Retirement Roundup: Here’s what could take a big bite out of your nest egg

A digest of news from publications around the nation about finance, investing, and retirement

Here’s
what could take a big bite out of your retirement nest egg — and how you can
control it | CNBC

Your income may be fixed in
retirement, yet how much you spend could fluctuate dramatically. The amount of
money that goes out each month could have a big impact on how well you live,
but research from J.P. Morgan Asset Management found that people tend to spend
more at the beginning of retirement. And those behaviors could upend
traditional measures for how much money to have saved.

Public sector employees shouldering more risk in retirement plans | PlanSponsor

Many people in the private sector
may not realize that for the vast majority of employees of state and local
governments, both participation in a public pension plan and contributing
toward the cost of the pension are mandatory terms of employment. In a recent
report, Employee
Contributions to Public Pension Plans, the National
Association of State Retirement Administrators (NASRA), says since 2009,
more than 35 states increased required employee contribution rates. As a result
of these changes, the median contribution rate paid by employees has increased
to 6 percent of pay for employees who also participate in Social Security, and
has remained steady at 8 percent for those who do not participate in Social
Security.

This
podcast exposes what Americans get wrong about retirement saving — and what
they can do to make it right | MarketWatch

Many Americans are unprepared for retirement, and they may
think it’s their fault they haven’t saved enough. A new podcast, “Reset Retirement,” from Teresa Ghilarducci, a
labor economist and director of The New School’s Schwartz Center for Economic Policy Analysis and the
Retirement Equity Lab,
begs to differ. The burden of having enough stashed away for retirement
shouldn’t just fall on the shoulders of Americans, says Ghilarducci. The
retirement system as a whole – shared by individuals, the financial services
industry and the government – is broken, and it’s hurting Americans’ future
security.

79% of Future Retirees Share This Major Concern | The Motley Fool

Earlier
this year, Fidelity
estimated that the average 65-year-old couple retiring in 2019 would
spend $285,000 on
medical care throughout their golden years. Meanwhile, cost-projection software
provider HealthView
Services puts that number at $387,644.
These figures account for expenses like Medicare premiums, deductibles, coinsurance,
co-pays, and services not covered by Medicare. It’s no wonder, then, that 79
percent of future retirees cite healthcare costs as their top financial
concern, according to a new
survey by Nationwide. If you’re worried about paying for healthcare in
retirement, the good news is that there are several savings
vehicles that can make it easier to sock away funds for this
expense. And the sooner you start taking advantage of them, the better.

Funds fail to repeat success in 2018 | Pensions & Investments

The world’s largest retirement
funds saw their assets dip 0.4 percent in 2018, to $18 trillion. That compares
with an increase of 15.1 percent the prior year, according to the latest survey
by Pensions & Investments and the Thinking Ahead Institute of the
world’s 300 largest retirement plans. For the 20 largest retirement funds,
assets fell 1.6 percent to $7.3 trillion, vs. a nearly 17 percent rise in 2017.