Kansas Senior Press Service News ArticlesKansas Senior Press Service News ArticlesBy Kansas Senior Press Service
Source: The North Central-Flint Hills Area Agency on Aging
By Gene Meyer
Kansas Senior Press Service
Retirement used to be simple. You worked. You stopped. You stretched your pension and savings to cover the important things in life, such as traveling, spending more time with your spouse or spoiling your grandchildren.
That’s all changing now. Financial services industry polls were finding, even before the economy cratered last year, that retirees of all ages were returning to the workforce in some form. One 2006 survey, by Zogby International and the MetLife Mature Market Institute, found that more older retirees (19 percent of the 66- to 70-year-olds quizzed) were returning to work than their younger contemporaries. About 11 percent of previously retired 55- to 59-year-olds and 16 percent of 60- to 65-year-olds also chose to rejoin the working ranks.
The reasons for all this “unretiring” are as varied as the people who dusted off their résumés. Many wanted the extra money, of course. But many also went back to work to remain active, contribute to their communities, or pursue in second careers some lifelong dreams deferred in their first ones.
Whatever their reason, retirees rejoining the workforce quickly discover that they have one thing in common: some potentially tricky financial issues that didn’t exist the first time around.
“For every retiree who considers a return to the workplace, there’s a critical need to review investment, insurance and tax issues,” says the Financial Planning Association, a national leadership and advocacy organization for the financial planning community. “If a retired person hasn’t done so, it makes sense to confer with a tax or financial adviser before going back on the clock.”
Picking up a part-time job or beginning a second career after you’ve been retired awhile isn’t as complicated as negotiating an executive job on Wall Street, of course. But nearly every re-entering retiree needs to think about a few basic issues. One of the biggest is Social Security. Depending on what your potential new job pays, as much as 85 percent of your Social Security benefits may be subject to income tax. No one will pay taxes on more than 85 percent of their benefits, and many will pay taxes on less, the Social Security Administration promises.
How much you might be taxed depends on your combined income, which is the total of your adjusted gross income, nontaxable interest from your savings, and half of your Social Security benefits. If this total is below $25,000 for taxpayers who file single returns, or below $32,000 for joint filers, your Social Security benefits are tax free. Individual taxpayers with combined incomes between $25,000 and $34,000, or joint filers with combined incomes between $32,000 and $44,000, will owe taxes on half their Social Security benefits. Those with a higher income will be taxed on 85 percent of their benefits.
Going back to work can reduce Social Security benefits for 62-year-olds or anyone else collecting benefits before reaching full retirement age (65 if you were born before 1937, 66 if you were born between 1943 and 1954, and varying a few months from those ages if you were born in other years). If you are drawing early benefits and earn more than $14,160 in 2009, Social Security will deduct $1 from your check for every $2 you earn above $14,160. The bite gets smaller during the year you reach full retirement age. You lose $1 for each $3 over $37,680 before the month you reach full retirement age, then have no limits on earnings after that.
Returning to work after you’ve retired also may affect any pension or other retirement benefits your former employer provides. The best way to check that question is to contact your current plan administrators and ask.
Key points to analyze include how re-employment might affect your pension, especially if you return to work with your former employer, and how your new job’s health plan might affect the health benefits in your retirement plan, say editors at Kiplinger.com. Remember the 401(k) money or IRA savings you piled up in your first career. You may be required to start pulling money out of those when you reach 70 ½ years of age, even if you are still working in your second career. You’ll want to be aware of any potentially changed tax bite when that happens.
And don’t forget the small stuff. Returning to work may require shelling out money again for business clothes, transportation, caregiving and other expenses that went away when you retired the first time. And you will have less leisure time than you may have become accustomed to. So, particularly if its benefits are skimpy, make sure it pays to take that new job.
Gene Meyer, a Fairway, Kansas resident and former staff reporter at The Wall Street Journal and The Kansas City Star, has been covering personal finance and financial planning for nearly two decades. He continues to report and write about those topics at http://kitchentablenomics.blogspot.com/.
By Don Carter
Kansas Senior Press Service
For many years now, I have been finding an increasing amount of tiny white flakes near the base of my furnace flue pipe — the point where the pipe and furnace meet. So, during last fall’s Home Show, I stopped by the Lennox booth to ask the firm’s technicians about it.
The prevailing opinion was that the flakes are caused by condensate inside my flue pipe. Hot gas flows up the pipe to a rooftop discharge, but somewhere en route, mine was cooling down too much, condensing moisture similar to the way a car’s tailpipe does. Then the condensate trickled down the flue to my furnace, washing scale from the galvanized finish with it.
Another, less likely, contributor could be natural gas additive plating out against the moist pipe walls, then drying and flaking. Either way, there was unanimous opinion that condensate was my problem. A three-way investigation was proposed.
First, they wanted to make sure my furnace wasn’t oversized. A furnace with too much capacity raises the house temperature rapidly and shuts down before the flue pipe gets hot enough to purge cold air. Before the era of tightly constructed homes, it was not uncommon to see furnaces and air conditioners with two to four times the necessary capacity. Even now, some builders size heating and cooling systems by the “front-door rule” — the largest unit that will fit through the front door. The rationale is high profits and preventing owner complaints about inadequate capacity.
