By Rita R. Robison, Consumer Specialist
Be extremely careful if you’re going to buy Elizabeth Taylor memorabilia and commemorative items following the death of American movie star icon, warns the Better Business Bureau.
For more information, see my article on AOL’s Consumer Ally “Planning to Buy Elizabeth Taylor Memorabilia? Don’t Do It for Investment.”
Copyright 2011, Rita R. Robison, Consumer Specialist
Baby boomers are beginning to turn 65 in 2011.
Many questions will be coming up on what to do about signing up for Medicare and Social Security.
US News Money offers these tips:
For details on these tips, see “Seven Tips for Baby Boomers Turning 65 in 2011.”
Thanks to The boomer Blog for a link to this article.
As the first baby boomers begin reaching 65 this year, much discussion is occurring about how boomers will be changing the face of retirement and aging.
What steps can baby boomer consumers take to make 2011 a great year for them?
The Baby Boomer Retirement Club recommends 10 areas boomer can be looking at now to have the high quality of life they want in their next stage of life:
1. Save for retirement by putting money in your 401(k) so you can take advantage of your employer matching funds, if they’re offered.
2. Examine new investment choices in your 401(k) plan to preserve asset value in the next few years.
3. Investigate ways to have continuing income after you retire from your primary career.
4. Get moving every day for 30 minutes in the exercise of your choice.
5. Take steps to help care for your aging parents and preserve your own mental health.
6. Make a will and a living will, if you haven’t done so already.
7. Build dreams together with your spouse or significant other.
8. Research and decide the best place(s) for you to live in the future and when.
9. Enjoy travel adventures while deciding where to live.
10. Examine spirituality as a way to strengthen your inner resources.
See "New Year’s Resolutions for Baby Boomers in 2011" for more information on these top 10 resolutions.
Copyright 2011, Rita R. Robison, Consumer Specialist
Everyone is aware that baby boomers like to buy things.
With tough economic times, it’s important to boomers that the goods and services that they buy are first rate.
What are the top 10 things that irritate boomers the most?
1. Cell phones not working properly, especially when calls are dropped or the phone company makes other mistakes, and trying to get the problem fixed.
2. Companies with "senior" products that try to sell them to boomers.
3. Bogus health products such as teeth whiteners, miracle diets, anti-aging potions, arthritis cures, and baldness treatments.
4. Investment scams, including high-pressure sales for products such as annuities.
5. The rising costs of health care, the quality of health care, and dealing with insurance companies about billing errors or denying coverage.
6. Low-quality and poor customer service, including in stores, from Internet sales, and over the phone where the menu choices are lengthy and the customer service representative is hard to understand.
7. Costly technical support for new electronic equipment including computers and cell phones.
8. Problems with cars, including difficulties getting a car repaired, false statements about cars being sold, and leasing and towing disputes.
9. High fees and interest rates from credit card companies, mortgage problems, and ineffective debt-relief companies.
10. Difficulties with contractors or repair men or women who don’t do the job right.
Any other top baby boomer complaints? Let me know in the Comment section below.
Copyright 2010, Rita R. Robison, Consumer Specialist
When baby boomers consumers are asked how their parents invested their retirement funds, many reply they only spent the interest and dividends and never touched the principal.
Why can't this method work for baby boomers, too? asks The San Francisco Chronicle article "Why Boomers’ Retirement Is Different From Their Parents."
The new boomer retirement
How boomer investing is affected
As for how boomer consumer investing differs from their parents’, boomers are giving up on stock gains and focusing on income investing, the article reports. Always hunting for higher yields means higher risk.
The article advises boomers to ask their financial advisors to "establish a sustainable withdrawal rate and build a diversified portfolio focusing on total return rather than focusing on dividend-producing, interest-paying securities."
Copyright 2010, Rita R. Robison, Consumer Specialist
After the financial mess that was spawned by Wall Street and the banking industry, the new agency is essential for the development and growth of our new economy in the United States.
However, the banking industry is set on killing the proposed new consumer protection agency.
The article "Banks Resist Push for Tighter Regulations" on the Miami Herald Web site reports:
Though virtually every cause of the nation's recent financial crisis was rooted in weak consumer protection, the U.S. Chamber of Commerce is leading the fight against the proposed agency on grounds that it would make credit less available and more costly. The American Bankers Association, the Independent Community Bankers of America, and the Financial Services Roundtable also oppose the measure.
Here’s what’s being spent to defeat the new consumer protection agency, according to the article:
The chamber said it's spending about $2 million on ads, educational efforts, and a grass-roots campaign to kill the agency.
The Center for Responsive Politics said that for the 2010 election cycle, commercial banks have donated almost $3.7 million to lawmakers – 54 percent of it to Republicans. Companies that provide credit have given about $1.4 million, 59 percent to Democrats. Mortgage bankers and brokers have given $581,423.
This massive lobbying effort by banks is unfortunate. Changes are needed to protect American consumers in their financial dealings.
