RetirementRevised

Financial security in retirement depends on more than individual savings. Social Security, Medicare, pensions, housing and health care costs, inflation and public benefits all play a role. As policymakers debate the future of these programs, which numbers matter most? Join me for the October American Society on Aging Chicagoland Roundtable, which will examine the key indicators shaping retirement security today and in the years ahead.

The Social Security cost-of-living adjustment (COLA) is one of the most closely-watched - and forecast - numbers on the retirement beat. The valuable annual inflation adjustment makes Social Security unique among retirement benefits - you simply can’t get it anywhere else. The COLA is determined using the Consumer Price Index for Urban Wage Earners and Clerical Workers (CPI-W).

The legendary Costco hot dog and drink combo. Costco CEO W. Craig Jelinek tells a story that I love because it captures the company’s commitment to its culture and customers. Here’s how he recalls it in a New Yorker profile of Costco published last year: At a 2018 luncheon, W. Craig Jelinek, who took over as C.E.O. in 2012, told a story about a stalwart Costco food-court deal: the dollar-fifty hot-dog-and-soda combo. Concerned about its economics, he’d approached [Jim] Sinegal, who was then his boss.

You’ll often hear politicians promise to “protect” Social Security. Right now, the most important problem facing the program is the trustees’ projection that the combined retirement and disability trust funds will be exhausted in 2034. Unless Congress acts, Social Security will only have sufficient funds to pay about three-quarters of scheduled benefits because the program has no legal authority to borrow money to close its funding gap.

As you might guess, I get plenty of questions from family, friends and readers about how to sign up for Medicare. In these conversations, I’m always struck by the complexity of the Medicare program - and the challenging task of transitioning to it from other types of health insurance. That’s what prompted me to write a primer on Medicare enrollment for the New York Times that appeared this past weekend.

The Social Security trustees issued their annual report this week on the program’s financial health. They continue to project depletion of the combined retirement and disability trust funds (OASDI) in 2034, although some underlying factors in the numbers continue to worsen. Think of the trust funds as though they were checking accounts: revenues flow in, and benefit payments flow out.

More than half of Medicare enrollees have chosen Medicare Advantage plans - the all-in-one commercial alternative to the traditional program. The rapid growth of Advantage in recent years has been fueled by extensive marketing emphasizing lower premiums, extra benefits, and claims about protection against high out-of-pocket costs. Advantage plans can indeed save you money upfront. Many include prescription drug coverage and charge no additional plan premium beyond the Part B premium.

Donald Trump has signed more than 250 executive orders during his second term as president, so you could be forgiven if you missed the one that aims to fix the biggest problem with the US retirement savings system: the coverage gap. Only about half of private-sector US workers have access to an employer retirement plan at any given time, mainly because small businesses are less likely to offer the plans.

Zepbound, one of the new class of GLP-1 weight-loss drugs that Medicare will start covering in July. Credit: Eli Lilly & Co. A new Medicare program launching this summer could put GLP-1 weight-loss drugs within reach for millions of seniors for the first time. The catch: it’s a temporary pilot program with an uncertain outlook after 2027.

Americans are more worried about affording retirement than at any time in the past five years - and their level of concern is approaching those last seen during the Great Recession. That’s the finding of the longest-running survey of retirement confidence, conducted annually by the Employee Benefit Research Institute.