 Welcome back. Well, you had a pretty exciting and formative first half of the program and we anticipated equally exciting and formative second half of the panel that we have for us. Sherry Johnson is the field services director for society for human resource management based in Round Rock, Texas. She supports the states of Arkansas, Louisiana, Louisiana, Michigan, Missouri, Oklahoma, and Texas. Sherry serves as Sherry's staff liaison to the government affairs coordination area for the advocacy team initiative and she is a member of Sherry's speaker bureau. Sherry has worked in the HR profession for over 15 years with industry experience in market-market community organizations, public education, and entrepreneurial experience as a owner of a smaller business. Jane Mehta founded MRR Medical Reimbursement Resource, LL City in 1992 in Houston, Texas. For over 20 years MRR has advocated for patients and their families to ensure that they can see all the benefits to which they are entitled under their insurance plans. MRR's clients include individuals with chronic illnesses, dual professional couples with children, seniors, and anyone frustrated with medical bills and insurance claims. Anyone frustrated? In addition, Jane consults with clients on benefit issues and insurance choices including the surge in selection of the most appropriate Medicare Part D drug plan for seniors as well as the selection of Medicare supplemental plans. Sherry Young serves as the executive director for the Credit Coalition, a HUD approved housing counseling agency whose membership includes Houston area financial institutions, community organizations, community leaders, and other related businesses and organizations. She is the Credit Coalition's lead instructor and foreclosure intervention, credit, home buyer, and reverse mortgage counselor. Aside from counseling and conducting credit coalition classes, Sherry participates in many community events to help spread the word about financial education, individuals with developer accounts, free visa side tax preparation assistance, and other programs that can help families build and retain their assets. She is the chair of the Counseling Committee of the Greater Houston Housing Coalition and co-chair of the Counseling Committee of the Texas Orpoacher Prevention Task Force. Each panelist will do a short presentation followed by a few questions from the department manager. Please use your index cards if you have questions and write them down and we will collect them so that they may be given to our panel. Please welcome our panelist. Pleasure to be here with you this afternoon. I wanted to preface my comments with the approach that I'm going to be taking with you this afternoon. You've heard a little bit already about the impact of the big boom of retirees on the workforce and I'm going to speak to you primarily from that perspective for just a moment. So from the perspective of the employer. Now keep in mind as I'm sharing with you the information that I will be going through. If you are representing yourself as an individual and you're wanting to arm yourself with information and data that will help you go back and have an effective conversation with your employer about what your goals are for your personal retirement, then hopefully that's my goal, that you will find some information in my presentation that will give you those talking points that you can go back and talk to your employer. And again if you're in the room representing an employer, then I'm going to give you some information that is really going to help you prepare for the future for your workforce and the success of your organization moving forward. Things that you should have on your radar and be preparing for. Now I've also brought with me 11 DVDs. So 11 individuals who registered for this event this afternoon are going to be lucky enough to take one of these home back with you or I guess we're going to mail them. We're going to draw the names and we're going to mail them to you. What this is is a 20 minute video. This highlights the National Institutes of Health. They are considered to be a preeminent, a premier company that serves the needs of their older workers in an exceptional fashion. So they are an extraordinary best practices case study compared to other companies on the best ways to work with, handle, engage and retain older workers in the workplace. So this is again a great piece of information that will help you prepare for conversations with your employers back home. So let's go ahead and get started. What I want to start with is the up and coming baby boomer retirement is a challenge, a significant challenge that employers should be preparing for. What you see before me on the screen is some recent statistical research done by the U.S. Bureau of Labor Statistics. And what you see reflected in here is that the U.S. workforce is aging at a very rapid rate, especially that age group of 55 to 64 years of age. Now you'll notice, if you look just below that, a significant decrease in the number of employees, the number of workforce, between the ages of 16 and 24. We see an increase in older workers, we see a decline in the number of new entrants into the workforce at this point in time. And that is moving forward into the next couple of decades. We will continue to see this pattern. Now I want to share with you some more information about how many baby