Best places for snowbirds to retire-Emily Brandon US News

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If you're serious about avoiding winter in retirement, you're probably dreaming of moving to a Sunbelt state. Although summers can be very hot, you aren't likely to need a winter coat or boots in these sunny retirement spots. These cities were the hottest in the U.S. in 2014, according to the National Climatic Data Center.

Key West, Florida
Key West, an island at the southernmost tip of the Florida Keys, is the hottest place in the mainland U.S. It had an average temperature of 78.6 degrees in 2014, which is slightly above its 30-year average of 77.8 degrees.
Miami
Miami is the warmest major metropolitan area. The weather averaged 77.5 degrees in 2014, a temperature that has remained consistent for the past three decades. But sea breezes from the nearby Atlantic Ocean sometimes temper the heat.
Phoenix

Phoenix is the hottest city in Arizona, averaging 77.2 degrees, which is even warmer than its 30-year average of 75.1 degrees. Phoenix is among the driest places in the country, averaging just eight inches of precipitation per year, and it's also one of the sunniest, with an 85 percent chance of sunshine.

Fort Myers, Florida

Located along the Caloosahatchee River and near the Gulf of Mexico, this southwest Florida city has warm winters and hot summers. Its 2014 temperature averaged 75.2 degrees, the same as the 30-year average.

Brownsville, Texas

Located on the southernmost tip of the state, Brownsville is the hottest city in Texas and had an average 2014 temperature of 73.9 degrees. Close to both the Rio Grande and Gulf of Mexico, the city is also known for its humidity, which averages 78 percent.

Orlando, Florida

The home of Walt Disney World and the University of Central Florida had an average temperature of 73.2 degrees in 2014. These pleasant temperatures have remained relatively constant over the past 30 years.

Tampa, Florida
Tampa is located on the west coast of Florida, along the Tampa Bay and near the Gulf of Mexico. Tampa had an average temperature of 72.9 degrees in 2014. Summers can be humid and thunderstorms are frequent.
Corpus Christi, Texas
Located along the Corpus Christi Bay and the Gulf of Mexico, Corpus Christi is known for its high temperatures, averaging 72.2 degrees. The high humidity averages 78.5 percent.
Tucson, Arizona

In Tucson, you get hot weather (averaging 72.2 degrees) without the humidity, which averages only 38.5 percent and is among the lowest in the country. Tucson is also one of the sunniest places in the U.S., with the sun shining down on the city 85 percent of the time.

Las Vegas

The weather in Las Vegas is hot (averaging 72.1 degrees) and dry, averaging just 4.49 inches of participation each year, the second-lowest of any city in the country. The sun is shining 85 percent of the time, and humidity is among the lowest of anywhere in the U.S.

Hawaii and Puerto Rico

If you're willing to venture outside of the mainland U.S., there are plenty of other sunny cities. Among the warmest in the U.S. are the Hawaiian cities of Honolulu (78.2 degrees), Kahului (77 degrees), Lihue (75.8 degrees) and Hilo (74.8 degrees). But San Juan, Puerto Rico is even hotter, averaging 82 degrees.

Culled from US news

WILL YOUR MEDICAL HEALTH SUPPORT YOUR PENSION?- Odunze Reginald

Their desire of every pensioner is to care of his or herself during old age, but is it  retiree financially stable to shoulder such responsibility , bearing in mind that the period 60 and above comes with various lingering issues including medical health problem.

The medical and health challenge is of varying dimensions, high blood pressure, stroke, obesity, heart attack, cancer of the breast, prostate cancer   that and other medical issues comes with old age.

With the developing state and coupled with the inability of the African governments to have a viable medical programme for old people as prevalent in other continents like Europe, North and South America, Asia , Australia etc. Africa countries with the exception of few African countries like South Africa, Egypt etc have not been able to develop a medical programme for old people and senior citizen. Even where it is said to be existing, there are bottlenecks, corruption and other vices militating against it.

So what do they do in such economy where there are little on non existing medical program for old people, what will the old people do in such a situation, will they resort to the little or no  contribution of their pension pot.

In a seminar organized in 2010 in Rock view Hotel in Abuja in conjunction with NHIS, and invitations open to PFAs, the organizers of the seminar were of the opinion of integrating retiree for NHIS, major stakeholders were in attendance including the then Director General of NHIS, the chairman of NUP , National Union of Pensioners. Stakeholders brainstorm on the gains of the programme and the positive it will have on the retirees. But has been the bane of Nigeria Government, the seminars were not put in to use.

So what should the retiree do in such an economy, bearing in mind the lack of government in such a vital issue?   That calls an adequate re examination by the government in such regards and the input of retirees towards achieving good health at their retirement age.  That calls for sacrifices on the part of the contributors to set aside an additional contribution to take care of medical bills, should such crop during old age.

