Page 4 December 8, 2016 needed. If your medical bills have gotten too high or you can no longer afford to pay the premiums, consider selling your life insurance policy through a life settlement. Essentially, you sell your policy to an investor who usually pays seven to eight times as much as the cash value of the policy. For many, this can be a quick way to relieve financial strain and Periodically, you should review your policy to see whether or not it’s still needed. deal with health care bills. Consider a reverse mortgage. This is a loan available to homeowners that allows them to convert part of the equity in their homes into cash. The loan is called a “reverse mortgage” because instead of making monthly payments to a lender, as with a traditional mortgage, the lender makes payments to the borrower. The borrower is not required to pay back the loan until the home is sold or otherwise vacated. Buy long term care insurance early. The costs of living in a nursing home or hiring a home caretaker can be staggering. Long term health insurance can be cost prohibitive, and for many healthy individuals, it’s hard to imagine a time when they will be in a situation when they will need full or assisted care. This can make it hard for them to justify paying the premiums. But if you start during your early to mid-50s, you can buy in at a lower rate and defray the expenses that you might not be able to afford. Of all these, many people don’t realize that selling their life insurance is a viable option. In fact, 90 percent of seniors who allowed their policies to lapse without knowing that selling their life insurance was an option, would have considered selling if someone had told them about it. To learn more if this JTSJHIUGPSZPVWJTJUXXXMJTBPSHr Seniors Four Creative Ways to Tackle Rising Health Care Costs When Planning Retirement (BPT) - No matter how hard you worked or how much you saved, the sad reality of today’s economic landscape is that the rising cost of health care can quickly eat away at your retirement fund. Health care expenses have inflated to the point that the average American couple over the age of 65 will pay $240,000 in medical bills, according to AARP. When paired with the sobering statistic that roughly a third of Americans over 65 rely entirely on Social Security for their retirement income, these findings underline an urgent problem that needs to be addressed. Rather than wait for Washington or the health care industry to come up with a solution, many are taking a proactive approach and tackling the problem head on. Often, they succeed through some surprising and unconventional strategies. Make sure to always talk to your trusted financial advisor or other professionals before taking any action, but here are four creative ways you can tackle rising health care costs in your retirement years. Maximize your social security benefits. It might be tempting to start claiming your benefits as soon as you’re eligible, but if you can, wait. The longer you wait, the more you and your spouse will be paid. Especially if you’re currently healthy, try to defer your benefits until you’re 70. If you do, your payments will increase by as much as 75 percent. This will put you in a good position to meet any unexpected costs in the future. Sell your life insurance. Just like stocks and bonds, a life insurance policy is an investment. Periodically, you should review your policy to see whether or not it’s still “new normal” of lower than expected investment earnings in the future. Another inconvenient truth is that many state governments have failed to deposit the annually required contributions into pension funds every year. The urge to spend more money on other government projects, however well intentioned, has diverted much-needed contributions away from pensions and has contributed significantly to unfunded liabilities. When pensions are unstable, millions of Americans are faced with an uncertain retirement. However, this is not only a problem for government workers - it affects all Americans. Without a sustainable solution to underfunded pensions, higher taxes will be the reality for all hardworking taxpayers. What’s more, an increasing percentage of state budgets are being drained to pay pension benefits, with less money available for important functions like funding public schools and fixing roads. One especially sobering story comes from Illinois, where since 2009, this trend is so extreme that 89 cents out of every new dollar of education spending has gone to teacher pensions, leaving just 11 cents for salaries, textbooks, building costs and the various in-classroom costs of education. And by 2025, Illinois will spend more on teacher-retirement costs than it will spend on the classroom. Pension funding is not a Republican vs. Democrat issue. It’s a retirement issue that affects all Americans. Unfunded pension liabilities will be harmful to the future of workers, retirees and taxpayers alike, if forward-thinking policymakers do not tackle pension reform in a timely fashion. To find out more about how prepared your state is and to see the full report, Unaccountable and Unaffordable 2016, is available at "MFDPSH1FOTJPO%FCUr Finance Pension Plan Funding Shortfalls Threaten Retirees in All 50 States (BPT) - Everyone knows it is important to save for retirement in order to build a nest egg and enjoy the “golden years.” So why is it that state and local governments many times act irresponsibly when it comes to saving for the future of public employees? Government pensions are the way in which state and local public employees like teachers, police officers and firefighters receive retirement benefits. Typically both the employee and the government set aside money each year to be invested. The investments will hopefully grow over time, and both the annual contributions and the investment growth is understood to form the pool of money public employees will be able to use once they reach retirement. That’s the theory. Unfortunately, according to Unaccountable and Unaffordable 2016, a new, state-by state analysis from the American Legislative Exchange Council (ALEC), government pensions are being massively underfunded across the states, and now hardworking taxpayers are on the hook. What is the price tag? Across the 50 states, unfunded pension obligations now total $5.6 trillion. Now, that number sounds large at a national scale, but what does it mean for the average American? To be exact, this state pension debt equates to an average price tag of $17,427 for every man, woman and child in the United States. There are numerous reasons why pension liabilities are so large. For one, the stock market is not growing as quickly as many assumed it would, exiting the recent economic downturn. Therefore, investments for many pension funds are not meeting expectations. The average pension fund assumes they will earn a whopping 7.37 percent on their investments over the long term. 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