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    BlackRock CEO Larry Fink says 65 retirement age is too low. Here’s what experts say

    As more Americans than ever turn 65, that is no longer the traditional retirement age.
    While some call for further raising the Social Security retirement age, experts say other changes may be more appropriate.

    BlackRock CEO Larry Fink speaks during the New York Times DealBook Summit Nov. 30, 2022 in New York City. 
    Michael M. Santiago | Getty Images News | Getty Images

    The idea of raising the Social Security retirement age has one more fan: BlackRock Chairman and Chief Executive Larry Fink.
    “No one should have to work longer than they want to,” Fink recently wrote in an annual letter to investors.

    “But I do think it’s a bit crazy that our anchor idea for the right retirement age — 65 years old — originates from the time of the Ottoman Empire,” wrote Fink, who is 71.
    Republicans have touted raising the retirement age.
    Former presidential candidate Nikki Haley said she would raise the Social Security retirement age for workers in their 20s. More recently, a House Republican budget proposal also called for lifting the age threshold for Social Security, though it did not specify by how much.

    The reason for the suggestion largely comes down to demographics.
    In the 1950s, many people who worked and paid into Social Security never lived long enough to retire and start receiving benefits, Fink noted.

    Today, the chances are higher that certain retirees over 65 may still be collecting Social Security checks until age 90, he wrote.
    Meanwhile, the number of baby boomers who reach age 65 is surging to historic levels. More than 11,200 Americans are expected to turn 65 every day — for a total of more than 4.1 million per year — from now through 2027.
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    That’s as Social Security is facing a looming shortfall. The trust fund used to pay retirement and survivors benefits is projected to run out in 2033, at which point there may be a benefit cut of at least 23%, Social Security’s board of trustees has projected.
    “Age 65 is the anchor that is a cultural age which we have hung our retirement hat to for decades,” said Jason Fichtner, chief economist at the Bipartisan Policy Center and executive director of the Alliance for Lifetime Income’s Retirement Income Institute.
    “It is no longer, I think, relevant,” he said.

    How the Social Security retirement age may change

    President Ronald Reagan signs the Social Security Act Amendment into law on April 20, 1983.
    Corbis | Getty Images

    Today, a new Social Security full retirement age of 67 is still getting phased in, prompted by changes enacted by Congress in 1983.
    Full retirement age is the point at which retirees stand to receive 100% of the benefits they’ve earned.
    For many years, Social Security’s full retirement age was 65. Today, that is still the age when individuals become eligible for Medicare coverage.
    Social Security benefits are available starting from age 62, “but with greater reduction” as a higher full retirement age phases in, according to the Social Security Administration.
    Retirees who wait to claim until age 70 stand to get the biggest benefit — with an increase of up to 8% for each year they wait past full retirement age.
    Yet fewer than 10% of claimants wait until that age, notes Teresa Ghilarducci, a labor economist at The New School for Social Research and author of the book, “Work, Retire, Repeat: The Uncertainty of Retirement in the New Economy.”
    As lawmakers face a deadline to make changes and address the program shortfall, they generally may choose from a limited menu of options — hiking taxes, cutting benefits or a combination of both.

    Social Security full retirement age

    Year of birth
    Social Security full retirement age

    1943-1954
    66

    1955
    66 and two months

    1956
    66 and four months

    1957
    66 and six months

    1958
    66 and eight months

    1959
    66 and 10 months

    1960 and later
    67

    Source: Social Security Administration

    Raising the retirement age, which is often presented as another option, is really a benefit cut, notes Alicia Munnell, director of the Center for Retirement Research at Boston College.
    “When you change the retirement age, it’s particularly painful to those who have to keep retiring at 62, people with health issues or people in professions where no jobs are available,” Munnell said.
    Congress may eventually raise the full retirement age to 69, predicts Andrew Biggs, a senior fellow at the American Enterprise Institute, even though Democrats have promised not to make that change.
    “When you look at countries around the world that have had underfunded pension systems, they raise the retirement age,” Biggs said. “It’s just a very, very common fix.”
    For each year the Social Security full retirement age is increased, that would cut benefits by a little under 7%, Biggs said.
    Pushing the age to 69 would repair less than one-fifth of Social Security’s shortfall, so other reforms would also be necessary, Biggs said. Moreover, a new higher retirement age would have to be phased in much faster than the 40-year window used for the last increase, he said.