boomers do we really have in the United States. Well the research indicates we have about 77 million baby boomers. The first group of those baby boomers who reached the average age, the traditional retirement age which is 65 years old, that first group of baby boomers started reaching that age in 2011. So again, in 2011 we had the first baby boomers starting to reach what we consider to be the average retirement age. According to the Pew Research Center, 10,000 more baby boomers reach the age of 65 every day. And they will continue 10,000 a day every day for the next two decades, reaching the age of 65. Now there's good news for employers to keep in mind. Because of the recession, since about 2008-2009, we've seen a trend that the number of baby boomers have decided to postpone their retirement and stay in the workforce a little longer, because financially they had to. No other option. But now as the recession is starting to improve, we've seen the GDP is starting to go up, and we've seen the unemployment rate starting to come down after some pretty dismal years. And with that, it's bringing an increased level of consumer confidence. And there's more trust in the economy at this point than there has been over the last few years. And for that reason, many baby boomers who had postponed retirement are now considering moving forward with those retirement goals. We've been doing a lot of research, and you can see I'm not going to go through all the data here. You can read that as I'm speaking. But you can see that many of the baby boomers have already started to retire. Some of them are fully retired. Some are partially retired. There's a lot of different things that baby boomers are starting to do right now as they're entering into those retirement goals. Now, there's a problem within the United States, and that is that, as I've already represented to you, the number of new entrants in the workforce will not sufficiently cover the vacancies left by the baby boomers when they leave the workplace. We call this brain drain on an organization. What's going to happen when those 77 million baby boomers leave the workforce? It's going to leave significant skills gaps and talent shortages. It's going to mean that the employers are not capable of getting the same level of productivity from the workforce left behind that they are currently accustomed to in achieving within their strategic goals for the organizations. Does that make sense to everybody? So, they're going to be dependent upon the new entrants coming into the workforce. But as I've mentioned, there's a decrease in that number, right? There's not as many of them. In fact, what you can see on the screen, there's only going to be about 23 million people, but there are more than 23 million people, but that's all the graduates that will be coming out of our colleges and universities during the next 10 years. So, again, there's not going to be enough new entrants in the workforce to fill the gaps that are going to be left behind. When the baby boomers leave, they take that institutional knowledge, the skill and the talent that they've earned or gained in the workplace for their employers, that all goes with them. We're finding too that the United States, compared with all other nations, educationally, we are lacking. So, there's an organization called OECD that stands for the Organization for Economic Cooperation and Development. And they do a survey, they do research, they study students aged 15 around the globe, and they compare the ability of those students in the areas of math, reading, and science to see if they can apply what they're learning in the classroom effectively on the job. They put that program together, that study together is the PISA, which is the Program for International Student Assessment. This study is done every three years. The data I have on the screen for you is from 2009 study. I did not have the 2012 study results on the screen, but what my understanding is that the results are comparable. In fact, maybe even a little less successful for the United States as compared to 2009. So, again, about 470,000 students participated in that study. And what we found is there's a significant lack in the ability of U.S. students as compared to other students from the nations around the globe. Especially, this is creating competition between the United States and those other emerging countries, specifically China and India. So we'll talk about that just a little bit. China is quickly surpassing the United States economically. They are very highly educated. They are expected, they are anticipated by the year 2020 that they could be the world's second largest economy. And so that should give us great concern considering the information that I've just shared with you. That we were losing talent from our workplaces. We don't have the skilled, educated students, the new entrants into the workforce and that's going to put a significant strain on the U.S. economy moving forward into the next couple of decades and beyond. AARP and SHIRN are partners. We've entered into a multi-year partnership to study the impact of baby boomer retirements on the U.S. workforce and what is that going to look like. And more importantly, our businesses, our organizations, large and small prepared for the impact of the baby boomer retirement. As a result of our partnership, SHIRN conducted a survey at AARP Gratefully, thank