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Michelle Singletary's 'Money Milestones' For Retirement

Michelle Singletary, personal finance columnist for The Washington Post, offers advice for listeners over age 65 on some money goals and milestones they should aim to hit during this time in their lives.

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Brian Lehrer: Brian Lehrer on WNYC. For this membership drive week, in addition to the news and issue conversations we have every day, we've been doing a few special series, including one we will finish right now with Washington Post personal finance columnist Michelle Singletary who has a great series called Michelle Singletary's Money Milestones for Every Age. She goes decade by decade. We've been going up the ladder with her. We started with people in their 20s on Monday and up and up. Today we wrap it up with money milestones for people 65 plus.

Even that, of course, is a big, big category that can be very different for, say, 66-year-olds than for 86-year-olds, for example. Let's cover some ground. Michelle is also the author of books on personal finance book-length treatments, including her latest which came out last year called What To Do With Your Money When Crisis Hits: A Survival Guide. Michelle, thanks for this whole week first of all. People have really been appreciating how well you organized your work to be so clear and helpful. Here we go one more time. Welcome back to WNYC.

Michelle Singletary: Oh, thank you so much for having me this week. It's been such a pleasure.

Brian Lehrer: Listeners 65 or older, ask Michelle a question today or on behalf of someone you know who's 65 or an older, parent, whoever. 212-433-WNYC, 212-433-9692. Let's start with a big one that's not about Social Security or your personal retirement accounts. You have a column called Watch Out for Scams. Why do so many scams seem targeted at older folks?

Michelle Singletary: They are the ones with the money. [laughs] Go where the money is if you want to get money. I don't want to say that the expression out there. Basically, the scammers know as you age you've been saving and you're more likely to have savings that they can take from you. That is why they target that group, people who've got retirement income. It's interesting though, they target older adults, but also younger adults because they're online, they're in a lot of platforms where they get these emails and text messages and things like that. These two groups are actually the two that are targeted the most by scammers.

Brian Lehrer: How can you tell? Are there some easy rules of thumb if something is just spam or if it's a scam?

Michelle Singletary: This is the advice. I've been here all week and I've hopefully given you a lot of good information, but just please take this away today. Do not respond to any unsolicited text message, email, or phone call. Absolutely not. I don't care if it comes up on a little screen that is from your bank. Don't answer it. Call your bank and say, "Are you trying to reach me?" If it says the IRS, don't answer it, call the IRS. Plus they're so overwhelmed, they are not calling anybody. The other thing is if they ask you to give them money, by a gift card, or wire transfer, 100% scam. 100%.

They also target seniors. They might call and say, "Hey your grandson's in jail," or, "Your granddaughter's in trouble. They don't want to tell their parents. Can you help them out?" They get millions and millions of dollars from grandparents who just want to help their grandkids. Total, total scam. Anybody who calls you is a scam and particularly text messages, especially as it relates to Zelle, which is a way for people to transfer money to each other. I got one the other day that said, "Oh, your Amazon account has been shut down." I was like, "Really? Because I'm looking at the account right now."

[chuckling]

Michelle Singletary: Basically, don't believe any of it. Just verify every single thing. I always like to say designate someone in your family or your sphere of influence as the skeptic because I'm the skeptic. Anybody who gets anything, they call me or email me and say, "Hey, Michelle, is this real?" I vet things for them. If you are their skeptic, you become that person. Particularly look out for folks who are really trusting. There are a lot of trusting people out there, and they are targets all the time for these scammers.

Brian Lehrer: Here's how sophisticated they've become. I got one recently that displayed as the actual Citibank customer service number. I have a Citibank account of a certain type. I did what I do in these cases, which is I did not do anything with the person on the phone, but I called the Citibank customer service number where I placed the call to what I knew was the Citibank customer service number. I asked them what the person was saying I needed to send the money for, and they said no.

Michelle Singletary: Exactly.

Brian Lehrer: That's how sophisticated they've become. They managed to get it displayed on my caller ID as the actual Citibank customer service number when it wasn't. Brad in New Rochelle, you're on WNYC with Michelle Singletary. Hi, Brad.