    Experts have other changes on their wish lists

    Researchers and policy experts who have spent years studying Social Security’s shortfall have their own wish lists for the changes they would make.
    Fichtner, who supports raising the retirement age, said that change would need to be paired with a higher minimum benefit, so as not to punish workers who cannot work longer.
    “Some people have the ability to work, some people want to work, but some people can’t,” Fichtner said. “It’s important that we maintain a healthy minimum benefit amount at age 62.”
    Increases to the retirement age could be set to automatically adjust to changes in longevity, much as the annual Social Security cost-of-living adjustments are tied to inflation, he said.

    Other experts would opt for different changes in place of raising the retirement age.
    Biggs advocates for moving to one flat benefit for all retirees, similar to what Australia provides. If that change were put in place, raising the retirement age would be unnecessary, he said.
    Munnell argues the most effective benefit cut would be to reduce the replacement rates for higher income workers.
    Ultimately, workers want to retire on their own terms — at the age they want and with enough money to live comfortably.
    To make that more possible, employers need to engage older workers so they feel comfortable staying in the workforce, noted David Blanchett, managing director and head of retirement research at PGIM DC Solutions.
    “There’s still potentially some implicit bias towards older Americans leaving the workforce,” Blanchett said. “If we can have a president over the age of 75 or 80, I think as a society we should be able to find more ways to accommodate older workers.” More

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    Rents across the U.S. grew for the first time in 6 months — only Arizona saw price drops in every metro

    While rent prices increased in March, it’s reflecting seasonal patterns and fundamental concepts such as supply and demand, experts say.
    Some markets in the country are cooling more than others. Prices in the Sun Belt and inner mountain areas are seeing prices come down, and this state is an example.

    Ascentxmedia | E+ | Getty Images

    Rent prices for one- and two-bedroom apartments grew in March for the first time in six months.
    The monthly cost for a one-bedroom apartment across the U.S. bumped up to $1,487, a 0.3% increase from February. The price of a typical two-bedroom apartment also jumped 0.5% to $1,847, according to a new report by Zumper, a real estate data site. 

    While prices are up overall, some metro areas saw declines. For example, the rent price for a one-bedroom apartment in Baltimore, Maryland, is $1,390, down 0.7% from a year ago, per Zumper.
    Arizona is unique, with rent decreases in all the major metro areas assessed. On a statewide level, the median price for one-bedroom apartments declined to $1,311 in March, about a 4% decline from $1,365 a year ago, according to Zumper data.
    The broader rental market’s slight increase in prices may be a reflection of old seasonal patterns, experts say.
    “It’s kind of expected,” said Crystal Chen, a spokeswoman for Zumper. “When we get to the warmer months, that’s when demand picks up.”
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    “During the colder months of the year … the rental market tends to be cool,” said Jacob Channel, a senior economist at LendingTree. “As we get closer and closer to summer, we start to see rent prices increase in more places.”
    Yet, some fundamental factors such as supply and demand may also be reflected, said Susan M. Wachter, a professor of real estate and finance at The Wharton School of the University of Pennsylvania.

    Why Arizona prices are coming down

    Some markets in the country are cooling more than others. Prices in the Sun Belt and the intermountain areas are coming down, and Arizona is a prime example, Chen said. Zumper defines the intermountain region as Arizona, Nevada and Colorado.
    “All of the Arizona cities on our report either had flat or declining year-over-year rates,” she said.
    The city of Glendale, for example, had the largest rent decline, with one-bedroom prices down over 10% from this time last year.

    Arizona has a lot of supply coming online, keeping rent prices down in the area, Wachter explained.
    “In the data, there’s some evidence of fundamentals at play, in addition to seasonality,” she said.
    Phoenix is expected to add more than 33,000 new units available this year and many buildings in the state are offering concessions, such as waived deposits or application fees and up to two months of free rent, Zumper found.
    “If you’re in that market, it’s a great time for renters to snag an amenity-rich apartment that would have been out of reach otherwise,” Chen said.

