Once the bombastic ballot rhetoric from President Trump is
history and the 46th president of the United States is installed, your
retirement plan may still experience volatility. Here’s why.
Although there is a federal moratorium on rental evictions,
many landlords nationwide, including an apartment management company owned in
part by White House senior adviser Jared Kushner, have filed the paperwork
necessary to remove tenants once the bans, also imposed by some states, are
lifted. And unless Congress passes another stimulus package, a lot of people
will face housing instability.
Despite a drop in the unemployment rate to 6.9 percent in
October, 11.1 million people remain out of work, according to the latest
jobless figures from the Bureau of Labor Statistics. The number of the
long-term unemployed — people who have been jobless for 27 weeks or more —
increased by 1.2 million to 3.6 million, accounting for 32.5 percent of the
total unemployed, the bureau reported. The number of people employed part time
for economic reasons increased by 383,000 to 6.7 million.
Unemployment claims are still staggeringly high.
“The pandemic has negatively impacted the income of nearly
half of all U.S. households at some point since the outbreak, has greatly restricted
travel and has unknown future health ramifications,” said Greg McBride, chief
financial analyst for Bankrate.com. “This can dramatically alter the landscape
for someone planning to retire this year or next.”
For example, withdrawing $10,000 this year rather than
contributing $10,000 has a nearly $36,000 effect on your nest egg 10 years from
now, McBride said.
“The pandemic recession has been dubbed a ‘she-session’
because it has hurt women far worse than men,” The Washington Post’s Heather
Long reported recently. “The share of women working or looking for work has
fallen to the lowest level since 1988, wiping out decades of hard-fought gains
in the workplace.”
Some experts are concerned about more layoffs if the United
States can’t control the spread of the coronavirus. On Saturday, the United
States reported 134,051 new coronavirus cases, according to Post data, and the
number of fatalities nationwide topped 1,000 each day between Tuesday and
Saturday. At least 237,000 people in the United States have died of the
coronavirus as of Sunday afternoon.
“There’s a lot of evidence that it’s still a limited
recovery that is really uneven and has exacerbated a lot of inequality that
existed before the crisis,” Kate Bahn, an economist at the Washington Center
for Equitable Growth, told The Post’s Eli Rosenberg following the latest Bureau
of Labor Statistics report.
In last week’s newsletter, I discussed how your 401(k) can
survive the election. Let’s continue that discussion. McBride and Carolyn
McClanahan, a physician turned certified financial planner who founded the
fee-only Life Planning Partners based in Jacksonville, Fla., answered the
following questions about dealing with the coronavirus-related recession.
Q: Should I change my retirement plans because of the
economic uncertainty?
McClanahan: If we have a prolonged recession because
of an uncontrolled pandemic, this may make it tough for people to retire. Keep
your skills intact and learn new skills so you can stay in the workforce
longer. Plan on staying engaged in some occupation as long as possible. Your
ability to work is your safest financial asset. Working part time in retirement
can provide a nice cushion or even some fun money.
McBride: Those still in the workforce can aim to work
longer. One or two additional years gives your existing nest egg time to grow,
more time for additional retirement contributions with higher catch-up limits
for those age 50 and up, and less time that nest egg needs to support you in
retirement.
Q: I’m going to be retiring soon, and I’m too scared to stay
in stocks. What should I do?
McBride: Regardless of what happens in the short
term, you can’t let that derail your long-term financial planning. The day you
retire, it’s not like you’re going to withdraw all your money that one day. No,
it still needs to last you another 25, 30, 35 years. So even then, the day you
retire, you have an investment horizon still measured in decades.
Q: What financial moves should people be making?
McClanahan: This pandemic should be a wake-up call
that savings needs to be focused on financial resiliency in the event of an
emergency such as sickness and job loss. If a person is lucky, those savings
will not be needed for emergencies and can be used for the day they no longer
want to work.
The most important factor in obtaining financial security is
to control spending. My advice is for people to make sure they are living the
best life they can in the present, save what they can to weather the
emergencies and call on our leaders to do more to get the pandemic under
control.
Q: Should people be concerned about rising health-care
costs?
McClanahan: Health-care costs are out of control, and
we will probably see price escalations in health insurance prices. Even those
on Medicare will have to contend with increased Medigap and Medicare D prices.
We need health reform focused on fixing our health-care
system to reduce health-care costs, and with the ravages of the coronavirus on
the system, that is unlikely to happen in the short term.
Q: What can people do to minimize the stress about their 401(k)
or similar retirement plan?
McClanahan: Make sure your investment allocation is
aligned with how you plan to use the money that is invested. For example, if
you are at the point you need to use some of your savings within the next 10
years, you should have some allocated to fixed income instead of taking
unnecessary risks in the stock market.
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