you, AARP co-sponsored that survey and it was conducted in 2012 and the research has continued since then. And as a result of the research, a toolkit has been developed and available on the SHIRN website to help employers with this challenge. Now, there's some specific points of data as a result of that study that I want to share with you right now. There were about 470 responses or organizations represented in this particular study. Seven out of ten out of the organizations that responded to the survey indicated that they know for a fact that the up and coming baby boomer retirements will have a significant and adverse impact on the success of their organizations moving forward. Now, here's a scary number. Only 29% of those organizations have done anything about it. 29% said that they had conducted a strategic workforce analysis to determine exactly what that impact is going to be on their organizations. Now, about 45% of the companies responded said that they have started to put some sort of covers or initiatives in place to address this challenge, but many of the organizations know that they are not prepared to move forward. That concludes my specific points for you right now. There's my contact information. I'm sure that during the questions, well, I'm hoping to get to you this afternoon some specific strategies that employers can put into place to address this challenge and those talking points that you as an employee in an organization can take back to your employer to work on those retirement goals for yourself as individuals. Thank you very much for your time. Thank you, Slime Adjustment. With all us boomers here and with all us boomers who've been paying for years for Medicare, that's what I'm going to talk to you about this afternoon. Medicare is federal health insurance for people who are over 65 or folks who are under 65 and who are disabled. And the only people today who are automatically enrolled in Medicare are those folks who are taking Social Security benefits early or those folks who are disabled and are those folks who are disabled and are receiving disability benefits. So how do you do it? Well, you call or you go online. It is the job of Social Security to enroll all of us in Medicare. You can call Social Security at 1-800-772-1213, 1-800-772-1213 or you can go to ssa.gov and you can enroll. If you're working past 65, you'll have to call them. You cannot enroll online because they have a couple of documents that they ask for you to complete. One thing I'd like to caution you about is try to allow about six weeks from the time that you initiate this process until you're planning on starting Medicare because it takes them a while. Don't be like my walking partner the way that I did the day before. I mean, you know, we walked together for years, didn't I? And I lectured her and, you know, what can I tell you? There are two special enrollment periods and they just about cover all of us. The first special enrollment period is for folks who are going on Medicare to turn 65. That is a seven-month enrollment period, the three months before your 65th birthday, your birthday month, and the three months after your 65th birthday. And most people really shoot to go on the month of your 65th birthday and you always go on Medicare on the first of the month. Now, if you happen to wait past your 65th birthday and you enroll a month or two afterwards, you would just go on the following month. But a lot of us, as Sherry was saying, are working past 65, aren't we? Now, those of us who are self-employed, like myself, when I turned 65, I obviously went on Medicaid because I didn't have a group plan. But many people continue to work and they have a group plan. And if you have a group plan and you turn 65, your company must continue to ensure you to provide you with insurance. But what the government says to small companies, and that is a company with less than 20 employees, the government says to that company, we're going to give you a break. Yes, you've got to continue to provide that insurance, but your employee who's over 65 can carry Medicare as primary insurance. Now, the company does not have to do that. The company may like you and say, I'm going to continue to pay for this insurance just the same as before you turn 65. But that is the option of that smaller company. If you're working for a larger company of 20 or more employees, most folks will carry that group plan as primary. You don't have to. You can always carry Medicare. But most of our clients, most of the people we see that continue to work past 65, they have a large company and that is their primary health insurance. I will caution you, if you decide to carry Medicare along with your primary group plan, Medicare will be secondary and Medicare rarely pays many benefits as secondary coverage. And you're going to be paying a premium with Part B of Medicare. And most people will wait to pick up Part B until they retire because you're going to be paying a premium for secondary coverage that rarely will pay benefits. You're going to have your large group plan as primary. So just keep that in the back of your mind. There are some people that may not be working or they may be working and they're insured through a spouse's group plan. Same rules and regulations apply. If you're insured through your husband's group plan, you can carry it as long as he's working. When he stops working, then