    Supply plays into rent prices elsewhere

    While more supply is expected to surge in the Sun Belt and the intermountain region, a lot of Midwestern and Northeast markets are undersupplied, making rent prices push upward.
    “The supply coming online absolutely does vary by market,” Wachter said.
    Rent prices for one-bedroom apartments are up 25% in New York City from a year ago, according to Zumper. Rent costs and high competition also plague areas such as Columbus, Ohio, and Norfolk, Virginia.
    Yet, while prices increased, they’ve significantly declined from a year ago and even more compared with the market volatility from 2021 and 2022, when pent-up demand kept prices high.
    “Rent prices are going up and they are expensive, but it’s not suddenly skyrocketing again,” Channel said.
    “We don’t expect to see national rates spike at all like in 2021 and 2022,” Chen said. “The seasonality is coming back after two crazy years.”

    While many factors affect housing affordability in the U.S., the main one, in simplest terms, is poor supply, Channel said.
    “The more rental units that are built, the lower prices are likely to go, and I think Arizona shows that really well,” he said. More

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    Ron Insana’s new firm aims to bring AI-powered trade ideas to individual investors

    iFi AI will try to crack the code of integrating artificial intelligence and investing, and it will be mostly focused on helping individual traders make buy and sell decisions.
    IBM’s watsonx powers the AI programs behind the new venture.
    The new company will face competition from other AI-related startups and Wall Street giants in trying to marry the new technology with trading.

    Traders work on the floor at the New York Stock Exchange on March 13, 2024.
    Brendan McDermid | Reuters

    A new company will try to crack the code of integrating artificial intelligence and investing, and it will be mostly focused on helping individual traders make buy and sell decisions.
    The firm, called iFi AI, launches Wednesday. The company will use AI models to help generate projected returns for stocks over various time periods, according to Ron Insana, iFi AI CEO and CNBC senior analyst and commentator.

    “It’s a big assist when you’re looking at making a decision on whether or not you want to buy a stock, and you get a forecasted rate of return that says it’s going to be up 3% in the next month,” Insana told CNBC. “There’s some comfort around the decision-making process, knowing also that there’s more data going into our forecast than any human can ingest in a given day.”
    IBM’s watsonx powers the AI programs behind the new venture, incorporating fundamental news, technical analysis and other factors to make projections about where stocks are headed. The AI programs are already being used to help make decisions with $6 billion that is managed institutionally, Insana said.

    There will be multiple levels and price points for iFi AI, with most aimed at self-directed traders and a top tier, with broader portfolio tools, built for financial advisors, according to Insana.
    Using high technology in finance was common well before the latest wave of AI, but Insana said the new programs are more dynamic than the types of quantitative strategies that have long been used in hedge funds.
    “The difference between quantitative analysis and AI-driven analysis is that AI learns and continues to learn and teach itself,” Insana said.
    The new company will face competition from other AI-related startups and Wall Street giants in trying to marry the new technology with trading. For example, Morgan Stanley named its first head of AI earlier this month.

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    Winning ticket for Mega Millions $1.128 billion jackpot sold in New Jersey — here’s how much the winner will owe in taxes

    There is a winner for the $1.128 billion Mega Millions jackpot, and all six numbers matched a ticket sold in New Jersey.
    The lucky ticket holder can expect an automatic federal withholding of 24% and state withholding of 8%, but the final bill will be millions more.

    Xavier Lorenzo | Moment | Getty Images

    There is officially one winner for the $1.128 billion Mega Millions jackpot — and the taxman will take a sizable share, experts say.
    A single ticket sold in New Jersey won the game’s fifth-largest grand prize after matching all six numbers drawn Tuesday night, Mega Millions announced Wednesday. The final jackpot dropped from an estimated $1.13 billion to $1.128 billion based on actual ticket sales.

    The lucky winner will choose between two options: an annuitized prize worth $1.128 billion or a lump-sum payout of $536.6 million cash.
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    Regardless of the payout option, “you’re losing almost half of it” to taxes, said Albert Campo, a certified public accountant and president of AJC Accounting Services in Manalapan, New Jersey.
    New Jersey taxes prizes over $10,000 and the winner will owe millions to the state, including a mandatory withholding, on top of their federal tax bill, he said.
    Eight states, including California, Florida, New Hampshire, South Dakota, Tennessee, Texas, Washington and Wyoming, do not levy income taxes on lottery winnings.