Also the medical history of the intending retirees should of utmost necessity be a guiding principle, especially those that family medical history on such diseases.

 

Culled from Reginald odunze.com

How to Save More for Retirement Without Saving an Extra Cent-Walter Updegrave

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Think you can't set aside any more dough than you're already saving? Here's a simple way to grow your nest egg without putting a squeeze on your budget.

Actually, there’s an easy way boost your retirement account balances without further squeezing your budget: Stash whatever money you do manage to save in the lowest-cost investments you can find. This simple tactic has the same effect as contributing more to your retirement accounts, making it the financial equivalent of upping your savings rate.
How big a jump in your effective savings rate are we talking about? That depends on how much you cut investment fees and how long you reap the benefits of those lower costs. But over time the increase in your effective savings rate can be quite meaningful, as this example shows.
Let’s say you’re 35, earn $50,000 a year, receive 2% annual raises, and contribute 10% of your salary to a 401(k) that earns a 7% a year before fees. If you shell out 1.5% annually in investment expenses, by the time you’re 65 your 401(k) balance will total just under $465,000.
Reduce your annual investment costs from 1.5% to just 1%—hardly a heroic effort—and you’re looking at a nest egg worth roughly $505,000. To end up with that amount while still paying 1.5% in annual fees, you would have to boost your annual 401(k) contribution to 10.8%. Which means that lowering expenses by a half percentage point in this case is essentially the same as saving nearly a full percentage point more each year, except you don’t have to reduce your spending to do it.
And what if you take an even sharper knife to investing costs?
Well, cutting expenses from 1.5% to 0.5% a year would give our hypothetical 35-year-old a 401(k) balance of just under $550,000 at age 65, or the equivalent of saving 11.8% a year instead of 10%. And if you’re able to really cut investment fees to the bone—say, to 0.25%—that nest egg’s value would balloon to just over $573,000. To reach that size while paying 1.5% annually in investing costs, our 35-year-old would have to contribute 12.3% of pay.
By the way, lowering investment costs can also have a big payoff after you’ve stopped saving and have begun tapping your nest egg for retirement income. For example, a 65 year-old with a $1 million nest egg split equally between stocks and bonds who wants an 80% chance that his savings will sustain him for at least 30 years would have to limit himself to an initial draw (that would subsequently rise with inflation) of just under 3.5%, or a bit less than $35,000, assuming annual expenses of 1.5%.
Cut that levy from 1.5% to 0.5%, and he would be able to boost that inflation-adjusted withdrawal to almost 4%, or $40,000, while maintaining the same 80% probability of savings lasting 30 or more years.
Of course, the results you get may vary for any number of reasons. For example, if you’re doing most of your saving through a 401(k) and your plan lacks good low-cost investment options, your ability to turn lower expenses into a higher account balance will necessarily be limited. And even if you are able to home in on investments with rock-bottom costs, there’s no guarantee that every dollar of cost savings will translate to an extra dollar in your account.
That said, unless every cent of your savings is locked into an account that offers only high-expense investments, you should be able to get some money into cost-efficient options. At the very least you can steer savings in IRAs and taxable accounts into low-fee index funds and ETFs (some of which charge as little as 0.05%). And while cutting investing costs can’t guarantee a larger nest egg, Morningstar research shows that funds with the lowest expense ratios tend to outperform their higher-fee counterparts.
One final note. While targeting low-expense investment options is certainly an effective and painless way to boost the size of your nest egg, you shouldn’t let low costs do all the work. Indeed, if you focus on low-fee investments and increase your contributions to 401(k)s, IRAs and other retirement accounts, that’s when you’ll see your savings balances really take off.

Culled from Money.com

Retirees: Are you spending too much?-By Christine Benz

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How much can you spend in retirement without outliving your money? It's one of the most fundamental questions confronting anyone who's retired--or getting ready to.

