Many younger workers put off saving for retirement so they can focus on goals like paying off their student debt or buying a home. But if you've reached your 50s and have no money at all in a dedicated retirement savings plan, consider it a wake-up call to start doing better. Here are three critical moves to make if that's the situation you're in.
1. Cut back on living expenses big time
If you're without retirement savings, chances are it's because you're in the habit of spending your entire paycheck. Getting on a serious budget and making lifestyle adjustments could therefore be your ticket to carving out some money for your nest egg and salvaging your retirement in the process.
IMAGE SOURCE: GETTY IMAGES.
Once you have your budget set up, comb through it to see where your money is going, and commit to making a few major changes that free up cash. That could mean downsizing to a smaller home, going car-less if there's low-cost public transportation where you live, or eating at home rather than dining out three or four times a week. Smaller changes, like downgrading your cable plan, will help, too, but if you're without retirement savings at all, you'll need to think big to make a difference.
2. Start making catch-up contributions to your IRA or 401(k)
The good thing about being in your 50s is that you're allowed to contribute more to a 401(k) or IRA than younger folks. Currently, workers 50 and older can put up to $25,000 a year into a 401(k) and up to $7,000 into an IRA. Those under 50, meanwhile, max out at $19,000 and $6,000, respectively.
Of course, if you're not in the habit of saving any money at all for retirement, it'll no doubt be a challenge to max out either account type. But let's assume you're housing your savings in an IRA. If you were to sock away $6,000 a year for the next 15 years and invest your savings at an average annual 7% return, you'd wind up with about $151,000. On the other hand, if you were to take advantage of that $1,000 catch-up and instead save $7,000 a year, you'd retire with around $176,000, assuming that same time frame and return on investment. That extra $25,000 could make a huge difference during your golden years, so it pays to push yourself to come up with that additional $1,000 annually.
3. Get a side hustle
There may come a point when you can only cut back on so many expenses or make so many sacrifices to free up cash for your nest egg. If you've exhausted those options, it may be time to consider a side hustle. Of the millions of Americans who have a second gig on top of a main job, 14% are taking on that extra work for the express purpose of saving for retirement.
Not only might a second job help you give your 401(k) or IRA a much-needed boost, but it might also be a gig you're able to continue doing during retirement to supplement your income down the line. And if you've reached your 50s without savings, chances are, you'll need all the money you can get once your full-time career comes to an end.
As of 2016, only 52% of workers 55 and older were saving for retirement in a 401(k) or IRA, according to the U.S. Government Accountability Office. Meanwhile, Social Security will replace only about 40% of the average worker's pre-retirement income, and most seniors need close to double that amount to live comfortably. If you're in your 50s without savings for your golden years, it's time to make some serious changes. Otherwise, you'll risk struggling financially when the time comes to finally leave the workforce.
Keijiro Nawata’s mother, Yaeko Nawata, who suffers from dementia, was sold multiple insurance policies by government-controlled Japan Post.
Photo:
Ko Sasaki for The Wall Street Journal
SANYO-ONODA, Japan—
Keijiro Nawata,
a 38-year-old truck driver, had finished the day’s deliveries and was changing his truck’s oil in the shop one day in June last year when an uncle called saying something was wrong. Mr. Nawata’s mother had received a letter urging her to pay $3,600 in overdue life-insurance premiums, the uncle said.
Mr. Nawata immediately called the insurance office and set up a meeting for the next day, where the news got worse. He discovered that salesmen had persuaded his mother, who suffers from dementia, to take out a dozen policies costing her $2,400 a month—twice her income. She had even been induced to get a $7,000 bank loan to cover payments when she ran out of money.
The company selling all those policies was no fly-by-night operator. It was government-controlled
Japan Post Holdings Co.
, one of the world’s largest financial groups, with trillions of dollars in assets.
“I couldn’t believe it, because I had absolute trust in the post office,” said Mr. Nawata as he showed the pile of contracts with his mother’s shaky signature. “This is very much like the work of gangsters.”
What happened to 71-year-old
Yaeko Nawata
and tens of thousands of other Japan Post policyholders has now ballooned into the biggest scandal since the company’s partial privatization a decade ago and highlighted the pressure that rock-bottom interest rates may be putting on institutions around the globe.
The family sifted through stacks of papers, noting each policy and each payment.
Photo:
Ko Sasaki for The Wall Street Journal
When longer-term rates are negative—as in Japan and parts of Europe, including Germany—it is hard to profit from the difference between short-term and long-term rates, the bread and butter of banks and insurance companies. The U.S. is also experiencing near-record-low interest rates that some economists believe may last for years.