    How much the winner could owe in taxes

    Before seeing a penny of the jackpot, the winner will pay a 24% mandatory upfront federal withholding to the IRS.
    If they choose the $536.6 million cash option, the 24% withholding automatically reduces the prize by about $129 million.
    However, the jackpot pushes the winner into the top federal tax bracket, which is 37% for 2024, Campo said. After the 24% withholding, the winner could still owe another 13% in federal taxes, or about $70 million.

    Of course, these are rough calculations. The winner’s federal tax bill will also depend on other income, credits or deductions.
    As for state taxes, New Jersey automatically withholds 8% for payouts of more than $500,000, which will cost the winner about another $43 million up front. The state withholding covers “a big chunk,” but New Jersey’s top tax bracket is 10.75%, Campo said.
    “None of these winners really think about taxes” until there’s a hefty share going to the IRS and state government, said Andrew Stoltmann, a Chicago-based lawyer who has represented several lottery winners.

    The Mega Millions is not the only way to win big. The Powerball jackpot has reached an estimated $865 million without a big winner from Monday night’s drawing. The chances of scoring the grand prize for that game are roughly 1 in 292 million.

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    An ‘often overlooked’ retirement savings option can lower your tax bill, advisor says. Here’s how it works

    Women and Wealth Events
    Your Money

    A spousal IRA is a separate Roth or traditional IRA for a non-working spouse — and it’s “often overlooked,” according to certified financial planner Judy Brown at SC&H Group.
    Married couples who file jointly have until the federal tax deadline — April 15 for most taxpayers — to make 2023 IRA contributions for each spouse.
    Traditional pretax spousal IRA contributions can provide a 2023 tax break, depending on income and workplace retirement plan participation.

    10’000 Hours | Digitalvision | Getty Images

    There’s still time to lower your 2023 tax bill or boost your refund with a lesser-known retirement savings strategy for married couples.
    One requirement for individual retirement account contributions is “earned income,” such as wages or salary from a job or self-employment earnings. But there’s an exception for single-income households: the spousal IRA.

    A spousal IRA is a separate Roth or traditional IRA for the non-working spouse — and it’s “often overlooked,” according to certified financial planner Judy Brown at SC&H Group in the Washington, D.C., and Baltimore area.

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    These accounts can provide a current-year tax break and boost retirement savings for nonearning spouses. As of 2021, some 18% of parents didn’t work outside of the home and most stay-at-home parents were women, according to Pew Research Center.
    “My advice to [nonearning] women would be make sure you’re at least doing that spousal IRA,” said Boston-based CFP Catherine Valega, founder of Green Bee Advisory.

    My advice to [nonearning] women would be make sure you’re at least doing that spousal IRA.

    Catherine Valega
    Founder of Green Bee Advisory

    How the spousal IRA works

    Married couples who file jointly have until the federal tax deadline — April 15 for most taxpayers — to make 2023 IRA contributions for each spouse, assuming there’s enough earned income for the combined deposits.
    Traditional pretax spousal IRA contributions can provide a 2023 tax break, depending on income and workplace retirement plan participation, explained Brown, who is also a certified public accountant.  

    With income phaseouts for IRA deductibility and Roth IRA contributions, many wait until March or April for the previous year’s IRA deposits. It can be a “game-time decision” while doing your taxes, Brown said. 

    The annual IRA contribution limit is $6,500 for 2023 or $7,500 for savers age 50 and older. The limit increased to $7,000 for 2024, with an extra $1,000 for investors age 50 and up.
    However, “it doesn’t have to be all or nothing,” Brown said. Even a $500 or $1,000 spousal IRA contribution could provide tax savings.

    Contributions could create a ‘tax problem’

    While spousal IRA contributions make sense for some couples, there are other factors to consider before making deposits, said CFP Laura Mattia, CEO of Atlas Fiduciary Financial in Sarasota, Florida.For example, some couples need the extra cash for living expenses or shorter-term goals, like paying for a wedding, she said.Plus, too much pretax retirement savings could create a “tax problem” in the future, depending on the size of your accounts and future required minimum distributions, Mattia said. Pretax withdrawals boost income, which can affect Medicare Part B and Part D premiums, among other consequences.”It’s a puzzle and really depends on a lot of things,” she added.

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    Almost half of voters say student loan forgiveness is a key issue in 2024 election, survey finds

    Almost half of all voters say canceling student loan debt is an important issue in the 2024 presidential and congressional elections, a new survey finds.
    Among younger people, 70% of Gen Z respondents said the action was “very” or “somewhat” important, according to the survey of 3,812 registered voters between March 15-19.

