By Elizabeth O’Brien; MarketWatch ~ Jul 19, 2014

Active-adult communities, assisted-living facilities, continuing-care retirement communities — that’s just the tip of the jargon iceberg for places people 55 and over might spend their golden years. And since each facility uses different terms and has different pricing structures, comparison-shopping becomes very difficult. “You can go crazy learning the terminology,” says Karyl Cafiero, 61, of Brooklyn, N.Y., who has researched communities for her mother-in-law.

By Donna Fuscaldo; Fox Business ~ Jul 17, 2014

The financial lives of adult children and their parents have become more intermingled in the wake of the financial crisis, but the two generations differ when it comes to talking money.

According to the Intra-Family Generational Finance Study from Fidelity Investments, almost two-thirds of survey respondents are at odds as to when to have financial conversations.

By Stephen Ohlemacher; The Associated Press ~ Jul 17, 2014

WASHINGTON (AP) — Bowing to pressure from Congress, the Social Security Administration said Thursday its field offices will continue issuing statements that recipients can use to verify their benefits.

People sometimes need the information quickly to verify their income when applying for a loan or other government benefits, such as housing assistance.

The field offices were scheduled to stop issuing the statements in October as part of Social Security’s efforts to provide more services online. But acting Social Security Commissioner Carolyn Colvin said Thursday the agency recognizes that some people require help in person.

By Alicia H. Munnell; MarketWatch ~ Jul 16, 2014

In an article in National Affairs, Andrew Biggs, of the American Enterprise Institute and Sylvester Schieber, an independent pension consultant and former chairman of the Social Security Advisory Board, question whether we are, in fact, facing a pensions crisis.

Among a long list of targets suggesting the nation might have a problem, they criticize two key assumptions underpinning the National Retirement Risk Index (NRRI), calculated by the Center for Retirement Research at Boston College. The index currently shows that 53% of working-age households will be unable to maintain their standard of living in retirement.

By Alyene Senger; The Daily Signal ~ Jul 16, 2014

One of the biggest contributors to the nation’s spending crisis is federal spending on government health care programs, according to the Congressional Budget Office’s Long Term Budget and Economic Outlook projections released this week. And Obamacare only exacerbates that problem.

Here are the main takeaways:

By Beth Pinsker; Reuters ~ Jul 15, 2014

NEW YORK (Reuters) – After helping a girlfriend through the messy, tangled finances left in the wake of a parent’s death, John Kerecz had a message for his own mom and dad: Get your paperwork in order.

A few years later, Kerecz’s father passed away unexpectedly. The 52-year-old environmental engineer from Harrisburg, Pennsylvania went to the house and looked where his father and mother used to keep their important documents, but nothing was there. It was pure luck that he went to the computer to look up a phone number and saw a folder on the desktop labeled “DEATH.”

By Shereen Lehman; Reuters ~ Jul 15, 2014

NEW YORK (Reuters Health) – Expanding the role of nurses in managing chronic conditions such as diabetes, high blood pressure and high cholesterol could be an effective way to handle the shortage of primary care physicians, according to a new study.

“The idea was to see if we could have nurses, who are the nation’s largest healthcare workforce, assume additional roles which they already do in hospitals, but they don’t necessarily do that much in outpatient settings,” said lead author Ryan Shaw.

By John Wasik; Forbes ~ Jul 14, 2014

Do you need cash today? Do you have a pension? Get a lump-sum advance on your pension payments to pay off your bills now!

These pitches, mostly through Internet-based sites, spell trouble. In exchange for “signing over” your monthly payments for money now, you’re getting a lousy deal. You may also have to buy a life insurance policy to ensure that the company “buying” your pension gets paid — even if you die.

Despite the mangled math, pension-advance services are thriving and are virtually unregulated. When I searched for “pension advances” on Google, I got more than 12 million hits.

By Marcy Gordon; The Associated Press ~ Jul 11, 2014

WASHINGTON (AP) — The federal agency that insures company pensions for more than 40 million Americans says its top official is resigning.

Joshua Gotbaum, a former investment banker, was appointed by President Barack Obama as director of the Pension Benefit Guaranty Corp. in July 2010. That makes him the longest-serving head of the agency in its history, the PBGC said in a news release Friday. During his tenure the agency’s deficit – the gap between pension obligations and assets available to cover them – widened to about $34 billion as the weak economy triggered more corporate bankruptcies and failed pension plans.

Gotbaum will step down in August, the agency said. No further information was given, and agency spokesmen didn’t immediately return a message requesting it.

By Erik Carter; Forbes ~ Jul 11, 2014

Did you know that you may have a new option in your 401(k) plan? Last week, the Treasury Department announced that new tax rules will allow people to use up to 25% of their 401(k) and IRA balances (to a maximum of $125k) to purchase a deferred income annuity as long as they begin collecting income by age 85. These annuities are often called “longevity insurance” because they start paying you a lifetime income stream at a later age to prevent you from exhausting the rest of your savings.