Japan Post said that over the past five years, it sold some 183,000 policies that may have gone against customers’ interests. The company is conducting an internal investigation of the matter.
Japan Post’s core life-insurance products are more like savings plans because they promise returns to policyholders even while they are living. When interest rates were 5% or 6%, Japan Post could offer attractive plans simply by investing in government bonds and letting the interest compound for decades. Today, savers might do as well stuffing their money under a mattress.
“Because of low interest rates, savings-style insurance is not very popular,” Japan Post Holdings President
Masatsugu Nagato
said at a news conference July 31.
“It’s now very hard” to sell policies, said
Masahiko Suzuki,
who has worked as a salesman for three decades at a central-Japan post office. Elderly people, he said, have good memories of the days when the products were more attractive, “so it’s easy to trick them.” Mr. Suzuki said he refused to do that and was a low performer.
One of the salesmen who sold policies to Ms. Nawata,
Koichi Tokutomi,
raised his voice when The Wall Street Journal called and asked about the case. “Why are you calling only me? I’m not the only person who does this!” Mr. Tokutomi said.
He is still employed at the post office in Sanyo-Onoda, an industrial seaside town with cement factories along the coast. Officials at the post office referred questions to Tokyo headquarters, where a spokeswoman declined to comment on the case.
The post office in Sanyo-Onoda, Japan.
Photo:
Ko Sasaki for The Wall Street Journal
Japan Post has apologized and said it would do its best to recover customers’ trust. At the July 31 news conference,
Kunio Yokoyama,
president of Japan Post Co., said, “I strongly regret” that unrealistic goals “put a lot of pressure on our employees.”
The 148-year-old financial behemoth has long been about more than just delivering the mail. With savings accounts and life-insurance policies, Japan Post brought modern finance to all corners of the nation with a network that now includes 24,000 post offices.
Japan Post Holdings Co. went public in 2015 along with its banking and insurance subsidiaries. The government now owns 57% of the holding company, which in turn owns 64.5% of the insurance unit.
As of last year, nearly 90% of Japanese households had insurance policies, with about four per household on average, according to the Japan Institute of Life Insurance.
But the industry has been through a rough period. Several insurance companies went bankrupt around the turn of the century, when the
Bank of Japan
’s benchmark rate was headed to zero for the first time. Overall, industry revenue has fallen nearly 40% since 2011, and the number of policies held at Japan Post has fallen by nearly half over the past decade to 29 million.
The insurance institute’s surveys released last year found that while Japan Post’s policies are seen as less attractive, it still received top ratings for trustworthiness.
Many customers are hanging on to lucrative older policies sometimes known as treasure insurance.
Kyoko Okamoto,
a 66-year-old who works part time at a parcel-delivery company, said she signed up for insurance when she was 20 and took out a loan from the post office to pay premiums when she was going through a rough patch. She said the terms were favorable by today’s standards and she has been collecting about $9,500 every five years, with the first payout coming at age 60 and the last to come at age 75. “I’m glad that I could manage to cling to it,” she said.
A poster inside of the Sanyo-Onoda post office advertising one of the products sold by Japan Post.
Photo:
Ko Sasaki for The Wall Street Journal
Some sales representatives try to persuade people to exchange their treasures for the insurance equivalent of trinkets: new policies with lower returns. Japan Post says its improper sales methods included charging policyholders twice for overlapping coverage.
Commissions account for 25% of annual income for the median postal salesperson, according to Japan Post, which cut salespeople’s base salaries in 2015 to emphasize incentive pay. Low performers have been sent to training where they were berated and humiliated with comments such as, “You’re useless!” said
Kazuhiro Kamon,
vice chairman of the labor union for the postal industry. Japan Post spokesman
Hideo Murata
said such training may have happened in the past but the company now offers proper training.
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What lessons about consumer protection can be learned from Japan Post’s sales practices? Join the conversation below.
At her spacious traditional home, Ms. Nawata, still wipes the wooden hallway floors every day and feeds stray cats that come to her Japanese garden, despite advancing dementia. When her 38-year-old younger son visited on a recent Sunday with a reporter, she said happily to him, “Oh, my goodness, you have become taller!”
According to Mr. Nawata, two salesmen visited his mother in May 2017, a month after
Japan Post Insurance
raised some premiums to reflect lower expected interest rates. Among the policies she was induced to buy were two from
Aflac Inc.
The U.S. company declined to comment about Ms. Nawata and said it was looking into sales practices.
