a. Managed Care and HMO vs. Cost containment

Life expectancy in the US has increased dramatically since the turn of the last century. About the only thing more dramatic in increase over the same 100 years is the cost of living. That cost will continue to rise of course, but no one knows where to expect health care to go. The current pattern of managed care and health maintenance organizations came about because of spiraling costs that threatened to surpass the national debt if not checked in some way. Costs are rising much more slowly now, but they are still rising.

One of the benefits of the type of health care we have in the US is that people a

These low-return savings routes are completely safe in that the individual cannot lose any principal when staying within the limits of the bank's insurance plan. Individuals committed to these routes often say the market is too risky, that they will not put their money into it. They fail to realize, of course, that their funds are not merely resting inside the bank waiting for withdrawal, that the bank itself is investing those funds for its own benefit. These savers need to invest some on their own behalf and thereby gain the full benefit of their own funds' activity in the market.

Providing counterpoint for his counterpart at the same publication, Dreman (2000) takes exception to Birinyi's positive outlook. He points toward the erratic movements in the NASDAQ exchange as indicative of an impending collapse of technology stocks.

This, of course, is a cardinal sin in the catechism of stock market investing. Not all the old wisdom of the "old economy" still applies, but the rule of choosing a stock with a long history of positive performance and then leaving the thing alone for a long time still applies. Approaching investing as a giant Monopoly® game can be a form of entertainment, but it generally is not the route to retiring wealthy. Another old rule is not to invest more than you can afford to lose. This is sound advice, and playing with high-risk stocks can be fun if losing the principal will not be problematic. The individual who would retire wealthy needs to take a more measured approach.

It is avoidance of taxes that makes the IRA attractive. The total deposited in an IRA up to the $3,000 ($2,000 in the U.S.) cap is directly deducted from total taxable income for the year. Thus that worker making $40,000 pays income tax on only $37,000, saving himself about $600 in taxes for that year. The interest accrued in an IRA also is tax free, so the saver gains all the benefit of the power of interest. Further, interest rates on IRAs are always higher than those on simple savings accounts where increases are not tax-deferred.

Of course no savings is "passive." Individuals must make the commitment to save. Here, passive savings refers to those accounts to which individuals make deposits and have the funds easily accessible, but they have to take no active role in tracking their funds, moving them or otherwise bothering with them. Passbook savings, CDs and money market accounts qualify under this definition, as well as many IRAs and 401(k) accounts.

Self-employed people can choose from SEP, SIMPLE or Keogh plans, and the Roth IRA is available to both the self-employed and those working for others as an employee (Bischoff, 2000). All have tax advantages of their own, and each carry restrictions for specific situations.

Retiring wealthy can be a characteristic of the greedy, but with today's increasing life expectancies, retiring wealthy quite possibly can translate into being able to maintain only a middle-class lifestyle in later years. The point is that today's workers need to build retirement funds to the maximum amounts they can. In order to do that, they will have t

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