MyMoney Resources - Life Events

This article featured in the Winter 2011/2012 edition of FDIC Consumer News provides information about what to do if you have been turned down for opening a checking account or the bank has closed your account and the importance of understanding reasons why.

"my Social Security," is a new online service that provides individuals quick access to their personal Social Security information. The site enables working individuals to obtain their earnings record and see estimates of future retirement, disability, and survivor benefits. It also enables people, who already receive Social Security benefits to get a benefit verification letter, check benefit payment information, change their address or phone number, and start or change direct deposit information online. Check it out!

Determine how long it will take to pay off your debt based on different monthly payment scenarios.

Estimate Your Social Security Retirement Benefits Online. The Retirement Estimator is tied to a person’s actual Social Security earnings records and eliminates the need to manually key in years of earnings information.

Over the last several decades, there has been a well-documented trend away from defined benefit plans toward defined contribution plans, in which an employee's retirement income depends on contributions to the plan along with the investment earnings on those contributions. Current workers increasingly must decide how much to contribute to retirement plans and how to invest plan contributions. By understanding which personal characteristics are associated with financial literacy, policymakers may target limited education resources to individuals with psychosocial traits that indicate risk for low financial literacy and insufficient retirement planning. Traditional, prior research on financial literacy has examined the impact of mainstay economic variables. This study examines the impact of previously unexplored variables- financial satisfaction, hopelessness and religiosity-on financial literacy. The study uses Health and Retirement (HRS) data and finds that financial satisfaction and religiosity are both significant independent predictors of financial literacy.

This edition of FDIC Consumer News focuses on small businesses. They are crucial to the U.S. economy and they're very important to the entrepreneurs who put their own money and long hours into operating and growing a company. If you're a small business owner – or you want to be – read our tips on ways to handle your business' finances, including getting loans, paying for everyday expenses, understanding your rights and responsibilities, and guarding against fraud.

This FDIC brochure provides information and advice on overdraft fees.

The majority of research on the retirement decision has focused on the health and wealth aspects of retirement. Such research concludes that people in better health and those enjoying a higher socioeconomic status tend to work longer than their less healthy and less wealthy counterparts. While financial and health concerns are a major part of the retirement decision, there are other issues that may affect the decision to retire that are unrelated to an individual’s financial and health status. Judgment and decision-making and behavioral-economics research suggests that there may be a number of behavioral factors influencing the retirement decision. The author reviews and highlights such factors and offers a unique perspective on potential determinants of retirement behavior, including anchoring and framing effects, affective forecasting, hyperbolic discounting, and the planning fallacy. The author then describes findings from previous research and draws novel connections between existing decision-making research and the retirement decision.

Increased policy and academic attention has been placed on promoting retirement savings early in the life course. This study investigates the extent to which retirement savings behavior among young persons, a population for which retirement savings is important but typically low, differs by marital status. We draw national survey data on young adult households (ages 22 – 35; N = 3,894) from the U.S. Federal Reserve Board’s Survey of Consumer Finances (SCF). Results reveal considerable differences by marital status. Controlling for important characteristics, young adults who were married were more likely than all other groups (including cohabitors) to perceive retirement as an important savings goal and to have an individual retirement account. Married persons were more likely than their single counterparts to participate in a defined contribution pension plan. Single women fared particularly poorly on retirement savings outcomes. A range of possible theoretical links between marriage and retirement savings at young adulthood are discussed.

This article provides an overview of the literature on best practices for retirement savings plan design and financial education in the workplace. Without a successful plan design, financial education will not be effective and even a well-structured plan can fail to achieve retirement savings goals without financial education. The main components of a retirement savings program that employers must consider include options for enrollment, investment choices, employer matching of contributions, and distributions over the working career and at retirement. In addition, employers control the core aspects of financial education, such as the topics covered, the delivery methods used, the frequency with which it is offered, and its general availability.