    A woman votes at the Royal Missionary Baptist Church polling location in North Charleston, South Carolina, on February 3, 2024, during the democratic primary. 
    Jim Watson | AFP | Getty Images

    Almost half of all voters, or 48%, say canceling student loan debt is an important issue to them in the 2024 presidential and congressional elections, a new survey finds.
    Among younger people, 70% of Gen Z respondents said the action was “very” or “somewhat” important in the election, and 72% of Black voters and 68% of Hispanic voters believe the same.

    The poll of 3,812 registered voters, including 2,601 Gen Z and millennial respondents, was conducted between March 15-19 by SocialSphere, a research and consulting firm.
    “This survey shows that most voters, regardless of age, believe that taking a loan to pay for education should not result in a lifetime of debt,” said John Della Volpe, CEO of SocialSphere and director of polling at the Harvard Kennedy School Institute of Politics. The report was released by Protect Borrowers Action, an advocacy group.
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    Outstanding education debt in the U.S. stands at roughly $1.6 trillion, and burdens Americans more than credit card or auto debt. The average loan balance at graduation is around $30,000. A quarter of borrowers were behind on their payments before the payment pause enacted during the Covid pandemic.

    7 in 10 voters want action on student debt

    Around 7 in 10 voters, 73%, believe the government should take some action on student loan debt, with 50% supporting partial or complete loan cancellation, the survey found.

    Among Gen Z and millennial Democrats, 81% of voters surveyed favored loan forgiveness. More than half, 53%, of Gen Z respondents said they or someone in their household has student debts, as did 46% of young millennials and 39% of older millennials.

    Many young people on the right now also support student loan cancellation, with 49% of Gen Z and millennial Republicans saying some or all outstanding education debt should be erased. Debt forgiveness has historically been a highly partisan issue, with supporters and detractors split down party lines.
    Debt cancellation is less of a priority among older people, with just 37% of baby boomer and silent generation voters in the survey saying the issue is important to them in the upcoming elections. More than two-thirds of Republican Gen X voters, those born between 1965 and 1980, said they don’t believe student debt should be canceled.
    Almost a quarter, 23%, of Gen X voters surveyed said they or someone in their household had student loan debt. Among baby boomer and silent generation voters, that share was 14%.

    Support for forgiveness may impact campaign trail

    The election year findings could reinforce the importance of loan forgiveness for President Joe Biden’s campaign, especially as it fights to turn around its fading support among younger voters.
    The Supreme Court last June struck down the president’s $400 billion plan to deliver student loan forgiveness to as many as 40 million Americans. Since then, the Biden administration has tried to cancel the debt in various other ways, using its existing authority. Mainly by improving current loan relief programs, it has now cleared the education debts of nearly 4 million people, totaling $143.6 billion in aid.
    Meanwhile, the popularity of loan forgiveness among voters may prove a challenge for Donald Trump, the presumptive 2024 GOP presidential nominee.
    “The Republican party’s steadfast opposition to student debt relief remains a wildly unpopular stance — even with a majority of younger Republican voters,” said Mike Pierce, executive director of Protect Borrowers Action.
    It was the legal challenge by six GOP-led states that ultimately led to the death of Biden’s sweeping loan forgiveness policy at the Supreme Court.

    Trump himself has a record of opposing debt cancellation.
    The former president also sided with the Supreme Court in its ruling striking down Biden’s plan.
    “Today, the Supreme Court also ruled that President Biden cannot wipe out hundreds of billions, perhaps trillions of dollars, in student loan debt, which would have been very unfair to the millions and millions of people who paid their debt through hard work and diligence; very unfair,” Trump said at a campaign event in June 2023.
    Correction: Donald Trump is the presumptive 2024 GOP presidential nominee. An earlier version misstated his status.

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    Women experience a ‘motherhood penalty.’ For dads, there’s a wage ‘bonus’

    Women and Wealth Events
    Your Money

    Often called the “motherhood penalty,” caregiving demands still largely fall on women and have shaped their labor force participation and pay after becoming parents.
    Even when women outearn their husbands, they still pick up a heavier load when it comes to responsibilities at home, reports show.
    For men, there’s a bump up or wage “bonus” after becoming a father.

