By Glenn Ruffenach; The Wall Street Journal ~ Jun 22, 2014

Imagine that you’re about to accept a new job, and it’s time to talk salary. You sit down with your boss, who begins as follows:

“Actually, our payroll system is impossibly complicated. You can pick from dozens of different ways to be paid and hundreds of different start dates, and each will produce a different salary. We offer some guidance, but we’re short-handed. As such, deciding when and how to collect a paycheck is essentially up to you.

By Karen Damato; The Wall Street Journal ~ Jun 22, 2014

My 401(k) account (not Roth 401(k)) includes my employer’s contributions as well as my own before-tax and after-tax contributions. When I retire, I would like to move all my 401(k) assets into two separate accounts—rolling over all my employer’s contributions and my before-tax contributions to a regular individual retirement account and moving all my personal after-tax contributions to a Roth IRA. Is this feasible?

Jean P. Camy, San Ramon, Calif.

By Andrew Pollack, New York Times – June 20, 2014

In dealing with health plans, drug companies are facing a new imperative — bargain or be banned.

Determined to slow the rapid rise in drug prices, more health plans are refusing to cover certain drugs unless the companies charge less for them.

The strategy appears to be getting pharmaceutical makers to compete on price. Some big-selling products, like the respiratory medicine Advair and the diabetes drug Victoza, have suffered precipitous declines in market share because Express Scripts, the biggest pharmacy benefits manager, recently stopped paying for them for many patients.

By Anna Gorman; Kaiser Health News ~ Jun 16, 2014

As soon as Deb Emerson, a former high school teacher from Oroville, Calif., bought a health plan in January through the state’s insurance exchange, she felt overwhelmed.

She couldn’t figure out what was covered and what wasn’t. Why weren’t her anti-depressant medications included? Why did she have to pay $60 to see a doctor? The insurance jargon – deductible, co-pay, premium, co-insurance – was like a foreign language. What did it mean?

By John Wasik; Forbes ~ Jun 16, 2014

When it comes to pulling money out of your retirement plans, you have to consider more than just the amount of the withdrawal. You have to consider how much you’ll owe Uncle Sam when you do it.

Being tax-smart in retirement means keeping more of what you’ve saved up. What seems natural is actually counter-intuitive from a tax standpoint since assets can be taxed different depending upon where they are held and what they are. Here are three strategies:

1. Cash in Your Stocks First. You’ll pay a lower rate on mutual funds and securities held in a taxable account. For assets held for at least one year, most investors will pay a 15 percent rate. That easily beats the 39.6-percent top rate on income.

By Kate Tummarello; The Hill ~ Jun 13, 2014

Federal Communications Commission (FCC) Chairman Tom Wheeler has recused himself as the agency considers AT&T’s plans to switch subscribers from traditional phone technology to Internet-based phone lines.

At the agency’s June open meeting on Friday, Wheeler announced that he would not participate in the agency’s work on this topic, citing his tenure on the Board of Directors for telecom company EarthLink, which recently filed to participate.

By Ray Le Maistre; Light Reading ~ Jun 12, 2014

The days of networks being adequately protected by “perimeter” security infrastructure are over, according to AT&T Chief Security Officer Ed Amoroso.

In a special video presentation recorded by AT&T Inc. (NYSE: T) for Light Reading’s recent Mobile Network Security Strategies event in London, Amoroso provided a detailed insight into the different stages “we’re going through as a community — a mobility community, telecom community, and as users.”

In the past, perimeter security that was built using devices such as firewalls and intrusion detection systems “sufficed,” and served us well as a community, notes the AT&T expert, but in those days mobility wasn’t an issue.

By Martyn Williams; InfoWorld ~ Jun 12, 2014

Personal information, including Social Security numbers and call records, was accessed for an unknown number of AT&T Mobility customers by people outside of the company, AT&T has confirmed.

The breach took place between April 9-21, but was only disclosed this week in a filing with California regulators. While AT&T wouldn’t say how many customers were affected, state law requires such disclosures if an incident affects at least 500 customers in California.

[ Learn how to protect your systems with Roger Grimes’ Security Adviser blog [1] and Security Central newsletter [2], both from InfoWorld. ]

By Cynthia Littleton; Variety ~ Jun 11, 2014

It’s all about the bundle.

That’s what AT&T and DirecTV told the FCC in a filing Wednesday that makes the case for why the union of the telco giant and satcaster would be in the public interest. As both sides have repeatedly stated, the combo will make DirecTV a more effective competitor against cable and allow the larger entity to sell bundled broadband/video/telco services.

By Mark Miller; Reuters ~ Jun 10, 2014

CHICAGO (Reuters) – Where do affluent retirees get their income? Portfolios invested in stocks and bonds, you might think – but you’d be wrong. Turns out many are living mainly on Social Security and good old pensions.

That’s the surprising finding of new research from a surprising source: Vanguard, a leading provider of retirement saving products like individual retirement accounts and 401(k)s. Vanguard studied the income sources and wealth holdings of more than 2,600 older households (age 60–79) with at least $100,000 in retirement savings. The respondents’ median income was $69,500, with median financial assets of $395,000. (The value of housing was excluded.)