What the Rise of Minorities Means for Advisors: Retirement Scan

Our daily roundup of retirement news your clients may be thinking about.

What the rise of minorities means for U.S. business
The aging workforce and the increasing number of Asian, Hispanic and other minority groups in the U.S. are likely to have an impact on business operations, including the development of products and services, and trainings for employees, writes Bruce Katz, vice president of the Brookings Institution. People under the age 18 are expected to be a "no-majority" population by 2020, while the number of people over 65 is expected to double between 2010 and 2035, writes Katz, also co-director of the Metropolitan Policy Program. "Our future prosperity will depend upon seeing these new demographic realities, as the opportunities for growth and shared prosperity that they are."  --Fortune

Retirement index shows many still at risk
The National Retirement Risk Index slightly improved to 52% for 2013 from 53% for 2010, indicating more than half of American households may not be able to maintain their pre-retirement lifestyle through the golden years, writes Alicia H. Munnell, the director of Boston Colleges' Center for Retirement Research. Despite the rising stock markets and increase in housing values, "the ratio of wealth to income had not bounced back from the financial crisis, more households would face a higher Social Security Full Retirement Age, and the government had tightened up on the percentage of housing equity that borrowers could extract through a reverse mortgage," Munnell says.--MarketWatch

The rewards of active listening for financial advisors
Financial advisors serve their clients much better and address other financial concerns that these clients have by listening actively to them, says Rose Swanger, a principal with Knoxville, Tenn.-based Advise Finance. “Active listening is about digging deeper. As an advisor, you have to be diligent. That’s the most important thing,” Swanger says. Swanger shares an experience with a client who sought advice about retirement and never knew she had a pension, until Swanger learned she has about $44,000 in annual pension benefits with a federal contractor where she had worked before.  --The Wall Street Journal

How much investment money can you take out in retirement
Although the safe withdrawal rate method is a conservative approach that people can use to compute their initial retirement income, the strategy cannot make adjustments to retirement income in the subsequent years, according to this article on Forbes. Retirement income planning should account for variables such as returns and sequence risk, as well as the possibility of failure rates. Dynamic updating is an option to determining a more workable retirement withdrawal rate based on the retiree’s longevity and market behavior.   --Forbes

Retirement: 7 financial goals for the end of the year
The year-end is a good time for pre-retirees to put their finances in order, according to this article on USA Today. To do this, they may weigh their options for their 401(k) plan, such as leaving their assets with their employer or rolling it over to an IRA. They may also track their expenses, start planning for their retirement withdrawal rate, and update the beneficiaries of their accounts. Doing a Roth IRA conversion, estimating out-of-pocket health care expenses, and assessing relationship with financial consultants are other ways that will help clients handle their finances in preparation for their retirement.  --USA Today

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