Social Security Retirement Estimator

A new Social Security retirement benefit estimator just went online this week at ssa.gov .

For my students, none may yet have the 40 credits (a credit is, essentially, a calendar quarter of work), or 10 years of work, necessary for retirement benefits -- so this estimator may not, for them, be personally usable.

Retirement must seem a long way away for my students... Oh, was I EVER that young???

- Rick

"Inflation" Doesn't Begin to Describe It

Per this CNN article, Zimbabwe has just introduced $100 billion banknotes (each of which is worth one U.S. dollar). According to the article, the Zimbabwe inflation rate is now at 2.2 million percent.

To put $100 billion in some perspective... per the U.S. Federal Reserve, the entire U.S. M1 money supply is less than $1.4 trillion...

- Rick

Retirement Issues - Post 4

Here's a paper, titled "Top Ten Myths of Social Security," by Prof. Richard Kaplan of the University of Illinois (hurrah!). The abstract quickly summarizes the ten myths - the body of the paper elaborates on each.

- Rick

Retirement Issues - Part 3

Robert Myers is one of the best-known names in the history of U.S. actuarial science. He was, for 23 years, the Chief Actuary of the Social Security Administration (SSA), and spent basically his entire career in government-oriented actuarial functions.

On the SSA website, there is the transcript of an Oral History Interview with Myers. It is rather long - but also rather interesting, and worth dipping into and scanning if you have some time. There are some references to actuarial history, but, more importantly, some enlightening discussion of how some of the key Social Security issues were originally addressed and subsequently developed. Issues such as the retirement test, pay-as-you-go funding philosophy, etc. - very interesting to hear the perspective of someone who was there.

By the way, if you've never seen it, check out the SSA Actuarial Resources page. Lots of good references, including to the annual Trustees Report, actuarial projections, etc. A great resource for those interested in retirement and pension issues.

- Rick

Retirement Issues - Post 2

From the Economic Policy Institute, an article entitled "How economic conditions affect retirement decisions" - specifically, the relationship between the level of unemployment and early retirement decisions. Some interesting statistical observations over the last three decades. Of course, the factors underlying movements in both these measures are critical to understand...

- Rick

Retirement Issues - Post 1

Recently, in Slate, there appeared a short article by Tim Harford suggesting that, contrary to traditional wisdom, most of us seem to be doing OK with respect to personally saving enough for retirement. An interesting read. Of course, this whole important area has a vast number of interrelated factors entering into it...

- Rick