CHICAGO, March 12 (Reuters) – If you are counting the days
to retirement because you hate your job, career expert Kerry
Hannon has a message for you: “Stick with it.”

Burnout is one of the biggest problems in the workplace,
especially for older workers. An annual survey on retirement by
the Employee Benefit Research Institute consistently finds that
about half of workers retire earlier than they expected – and
that job burnout is a key factor.

CHICAGO (Reuters) – Back in the day, you could walk into a bank to open a new account and walk out with a free toaster.

Today, you can get anywhere from $50 to $2,500 for rolling over a 401(k) into an Individual Retirement Account, or just by moving an IRA from another financial institution.

CHICAGO (Reuters) – When you are planning for retirement and ask for advice, whose interest should come first – yours or the financial expert you ask for help?

That is the question at the heart of a Washington debate over the unsexy-sounding term “fiduciary standard.” Simply put, it is a legal responsibility requiring an adviser to put the best interest of a client ahead of all else.

CHICAGO, Feb 19 (Reuters) – Nancy Kessler spent much of her
career as a museum curator, but she also has had a lifelong love
of working with older people. During one stint working with
Alzheimer’s patients, she noticed a gap in one type of
caregiving: “There is a lot of wellness and physical therapy but
not much intellectual stimulation.”

Last year, she decided to do something about that. Following
a layoff at age 58, she launched Memoirs Plus, which specializes
in writing memoirs for seniors. The idea of her business is to
provide her clients with intellectual stimulation and a creative
activity that helps them tell their life stories.

CHICAGO, Feb 12 (Reuters) – More Americans over 55 are
finally getting back to work after the long recession. The
strong national employment report for January released last week
confirmed that. The unemployment rate for those over 55 was just
4.1 percent in January, down from 4.5 percent a year ago and
well below the national jobless rate. The 55-plus labor force
participation rate inched up to 40 percent from 39.9 percent.

That is good news for patching up household balance sheets
damaged by years of lost employment and savings, and also for
boosting future Social Security benefits.

CHICAGO, Jan 29 (Reuters) – Stanford University welcomed 25
unusual students onto its campus this month – all in their 50s
and 60s.

They are the inaugural fellows of a new program, the
Distinguished Careers Institute (DCI), designed for people who
want to follow more than one career path in their lifetimes and
who want to go back to a college setting for more training. It
is the forefront of a new movement for universities to look
beyond typical 19-year-old undergraduates.

Chicago, Jan 21 (Reuters) – Remember Mitt Romney’s huge IRA?
During the 2012 campaign, we learned that the governor managed
to amass $20 million to $100 million in an Individual Retirement
Account, much more than anyone could accumulate under the
contribution limit rules without some unusual investments and
appreciation.

Romney’s IRA found its way, indirectly, into a broader set
of retirement policy reforms unveiled in President Obama’s State
of the Union proposals on Monday.

CHICAGO, Jan 15 (Reuters) – My home state of Illinois is not
the first place that comes to mind for innovative approaches to
retirement savings. We are much more infamous for our pension
plan for state workers, which is the worst-funded in the
country.

But Illinois just became the first U.S. state to adopt a
promising new approach to a big problem in the nation’s
retirement saving system: the lack of workplace saving options
for low-income workers.

CHICAGO (Reuters) – Since the midterm elections, President Obama has taken decisive action on immigration reform, climate change and relations with Cuba. Now, the new Republican-controlled Congress has handed him another opportunity to act boldly – by leaving a legacy as a strong defender of Social Security.

House Republicans signaled this week that they are gearing up for a major clash over the country’s most important retirement program. In a surprise move, they adopted a rule on the first day of the new session that effectively forbids the House from approving any financial fix to the Social Security Disability Insurance (SSDI) program unless it is coupled with broader reforms. That would almost surely mean damaging benefit cuts for retirees struggling in the post-recession economy.

CHICAGO (Reuters) – John Turner wondered if he should roll over his federal government retirement account into an individual retirement account. So he called 15 IRA providers to get some guidance.

That may sound like overkill, but Turner wasn’t really contemplating a rollover. He was calling IRA providers to test the truthfulness and value of their advice on rollovers from workplace retirement accounts to IRAs.