you must go on Medicare if you're over 65. And that's the second enrollment period, the special enrollment period for those of us who are working past 65 and who have a group plan. An individual continues to work past 65 and is insured on the company plan or your spouse's plan. And when you stop working, you could retire and you could just stop. Or you could quit. You have an eight month special enrollment period during which you can enroll in Medicare. Now just about everybody I know goes on Medicare as soon as they can because they want to have continual coverage. Does that make sense to everybody? I'd like to say one thing about COBRA. You know, we have COBRA and there are certain times that you will use COBRA when you stop working to continue your insurance coverage. COBRA and Medicare do not work together. When it's time to go on Medicare, it is not time to use COBRA. If you are retiring from your group plan and you opt to go on COBRA, there is no special enrollment period for Medicare after COBRA ends. It is not postponed until you finish your COBRA. Simultaneously, while you are on COBRA, you are running through your enrollment period. Whether you're at 65 or you work past 65 until you're 70. What does that mean? Well, it means that you don't have a period during which you can enroll in Medicare. So what do you do? Well, you're left with the annual enrollment period. Let's just say that you retired and you could have gone on Medicare and you opted to carry COBRA for 18 months and your COBRA ended in December. So you can enroll in Medicare sometime in the first quarter of the next year, but your Medicare will not start until July 1, so you will not have any insurance for six months. In addition, because you did not go on Medicare when you should have, the government is going to attach a penalty to your partly premium. And it's 10% of your partly premium for every 12 months that you should have been in Medicare if you weren't. So in my example of 18 months, they've gone into the second 12-month period. And that person will not only be without Medicare coverage for six months, that person will have a 20% penalty of their partly premium, monthly premium for ever. I'm not trying to scare you. What I'm trying to impress upon you is think very carefully when you retire from your group plan or you turn 65, it's time to go on Medicare. Think very carefully about carrying COBRA. And companies are not required to inform you about this. I have a client and she asked me to share her story with everyone. She was an attorney for Exxon and she worked until she was about 67 and then she carried COBRA for 18 months and then she called me and said, I'd like to go on Medicare. It was August. I said, you can't go on Medicare until next July. And she had serious health problems. And when she went on Medicare, she has a 20% penalty of her partly premium for ever. So just kind of put that little COBRA memo at the back of your mind when you're thinking about going on Medicare. When you go on Medicare, you have choices. You have two choices for medical coverage. Traditional Medicare is called A and D and you can see Part A covers inpatient, hospital-skilled nursing and hospice. Part B covers all your outpatient care and they tag team together. If you have one, you have the other and then you have full medical coverage. And the dollar signs indicate premiums. That's why they're in red. And if you're carrying A and B, we recommend that you do carry a free-standing Medicare Part B drug plan. They're offered by lots of companies like Art. My husband's on Art. It works really well. There are 34 in the state of Texas. And you can go online to Medicare.gov and you can put your information in and you can put your prescription drugs in. And they will list the 34 plans that are most economical, down to the most expensive. What we do caution you to do is to read past through the pages that they have there and it can be complicated and look and make sure that it's a user-friendly plan. We do this for a lot of clients and we want to make sure that you have the most economical plan that works for you but also one where you're not going to the pharmacy being hassled about a drug that you need to take because your plan doesn't want to pay for it. 34 plans in Texas this year. And then we recommend that you take a private, carry a private supplemental plan which is your catastrophic safety net that goes along with Parts A and B and it picks up deductibles and it covers all co-pays. And the supplemental plans are private insurance that have been standardized by the government. So that's one of your choices. And your second choice is the new kid on the block. He came out under the Bush administration. It's called the Advantage Plan and it's Part C. And Part C, you see there's just one dollar sign there. That's one of the real advantages of the Advantage Plans. You only have one premium. And it happens to be the same premium as Part B. We call it the Part B premiums. I'm going to show those to you right before I close. The Advantage Plans replace AB and the supplemental. And you would want to be on an Advantage Plan that has a drug plan incorporated in it. But you can see just one premium as versus three premiums. And essentially the benefits are the same. Why would anybody with a brain go on Medicare A and B, D in a supplemental plan and spend all that money if they can go on an