It took months for Mr. Nawata and his uncles to sort stacks of papers. They wrote down by hand each policy and each payment.
After half a year, the family managed to cancel all Ms. Nawata’s policies and get back the money she paid.
“I should have paid more attention to my mother. But the bonds with my family are now stronger,” Mr. Nawata said. He used to visit his mother only on weekends, but now stops by after work almost every day.
Keijiro Nawata and his mother, Yaeko Nawata, in her home in Sanyo-Onoda.
Photo:
Ko Sasaki for The Wall Street Journal
When the U.S. Supreme Court chose to support same-sex marriages a year later, Cathy posted on Twitter that the "founding fathers would be ashamed of our generation" and pronounced it a "sad day for our nation."
The company's charitable foundation has also donated millions to anti-LGBTQ organizations, according to multiple U.S. media reports.
The chain plans to open 15 locations in the Greater Toronto Area in the next five years. There's currently only one other Canadian location, at the Calgary International Airport.
"We respect people's right to share their opinions and want all Torontonians to know they are welcome at Chick-fil-A Yonge & Bloor. Our focus is on offering a welcoming and respectful environment for our guests and team members, and we encourage people to give us a try," read a statement emailed to the Star from Wilson Yang, operator at Chick-fil-A's Toronto location.
A few counterprotesters showed up at Friday's grand opening holding homophobic signs.
Controversial Evangelical pastor Rev. Charles McVety, president of Canada Christian College and a vocal opponent same-sex marriage, came down to support the chain.
"I'm all for freedom," he told reporters outside.
"The founder of this great restaurant chain, the third largest in America, he supports many Christian charities and because he supports Christian charities the bullies come out."
But others in line said they were there for the chicken.
"I'm here because the food is good," said Hanan Mohamed, sipping a frozen lemonade.
"Everyone has their own views and we should be able to eat what we want."
Mohamed has eaten at the franchise in several U.S. cities, including Atlanta where it's based. She arrived around 9 a..m. and stood in line for about an hour and a half, "but it was worth it."
She said she disagrees with the company's stance on LGBTQ issues, but said only a bad customer service experience would make her not want to eat there.
"I love chicken," added Sam Bersam, waiting in line around the corner.
"To be honest, I'm with them," he said of the company. "They have the right to open wherever they want."
At one point on Friday, protesters lay on the sidewalk in front of the restaurant for a "die in," and chanting "Chick-fil-A go away, homo vegans here to stay," while a line of police officers stood on Yonge St. keeping watch.
Protester Rolyn Chambers got into a heated discussion with a Chick-fil-A supporter.
"How can I be calm when my rights are at risk?" he asked. "It's about the money they give, that's the point."
Chambers came with a sign he said was inspired by a Seinfeld episode.
"Baaaad chicken" read the sign.
"Don't eat hate."
With files from The Canadian Press
With files from The Canadian Press
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September 07, 2019 at 03:01AM
Fox Business' Edward Lawrence spoke about how many jobs were added in August and about the Federal Reserve's Jerome Powell's take on the trade war in relation to the U.S. economy.
Hours after Federal Reserve Chairman Jerome Powell said he did not see the U.S. sliding into a recession despite uncertainty surrounding the U.S.-China trade war with China, President Trump had a few words for Twitter followers about China’s economic strategy.
“China just enacted a major stimulus plan. With all the Tariffs THEY are paying to the USA, Billions and Billions of Dollars, they need it! In the meantime, our Federal Reserve sits back and does NOTHING!” he wrote in the tweet.
The People’s Bank of China Friday, in a statement on its website, said it would cut the amount of cash that banks are required to hold in reserve. The shift pivots the country to the lowest level of capital reserves since 2007.
China’s stimulus package is estimated to bring an added $126 billion in available loans to kick-start growth.
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Powell on Friday, while speaking in Zurich, Switzerland, said he “wouldn’t see the recession as the most likely outcome in the U.S.”
“The most likely outlook is still moderate growth, a strong labor market and inflation continuing to move back up," he said.
When asked if he felt whether politics influenced decisions by the U.S. central bank, he was emphatic.
“Political factors play absolutely no role in our process, and my colleagues and I would not tolerate any attempt to include them in our decision-making or our discussions," he said.
MORE ON FOXBUSINESS.COM ...
Trump has often criticized Powell for stifling economic growth by raising interest rates in 2018.
In July, Fed policymakers cut interest rates for the first time since the financial crisis. They are expected to lower rates by another 25 basis points during their upcoming meeting on Sept. 18.