Second, they wanted to confirm a sufficient run of double-wall pipe. After a flue leaves the basement level, it passes inside stud walls, where codes require inner and outer pipe walls to prevent fires. The double wall that keeps heat away from wood also retains more heat within the pipe. I have a two-story house, so my furnace is easily 30 inches from final discharge, with only the pipe segments between sheetrock being double-wall pipe.
Third, they wanted to see whether my attic exposure was too long. Once a flue clears the upper-story ceiling, it goes back to being single-wall pipe and passes through a cold attic to the roof. The thought was that I may have too many feet of exposed pipe, causing it to cool down before it reaches discharge. My furnace is in the front of the basement, but neighborhood covenants require rooftop vents to be hidden in the back, so there is a long distance before discharge.
Condensate was the problem, but I will never know which condition was responsible for the flakes. My furnace was sized correctly, we added double-wall pipe from the furnace to the first floor, and we insulated the attic pipe.
This much I do know: It wouldn’t have paid to ignore the symptoms much longer because, once disassembled, the single-wall pipe’s interior revealed red rust and pin holes. Sooner or later, we were facing a carbon monoxide leak.
If you see evidence of white powder, flakes or rust on your furnace or hot water tank’s exhaust, don’t wait as long as I did. Have it checked.
Don Carter is a licensed structural engineer and managing general partner of Foundation Engineering Specialists LLC, a company specializing in residential design and assessments: don@fdnengineering.com.
By Barbara L. Watkins
Kansas Senior Press Service
When he was diagnosed with lymphatic cancer, Gabriel Garcia Marquez said that for him, the disease was an “enormous stroke of luck” because it forced him to write his memoir (Living to Tell the Tale, Random House, 2004). I’ll settle for a modest taking stock of my life and my world.
One of my first insights after being diagnosed with cancer early in the 21st century was — trite as it may sound — how communication had changed in my lifetime. When I lived abroad for extended periods in the 1960s, we packed our sea trunks and took off, sailing for 10 days across the Atlantic, carrying all we would need for that year. We did not expect to hear from anyone, except by regular mail, unless there was a death in the family. But when I sent word of my cancer out into the world, I received, by e-mail and phone, expressions of concern and support within hours — from Alaska, the East and West coasts, Japan, Ukraine, Poland, New Zealand, France, and Great Britain. In one memorable instance, I sent an e-mail to a colleague friend in Florida and then swiveled around to my office desk to pick up the phone as she called within a nanosecond.
The communication insight seemed less momentous, however, when I learned that within a week of Roentgen’s discovery of X-rays in 1895, he had received 1,000 letters, and that within a year, more than 1,000 papers on X-rays were published in scientific and medical journals.
I have also learned of the power and support of others who have faced the cancer challenge — work colleagues, neighbors, friends near and far, and the amazing strength of African American church women and their prayer cells. These prayer groups are an element of life that I knew little about before my diagnosis.
I finally learned to do what my mother told me to do for years: take time to smell the roses. One friend and her partner, who are more experienced at dealing with cancer than I am, celebrate each year’s landmark of being cancer free with a trip, dinner or kayaking.
Another friend, who is newly diagnosed, sent me a wonderful first-person story:
[As] I was on my way for a walk in the Fort Worden woods, a little boy in the North Beach park caught my eye as he would run, then stop, run, then stop. I stopped to watch him and saw that he was chasing a Pacific crow. The crow would land and stay in place until the little boy came close, then it would fly again, landing a few feet away. This game of chase lasted for quite a while and only ended when the little boy’s mother put her cell phone away and announced that it was time to leave.
As they drove away, I realized that although the little boy’s mother had scarcely noticed the activity, I’d been watching this ballet for almost 30 minutes. I also was aware that I’d been smiling and giggling throughout the performance. It was pure joy! It was such a wondrous feeling. I realized I don’t often take time to relish joy. I know that I either don’t look for things of joy or I fail to recognize acts of joy.
Although I am not a religious person, I have developed more respect for those who are, and for spirituality in general. Recent research shows positive links between health, prayer and meditation, including improved immune systems and fewer episodes of chronic inflammation.
While my experiences with the surgical, oncology and radiation aspects of cancer have been excellent, I have grown a bit cynical about the breast cancer “cult”; the use of such terms as “victim” and “survivor”; and the profiteering of the pharmaceutical industry.
For me it has become increasingly clear that corporate and individual greed, poverty, pollution, the population explosion, AIDS and growing numbers of individuals who can’t afford health insurance (47 million in the United States) are all “weapons of mass destruction.” It’s no wonder that my physician friends support universal health insurance! My recent experience has taught me that, more than ever before, it is our responsibility as citizens of this democratic nation to be informed about, and confront, complex issues such as these.
Living with cancer is like entering a very dark forest where there is no path. Dealing with our own mortality may inspire fear, but it also provides meaning. Cancer forces us to live intensely in the here and now — and ideally to assess how to become more fully human. I believe that I have learned how to be more empathetic, that is, to “feel with,” not to pity or condescend. It is our job to make the best of ourselves and to help mend our broken world. As we lie down, be still and contemplate, we will surely heal.
Barbara Watkins, retired from University of Kansas Continuing Education, is an avid and accomplished gardener, birder and director of outdoor excursions — preferably involving wine.
These articles are also available electronically at the Center on Aging Website: http://www2.kumc.edu/coa/Senior_Press_Article/Topic_Index.htm