But it's a head-scratcher for many, according to a survey from the American College of Financial Services. Seven in 10 individuals between the ages of 60 and 75 with at least $100,000 said they were unfamiliar with the oft-cited 4% withdrawal-rate guideline. Meanwhile, 16% of survey respondents pegged 6% to 8% as a safe withdrawal rate.
That's a problem. Because setting a sustainable withdrawal rate--or spending rate, as I prefer--is such an important part of retirement planning, pre-retirees and retirees who need guidance should seek the help of a financial advisor for this part of the planning process.
And at a bare minimum, anyone embarking on retirement should understand the basics of spending rates: how to calculate them, how to make sure their spending passes the sniff test of sustainability given their time horizon and asset allocation, and why it can be valuable to adjust spending rates over time.
How to Calculate It
To determine your own spending rate, simply tally up your expenses--either real or projected--in a given year. Subtract from that amount any nonportfolio income that you're receiving in retirement: Social Security, pension, rental, or annuity income, to name a few key examples. The amount that you're left over with is the amount of income you'll need to draw from your portfolio. Divide that dollar amount by your total portfolio value to arrive at your spending rate.
Say, for example, a retiree has $60,000 in annual income needs, $28,000 of which is coming from Social Security and the remainder of which--$32,000--she will need to draw from her portfolio. If she has an $800,000 portfolio, her $32,000 annual portfolio spending is precisely 4%. But if she needs to draw $50,000 from her portfolio, her spending rate is 6.25%.
The 4% Rule, Unpacked
The notion that 4% is generally a safe withdrawal rate was originally advanced by financial planner William Bengen; it has subsequently been refined--but generally corroborated--by several academic studies, including the so-called Trinity study. Before retirees take the 4% guideline and run with it, however, it's important to understand the assumptions that underpinned it.
First, the research assumed that retirees would wish to maintain a consistent standard of living, drawing a steady stream of income--in dollars and cents--from their portfolios each year. Thus, the 4% guideline assumes that the retiree spends 4% of his or her initial balance in year one of retirement, then subsequently nudges the amount up in subsequent years to keep pace with inflation. He or she doesn't take 4% of the balance year in and year out, though that's a viable spending-rate method, too (more on this in a moment).
Additionally, the 4% guideline assumes a 60% equity/40% bond asset allocation and a 30-year time horizon, and that the 4%, whether it comes from income and dividend distributions or from selling securities, is the total withdrawal. Thus, a retiree whose portfolio was generating 4% in income distributions couldn't take an additional 4% from her principal. This article discusses the 4% guideline research in greater detail.
Swing Factors
Because not every retiree's profile matches those parameters, not every retiree should take the 4% guideline and run with it. Indeed, much of the recent research on spending rates has suggested that rather than take 4% of a portfolio per year and simply inflation-adjust that dollar value, retirees should be prepared to adjust their spending rates up or down based on the following factors.
Time Horizon: Retirees with time horizons that are longer than 30 years should plan to take well less than 4% of their portfolios in year one of retirement. On the flip side, older retirees--those 75 or older, for example--might consider taking a higher withdrawal rate. David Blanchett, head of retirement research for Morningstar Investment Management, has suggested that retirees consider their life expectancies when determining their spending rates. The life-expectancy factors used to calculate required minimum distributions from IRAs and company retirement plans could be helpful in doing so, as Blanchett discussed in this video.
Asset Allocation: A retiree's asset allocation should also be in the mix when calibrating sustainable spending rates. The 4% guideline, as noted above, is centered around a 60% equity/40% bond mix. But investors who want to employ a portfolio that includes more bonds and cash should be more conservative in their spending rates, as Blanchett discussed in this video. The reason is that bond yields have historically been a reasonable predictor of bond performance in subsequent years, and bond payouts are ultralow right now. Thus, the bond-heavy investor can expect less help from the market in the years ahead.
Market Performance: The bear market of 2008 illustrated so-called sequencing risk: Retirees greatly reduce their portfolio's sustainability potential when they encounter a lousy market early on in their retirements and don't take steps to reduce their spending. That's because if they overspend during those lean years, they leave less of their portfolios in place to recover when the market does.
The Right Spending Strategy for You
Indeed, much of the recent research on sustainable withdrawal rates supports the idea of tying in withdrawal rates with portfolio performance. The retiree takes less out in down-market years and can potentially take more out in years when the market performs well, such as in 2013.
The purest way to tie in spending with portfolio performance is simply to take a fixed percentage of that portfolio--say, 4%--year in and year out. Under this method, the retiree could take $32,000 from her portfolio when its value is $800,000, but would be forced to live on $24,000 if her portfolio dropped to $600,000 in value. Using the fixed-percentage method, the retiree would never run out of money, but she might not be able to make do on the smaller amount.
For retirees who aren't comfortable with such dramatic fluctuations in their standards of living, it's possible to employ a hybrid approach: tying in spending with market movements while also ensuring a basic standard of living. One such strategy, discussed here, blends fixed-percentage withdrawals with a ceiling and floor. A simpler strategy, advanced by T. Rowe Price and discussed in this article, allows the retiree to spend a fixed dollar amount, adjusted upward for inflation, as in the 4% guideline. But the retiree simply forgoes the inflation adjustment in lean market years. T. Rowe's research found that even this simple step helped improve portfolios' sustainability.