Brandon: Hi, Brian. Thank you so much for taking my call and thank you for what has been a very informative series. My question is this. My wife and I have a chunk of money with a money manager that we've set aside for retirement. She retired early. I retired in 2001 and I'm 67 now. I don't know what questions to ask my money manager about how I start getting money from this block of retirement money. I don't know.

Michelle Singletary: That sucks.

Brad: How does that work? I feel like I'm just totally in the dark here and I'm paying this guy to do this, and yet he says, "You're fine, you're fine. You're going to be fine for X amount of years." I'm like, "Okay, but when do I start taking it? What do I do?"

Michelle Singletary: That's really great. That's such a great question, Brad. You are like so many people, including myself, you spent years, decades saving and now you're like, "Wait a minute, how do I spend?" What you would do, Brad, is look at the other income that you have, Social Security or pensions and savings that you have outside of a retirement account, and is that covering all that you need for your household? Brad, are you still there?

Brian Lehrer: Brad, are you still there?

Brad: Yes, I'm here.

Michelle Singletary: Okay. Would all of that cover your expenses for the month of the year?

Brad: Meaning my wife's pension?

Michelle Singletary: Yes.

Brad: Both of our social securities?

Michelle Singletary: Correct.

Brad: Got it.

Michelle Singletary: You look at all of that, and if you need some more money for some other things, then typically what advisors will tell you is you want to pull out between 3% to 4% per year. That'll make your money last depending on how much you have for 20 or 30 years. You would pull 3% to 4% and that would then add to the other income that you have if you need it. If you don't need it, you could sit it there or you might pull out that to take a nice vacation. Maybe you and your wife wanted to go around the world in 30 days.

You would start there. I'm surprised that your advisor when you asked that question didn't sit down with you and talk to you about how much you should be withdrawing per year to meet your expenses. You want to ask him that question and say, "I need to set up a meeting with you. This is what we got coming in that is non-retirement. How much should we be pulling out percentage-wise of my retirement money?"

Brian Lehrer: You've got, you said, a 4% rule?

Michelle Singletary: It's called the 4% rule although, with inflation up, it could be a little bit more or a little bit less. Anywhere from 3% to 4%. In some years, it might be 2% if inflation is really high and you want to make that money last. If he and his wife don't need the money right now, the portfolios are probably down. If you don't need to touch it, you might leave it alone while giving the market some time to recover.

Brian Lehrer: All right. Let's go to Diane in Bloomfield who has a question that I bet a lot of people have. Hi, Diane. You're on WNYC with Michelle Singletary.

Diane: Hi, thank you for taking my call. I'm calling for my sister who is 68 and going to retire this year. She's very confused about her Social Security. She's working so she can't call. She was wondering is she better off to take it now when she retires at 68 or should she wait till she's more like 70.

Michelle Singletary: That's so interesting because you said she's still working, so she's actually doing the right thing by waiting because when you wait, even after you reach full retirement age, you get about an 8% bump per year until you hit 70. She's still working and she doesn't need the money, just wait out that next two years because she's got to get a significant buck. Listen, the market isn't paying 8% right now, so if she doesn't need it, I would say don't collect the benefits until she hits 70.

There's no point in waiting after 70, the benefits don't increase. She should go right ahead and start collecting it in two years. You tell her I said that. Now, if she absolutely needs the money, I don't want people sitting around like, "Oh," and not doing the things that they want to do or need to do to get that bump, but, like you said, she's working, she probably doesn't need it. Wait out those two years and get that 8% bump for the next two years.

Brian Lehrer: Diane, thank you for your call. I hope that's helpful. You have a column called What You Need to Know About Your Retirement Accounts When You Hit 73. Why is 73 a magic number?

Michelle Singletary: It's called the required minimum [chuckles] distribution. Basically, the government, it says, "Listen, we let you all put that money in those retirement accounts, but we're going to need our tax money." At a certain age, you've got they're forcing you to take money out of your workplace retirement account. That's RMD, which is required minimum distribution. Whoever is running your financial plan, your workplace retirement plan, they'll help you figure out what that amount is and how to take it out.