David Arkush, director, Public Citizen’s Congress Watch Division, said in a statement supporting the new federal consumer agency:
For too long, financial regulators have been too cozy with the financial services industry that they were supposed to be overseeing. Moreover, no single federal agency focuses primarily on consumer protection for credit products.
Lenders have run amok, writing their own rules and creating a maze of unfair and predatory products that have harmed consumers and destabilized the economy. The lack of oversight and regulation, along with Wall Street’s unchecked greed, drove this country into its current financial crisis. Americans deserve an agency that will put their financial well-being ahead of the short-term profits of a few Wall Street banks.
The president’s proposal to create a new Consumer Financial Protection Agency will add much needed oversight of an industry that has run wild at great expense to consumers and homeowners.
Establishing an agency to protect consumers in their financial transactions is essential. Let your senators and representatives in Congress know today that you support this important consumer protection measure.
Copyright 2009, Rita R. Robison, Consumer Specialist
Recently, when I took a trip to the mall while I was on vacation in Miami, I surprised to see the mall culture alive and well.
People thronged about two hundred stores offering every kind of goodie imaginable. I didn’t see a single boarded up business. I wondered whether nothing has changed in these difficult economic times. Whether consumers, especially baby boomers famous for their conspicuous consumption, are continuing the shopping life style.
Later I heard a program from National Public Radio’s WBUR on “Our Delayed Gratification Era.”
On Point host Tom Ashbrook interviewed John Lehrer, science writer and contributing editor at Wired, who recently wrote an article for the New Yorker called “Don’t! The Secret of Self Control.”
Leher, author of “How We Decide,” described a 1968 study in which 4 year olds were given one marshmallow or an Oreo cookie and told if they could wait, they’d get a second one. The children rang a bell when they were ready to eat the marshmallow or cookie.
“Every kid decides to wait,” Leher said on the program. Some ring the bell right away, some in 2 minutes, and others in 2.5 minutes. Some wait 15 minutes.
High delayers are better at distracting themselves. They turn their backs on the treat or sing songs from Sesame Street.
During their senior year, the high delayers were studied again. It was found that they got along better with friends, were less likely to do drugs, achieved higher SAT scores, and were more even tempered.
“It’s a dramatic difference,” Leher said. “At the age of 4, will power is more of a predictor of success than IQ.”
Ashbrook wanted to know if low delayers could be taught cognitive strategies to build self control. “It could have big consequences nationwide.”
Walter Mischel, who conducted the tests and is now a professor at Columbia University, is doing research now to see if kids between 4 and 8 can be taught delayed gratification. Low delayers have lost skills to delay gratification and need interventions to get the skills back, he said on the program.
Mischel and his colleagues are hoping to identify the particular brain regions that allow some people to delay gratification and control their temper, reports the New Yorker article. They’re also conducting a variety of genetic tests, as they look for the hereditary characteristics that influence the ability to wait for a second marshmallow.
In American culture, people are used to buying on credit so they can enjoy things immediately. This behavior is sustained by how the brain works, Mischel said. It’s called temporal discounting. People focus on instant gratification not what will happen years from now.
It’s encouraging to think if we could teach a child to delay gratification, it could make a difference in spending patterns as adults, he said. However, at the moment, how teachable this is isn’t known.
Another guest on the program, economic historian Richard Sylla, professor at New York University’s Stern School of Business, said people aren’t currently “snagging” the stuff they normally would. They’re staying out of stores.
Americans were used to rising standard of living until 1990, and generally had been prosperous, said Sylla. In 1990, workers in India, China, and other countries all over the world began competing with U.S. workers.
When workers here saw their standard of living was stagnate, they kept their spending up by using home equity loans and credit cards and investing in the stock market and 401Ks. They thought they didn’t need to save.
People with nothing to do would go to store and buy something interesting to distract themselves.
Sylla said he thinks Americans can change. In 1980, President Carter urged Americans to tear up their credit cards during an inflationary period. During the Great Depression, President Roosevelt reassured Americans the banks were safe for deposits, and they began putting their money in banks again.
Mischel also believes people can change their spending habits. His research on psychology and the human mind shows people have plasticity and can change economic and social behavior. People are creatures of evolution and can and do change, he said.
It’s probably time for Americans to cut back, Sylla said. If they save, they’ll learn to get two marshmallows down the road. “A lot of security comes from savings.”
“The word is out,” he said. “People will benefit by saving more.” For example, if they lose their jobs, they’ll need savings for living expenses.
Americans will return to the way they’ve lived through history, Sylla said. The high consumptive lifestyle of recent decades will be abandoned. “I suspect we’ll go back to more delayed gratification."
Finally, I completed my taxes Wednesday.
Like last year, I went to one of the free sessions offered by AARP at my neighborhood library. Asking for help paid off. The computerized program was able to find deductions I’d missed. My return will be larger than I’d calculated.
Along with forgetting to include your social security number or writing it on the forms incorrectly, missing deductions is one of the most common mistakes taxpayers make, according to the article “The 11 Most Overlooked Tax Deductions” on the Kiplinger page of TurboTax.
Review these commonly missed deductions to see if they apply to you or a member of your boomer family or household:
See the article for details on each deduction.