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    “For mothers, employment and earnings conditional on being employed fall sharply around the time of birth for women, and, more ominously, may remain permanently lower well after childbirth,” the authors of the PNAS study wrote.
    There is a dynamic that perpetuates itself, according to Jasmine Tucker, vice president of research at the National Women’s Law Center.
    “If a kid is sick and someone needs to take time out of their workday, it’s going to be the woman because they are paid less,” Tucker said. “It makes more economic sense. It’s a self-fulfilling prophecy.”
    Men do not face a “penalty” as parents at all. Alternatively, fathers who work full time experience a wage “bonus” when they have children, according to a separate report by the British trade union association TUC.

    Fathers make roughly 20% more than men with no children, the report said.

    ‘Breadwinner’ moms still have a heavier load at home

    But there’s another problem: Even when women outearn their husbands, they still pick up a heavier load when it comes to caregiving responsibilities, according to a separate Pew Research Center survey and analysis of government data.
    “Even though there may be more egalitarian marriages, their duties at home have not been equalized,” Richard Fry, a senior researcher at Pew, told CNBC last spring. “The gender imbalance in time spent on caregiving persists, even in marriages where wives are the breadwinners.”

    In fact, the motherhood penalty is even greater in “female-breadwinner” families, the PNAS study also found, where higher-earning women experience a 60% drop from their pre-childbirth earnings relative to their male partners. 

    More hybrid jobs could help working moms

    While the high cost of child care in the U.S. continues to weigh heavily on women’s labor force participation, shifting workplace dynamics may help, said Lauren Sanfilippo, senior investment strategist at Bank of America’s Chief Investment Office.
    Coming out of the Covid-19 pandemic, many employees pushed back against return-to-office plans, resulting in a hybrid work model of three days a week in person that is now more the norm than the exception.
    Office attendance has stabilized at 30% below where it was before the pandemic, according to a report by the McKinsey Global Institute.
    That appears to be helping women stay in the labor force after having kids, other reports show.
    “We’ll eventually see the motherhood penalty be tempered a bit by this hybrid work environment,” Sanfilippo said. “There’s a little bit more flexibility since the pandemic and that’s been a good thing.”

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    BlackRock’s Larry Fink sees Social Security crisis, says 65 retirement age ‘a bit crazy’

    BlackRock CEO Larry Fink
    Taylor Hill | Getty Images Entertainment | Getty Images

    BlackRock Chairman Larry Fink said capital markets can help solve a crisis brewing around the ability of Americans to afford retirement as lifespans elongate, and for the government to provide a basic safety net.
    In his annual letter to shareholders, Fink called the decreasing ability to retire in a financially sound way one of the biggest economic challenges of the mid-21st Century. He said access to investing can help solve this challenge, while also pondering if the expectation for everyone to receive Social Security benefits at age 65 has become archaic.

    “Today in America, the retirement message that the government and companies tell their workers is effectively: ‘You’re on your own,'” Fink wrote. “And before my generation fully disappears from positions of corporate and political leadership, we have an obligation to change that.”
    Fink pointed a U.S. Census Bureau survey that found nearly half Americans between 55 and 65 have no savings in personal retirement accounts. And the investing firm’s leader noted tens of millions of Americans work part-time or gig jobs that don’t offer clear retirement contribution plans.
    Worsening the outlook is a Social Security system that’s said it will not be able to pay full benefits by 2034.
    The 71-year-old believes the American retirement system has entered such a deep crisis that it has become a once-in-a-generation issue and its on government and business leaders to start trying to fix it right away.
    A federal law that will require employers with 401K plans to auto-enroll new workers provides a bright spot, he said. Hundreds of companies have already taken this step, Fink noted.

    But corporations also have a duty to provide benefits like fund matching or financial education to workers, he said. And Fink said employees should be able to easily transfer 401K savings when they change jobs.
    Increasing lifespans create further difficulties when trying to improve the retirement system, Fink said. This issue is of increasing relevance as blockbuster weight-loss drugs have already begun drastically reshaping the healthcare landscape, he said.
    As a result, Fink said it’s worth taking a look at when Americans are expected to start accessing Social Security benefits, typically a sensitive topic that no politician wants to touch.
    “No one should have to work longer than they want to,” he said. “But I do think it’s a bit crazy that our anchor idea for the right retirement age — 65 years old — originates from the time of the Ottoman Empire.” More