Is Your Budget Strained?; The Maine WIRE: Seniors are strained by shrinking assests, rising inflation

M.D. Harmon: Seniors are strained by shrinking assets, rising inflation

The polls continue to find that voters’ attention remains focused on the economy—not so much in the sense of Bill Clinton’s “It’s the economy, stupid,” as in, “It’s the stupid economy.”
And that matters a great deal to the group most often viewed as the one most up for grabs in November, the so-called “50-plussers.”

They are those either retired or close enough to retirement to be very aware of how their plans for the future are being wrenched out of shape by two powerful forces.
The first one is what’s going on in the stock market, their employers’ retirement programs and the changes now being pondered and implemented for seniors’ health care.
And the second is a form of “hidden” inflation not easily tracked by traditional measures of that insidious force.

First, let’s pay heed to a pair of recent columns, the first one by Glenn Harlan Reynolds, a libertarian law professor at the University of Tennessee who blogs as “Instapundit” (a blog well worth bookmarking, by the way). He recently wrote on the economic pressures facing those now entering their retirement years—and they are grim.

Continue reading the rest of the article here, it is important.
http://www.themainewire.com/2012/09/m-d-harmon-seniors-strained-shrinking-assets-rising-inflation/