 Culled from Morning star

Pension pot hunt fund to help millions trace lost money to be massively expanded-By Vincent Moss

Pension hunt: Team is expanded

A free service to help people trace millions of lost pension pots worth an ­estimated £3billion is to be hugely expanded.
The Pension Tracing Service in Newcastle will triple its staff to 49.
Pensions Minister Steve Webb said: “We are working hard to make sure people get what they are entitled to.
“If you contributed to a pension in a previous job and don’t have any details any more, it would be worth contacting our free PTS to see how you can be reunited with your lost pension pot."
Last year, the service traced lost pensions for more than 125,000 people.
Last year, the service was contacted a record 145,000 times – double the amount in 2010.
In 87 per cent of cases, staff successfully managed to put customers back in touch with their lost pension provider.

Culled from mirror

THE RISE IN PENSION ASSETS AND THE NEED FOR HOUSING DEVEOPMENT-Odunze Reginald C

In advance economy, pension assets have been effectively used for infrastructural development like good road network, housing etc

The need for housing cannot be over emphasized

In January  2015, the National Pension Commission, PenCom, announced that the pension assets has hit 4.6 Trillion Naira, and also stated that the operators in the scheme has 20 PFAs, 4PFCs, 7CPFAs, 19AES,and more  recently the Police Pension Fund.

The astronomical increase in pension assets at the point of writing this article may far be in excess of 4.6 Trillion, may have been necessitated by the strict oversight functions of PenCom, the body vested by the provisions of the Pension Reform Act as being responsible for the supervision and control of the Pension Fund Administrators, Pension Fund Custodians and other relevant players in the scheme.

The recent amendment of the 2004 Pension Reform Act, which resulted in its repeal and the subsequent provisions of the Pension Reform Act 2014 will positively consolidate more on the pension assets as the relevant portions of the law has increased the coverage to states, local governments, and employers with minimum of three employees.

What these portends is that of sustainability , a market deepening and expansion which will definitely results in Larger pension assets. But market deepening and expansion has its problems which includes handling the issue of customer service delivery and incidence of high technological cost.

Technology is a paramount necessity in all spheres of business life and pension cannot be an exception, linked to technology is the issue of customer service delivery as the market deepening will come with it, a larger customer base waiting to be serviced on a regular bases.

But far from these, the increase in Pension Assets will definitely results in large investible funds for the real sector and infrastructure, but the idea of investing in real sector and infrastructure comes with it a myriad of problems like corruption, inflation of contracts, kick back just to mention a few, what then do we do as corruption or fraudulent practices may results in the retiree not able to access his funds at the point of retirement.

Culled from reginaldodunze.blogspot.com

PFAs to face sanction for conniving with PHCN workers -By Sola Alabadan

The National Pension Commission (PenCom) says some reabsorbed employees of the defunct Power Holding Company of Nigeria (PHCN) connived with some Pension Fund Administrators (PFAs) to withdraw 25 per cent of their pension contributions, in spite of the fact that their Retirement Savings Accounts (RSAs) were still active.

Misbahu Yola, MD, Legacy Pension

PenCom has been investigating the case, and has assured that any PFA found gulty to have willfully violated the provisions of the Pension Reform Act 2014 (PRA) would be sanctioned accordingly.
This was disclosed in the latest quarterly report issued by PenCom under the leadership of its Director General, Mrs. Chinelo Anohu-Amazu.
Specifically, PenCom stated that “It was brought to the attention of the Commission that some reabsorbed employees of the defunct PHCN connived with some PFAs to access 25 per cent of their RSA balances using their disengagement letters to obtain the Commission’s approval, in spite of the fact that their RSAs were still active.
“The Commission was still investigating the case with a view to take appropriate actions against those PFAs found to have willfully violated the provisions of the PRA.”
Although, the Pension Act stipulates that an employee shall not be entitled to make any withdrawal from his retirement savings account before attaining the age of 50 years, an employee who is disengagaged is allowed to withdraw 25 per cent of his RSA balances provided such an employee does not secure another employment.
Due to the fact that the affected former employees have been reabsorbed by PHCN, they no longer qualify to withdraw 25 per cent of his RSA balances.
In specific terms, Section 7(2) of the Pension Act states that “Where an employee voluntarily retires, disengages or is disengaged from employment as provided for under subsections (2) and (5) of section 16 of this Act, the employee may with the approval of the Commission, withdraw an amount of money not exceeding 25 per cent of the total amount credited to his retirement savings account, provided that such withdrawals shall only be made after four months of such retirement or cessation of employment and the employee does not secure another employment.”
It was added in subsection (3) of the same section that “Where an employee has accessed the amount standing in his retirement savings account pursuant to subsection (2) this section, such employee shall subsequently access the balance in the retirerement savings account in accordance with subsection (l) of this section.”

Culled from Daily Independent