Now, it used to be the penalty for not taking it out was pretty stiff, like 50%. The law changed last year to reduce that penalty significantly, but it's still like 25%. You want to make sure that you take that RMD when you're supposed to when you hit 73. It used to be an older age, but most people now will just wait till they're 73, and in a couple of more years after that, it's going to be 75. You want to work with the company that's managing your plan to make sure you take that RMD when you're supposed to so you're not subject to that penalty.

Brian Lehrer: We have time for me to raise one more topic with you that you write about in your 65-plus or 70-plus Money Milestones column. One column of yours is called Is a Retirement Community Right For You? I bet a lot of people listening on behalf of themselves or their parents or whoever are wondering about that. There are several kinds of those, right?

Michelle Singletary: That's right. There are different kinds. There are ones where there's a mix. You might be in an apartment by yourself or you're in a facility that perhaps there's some dementia and some helping. The thing about it is you want to just investigate it. It's a lot of money to put down for these communities, and you want to be sure that you understand what the upfront cost is because sometimes it's a huge upfront cost.

The benefit there is that as you age and perhaps need more long-term care, you are right there with the help that you need. That is something that lots of seniors are looking into because they may go from a home to an apartment, less space, less things to take care of to an assistant living facility all in the same complex.

Brian Lehrer: You mentioned that AARP has a good guide to the pros and cons of retirement communities. Is there one pro or one con you'd like to draw attention to?

Michelle Singletary: I think the pro is that you have the medical help and you've got a community of people, like-minded people. They have a lot of things going on, activities to keep you vibrant and everything like that. I think the con is the cost, clearly. I've thought about this myself. A lot of times, you can only live there if you're maybe 55 or older or 60 and older. I want to live in a mixed community where there's younger people and people in their 40s or 50s.

Also, I'm a family person that, say if my grandkids need someplace to stay, something happens or whatever, I want to be able to have them come live with me. I don't like some of the restrictions that some of these communities have in terms of who can stay there. Like I said, I want to be in a community with a variety of different people. I think you can benefit from that. I also see why some people love these communities because it's like a protective cocoon for them. Particularly if you are concerned about having long-term care issues down the road. Maybe that's something that happens in your family quite a bit.

Brian Lehrer: I'll give you one more from a listener that came in via Twitter. I'll need a quick response to it because we're running out of time.

Michelle Singletary: Sure.

Brian Lehrer: This one actually applies to any age. Folks, listen up. Listener writes, "I'm 81 and my husband is 82. Unfortunately, we own a 22-year-old Toyota Camry. It's going fine except that it has a problematic suspension system. It may break any time. My question is, should we lease a car or buy with a loan?" Of course, any age might ask should we lease a car or buy with a loan? Give me 30 seconds on that, Michelle, and then we're done.

Michelle Singletary: Do not lease. I can just jump. I'll need 10 seconds. Do not lease it. I just think it's a waste of money. If you can buy it with cash, buy a late model. Use new to you car. Try not to take out a loan, especially if you're in your 80s, or just fix the car. I'm driving almost a what? A 17, 18-year-old car. I just fix it when it breaks down, as long as it's not going to be stranding you. That's my quick answer. [laughs]

Brian Lehrer: Folks, that concludes our series with Washington Post personal finance columnist Michelle Singletary from her guide called Michelle Singletary's Money Milestones for Every Age. You can see all of it on The Washington Post website. I love how clearly it's laid out. People can click on which decade of life they want to see your articles for and go up the chain if they want. Michelle is also author of books on personal finance, including her latest called What to Do With Your Money When Crisis Hits: A Survival Guide. Michelle, you're awesome. Thanks so much for this week.

Michelle Singletary: Oh, thank you so much for having me. It's been a pleasure. I love the questions from you New Yorkers. Oh, so smart stuff.

[laughter]

Brian Lehrer: Thank you again. Brian Lehrer on WNYC. Much more to come.

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