent of their income in savings. One in five said they're not even able to save a penny. The highest savings rates were reported by those in the middle of the income ladder; more than a third of households earnings between $50,000 - 75,000 said they're saving more than 10 percent of their incomes, a higher rate than those in the highest-income bracket....

You probably want to retire at some point. But before you can get there, you have to be able to answer a few questions.For example, how much money should you have already saved up if you want to retire by age 65?JPMorgan Asset Management's 2015 "Guide to Retirement" has a handy retirement savings checkpoint guide to help you with that one.To get a crude idea of how much you should have saved, find the age nearest to your age and then go across to the column with the salary nearest to your current salary. Then multiply the number you land...

No excerpt allowed from Bloomberg, column here.

As I have noted previously bond yields continue to go lower, and Investment News reports that it has some bond managers worried that it means that the country will suffer a bout of deflation this year, which mean that the economy, might be, could be, holy cow, a little weaker than expected. Wow. You donÂ’t say? Investment News reports that bond yields are a pretty accurate predictor of which way consumer prices will be going. And in this case the yields are saying consumer prices will be going down. ThatÂ’s good news for those of us who still buy things...

Akin Oyedele October 22, 2014"Gold gets dug out of the ground in Africa or someplace. Then we melt it down, dig another hole, bury it again and pay people to stand around guarding it. It has no utility. Anyone watching from Mars would be scratching their head." That's what Warren Buffett said back in 1998. Gold has long been considered a safe-haven investment. However, the price of gold has performed dismally in recent years. For those who don't trust the conventional financial markets, there are alternative more unorthodox ways to put away wealth. We put together a list of some...

Citing a paper released this week by the St. Louis Federal Reserve, Vice-President Joe Biden blamed American consumers for the sluggish economy. “The government is doing everything it can to try to stimulate the economy,” Biden contended. “The federal government is spending every dollar it can get its hands on. The Federal Reserve is manufacturing new dollars at an unprecedented pace. But consumers are just sitting on their cash.” “Hoarding cash makes no sense,” the Veep argued. “The dollar’s purchasing power is being diluted on a daily basis by government policies. Spending your dollars before they lose even more value...

More than a third of American adults have no retirement savings, including 14% of those 65 years of age or older, according to a new study released Monday. The low savings rate for people at or approaching retirement age is alarming, said Greg McBride, chief financial analyst for Bankrate.com, which conducted the survey. About a quarter -- 26% -- of those age 50 to 64 haven't started saving for retirement, the survey said; the figure was 33% of people who are 30- to 49-years-old. Overall, 36% of those 18 years or older have not started saving for retirement, according to...

One in five people who are near retirement age have zero money saved. Yes, you read that correctly. The sobering statistic was one of many released by the Federal Reserve on Thursday as part of its report on the economic well-being of U.S. households, which surveyed more than 4,100 people online last year between mid-September and early October. The study offered a stark reminder that as more Americans are made responsible for their own retirement, most are not saving nearly enough. Overall, 31 percent of people said they have zero money saved for retirement and do not have a pension....