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business newsYesterday's TV, Today's Economy: "The Golden Girls"
Would Rose, Dorothy, and Blanche need Obama's proposed stimulus checks?
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None of the “Girls” appeared to collect from pension plans (Nylund lost a claim to her deceased husband’s) or to be eligible for significant future payments other than social security. Their children were generally unreliable, and Nylund suffered from various health problems, some of them serious. Their subsequent lives would have been dependent on luck but also planning, according to retirement expert Ellen Siegel of Ellen R. Siegel and Associates in Miami.
So what would Siegel suggest if the three Golden Girls showed up in her office today?
First, she’d run each through a forward retirement projection.
"The concerns at that age would be, 'Will I become infirm and dependent on children?' " she says.
Based on actuarial tables and simulations, such as realage.com, active and relatively healthy women in their 60s have a life expectancy of 88 or so, says Siegel -- longer than most realize. As part of her projection, their past experience with money would be an important consideration. “How people have handled money and financial stress is the best indication of how they’ll do in the future.”
Siegel would also have each woman make careful spending projections, “something people resist,” she says. “If their circumstances were really marginal, I’d look for a way that they could generate more money.” For example, if Devereaux wished to stay in her house, a reverse mortgage might make sense.
But, says Siegel, for women of that age, the main concern is usually not material things, "it’s friendship.” A retirement home or community, where Nylund would find fresh for her St. Olaf stories, might be a better option than hanging on to the Miami home.
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Photo by Time Life Pictures/DMI/Time Life Pictures/Getty Images
In general, among the 50 million Americans who receive Social Security, payments average about $1,153 per month. For many retired or disabled persons, though, the costs of health care and drugs can eat up most of that income.
The issue is so serious that a recent study by the National Academy of Sciences pegged the poverty rate for Americans 65 and over at 18.6%, rather than the official 9.7%.
"It's a hidden problem," Robin Talbert, president of the AARP Foundation, told the Associated Press. "There are still many millions of older people on the edge, who don't have what they need to get by."
The problem may be exacerbated next year, when, for the first time in 30 years, Social Security recipients will not benefit from a cost-of-living adjustment. By law, the adjustment is calculated according to the amount of inflation in the economy.
To compensate for the change, President Barack Obama has floated the idea of issuing one-time $250 stimulus checks for those receiving Social Security. His proposal is expected to pass congress.
If the Golden Girls were around, we can bet how they'd spend those stimulus dollars: In Miami Beach -- which one man claims is the real origin of a certain dessert made famous in Brooklyn -- $250 can buy a lot of cheesecake.
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