Advantage Plan and save money on premiums. With A and B, you do get a larger choice of providers than you do with C. There are lots of great Advantage Plans and you all have heard them on CMI TV right now. AARP has some. Secure Horizon, Texan Plus, Kelsey Siebel, our big local planet. They all have Advantage Plans. But what you want to ensure before you go on an Advantage Plan or your loved one goes on it is that your doctors and hospitals are in that plan. You just want to be sure about that. And open enrollment is 1015 through 127 with changes going into effect on January 1. And that's when you can switch from A and B to C or vice versa. They don't care. They don't care what your pre-existing conditions are. And it's also when you can look at your Part D drug plan and ensure that it's going to work for you for the next year. Because there are two variables on these Part D drug plans. Your drugs can change from year to year when you've done your search and the plans do change. Most of the plans do change. So you just want to make sure that your plan for 2014 is going to work for 15. And that's during the period when you do that. This is actually some information on Part B and because we don't have a lot of time I'm just going to go down to the premiums here at the bottom part of the page. The left column is your monthly individual Part B premium. We all go on Medicare as individuals. And what Medicare started after 2000 actually under President Bush is that they have five different levels of Part B premium depending upon your income. And if you file as a single that's the income breakdown and if you file as a married couple that is the married couple breakdown. And these are the premiums and they cannot come up since last year they're the same as last year. And so if you were ever curious about if they could exchange information about you yes, the IRS Social Security and Medicare are able to exchange information about you and Medicare is able to get your tax return. And they will look at your last tax return which means then they will look at your income from the year before. And if your income changes from year to year your premiums will change from year to year. And what they look at is they look at your modified adjusted gross. That is your adjusted gross you all are all familiar with if you ever signed a tax return with your adjusted gross. Modified adjusted gross they add in any tax free interest income and that is an example of that would be a municipal bond. So I'm going to end with that. And if anybody has any questions I'll be happy to stay after the program is over and answer any questions you have with that. Here as well. I've been this long writing, writing, writing trying to write all of them down. So you're not going to provide a PowerPoint? Of course. I'm sharing it with the credit coalition and I'm very grateful and thankful that I was invited to be part of this program today. And I don't mean to put a downer on this wonderful presentation but I've been asked to talk about how to handle a financial hardship if it comes your way. As a financial education provider and a reverse mortgage counselor I speak to people from all walks of life and usually it is when they're in their down period either a loved one has passed they've lost their income they're 52 years of marriage and because one of them doesn't like each other anymore or they have just said that notice at work that their job they aren't working for one of those employers who actually care about their benefits they're carrying with their company or the company's been downsizing or for whatever reason they're out of work. And so my place today is to have everyone in here think about not think about that you're going to have a hardship come your way well what would you do before that hardship comes, that financial hardship how could you prepare for it so you aren't calling a Hutter Group Housing Counseling to see in desperation say what do I do. So the first thing we ask everyone that come through our classes and that I speak to you on the line is we ask where does your money go right now? If you're going to be trying to prepare for a potential pickup in your life or a potential problem do you know what it takes to maintain your lifestyle today? You may not be in such a bad shape if you don't truly know where your money's going how do you know you're going to have a problem in the future? So we ask everyone to write down every single penny you spend for at least 30 days the good news is tomorrow's the first right? So everybody in here if I saw you in 30 days I asked you how that tracking go so I asked you to write down everything you spend for the next 30 days every penny from money that you give to your growing children money if you give to people in the corner put money in a machine down the hall wherever you spend your dollars we want you to know where that is but we also ask you to save your receipts the receipts saving people say well you know I don't need my receipts I use my debit card what is the purpose of a receipt? someone share with me what you think the purpose of a receipt is? balance your checkbook you can see what you actually bought yes? it could be for tax purposes not how much you pay for the giant it separates out what you purchase what you pay yes ma'am? proven purchase I'll throw one more I'm going to return and discrepancy you have your receipt each receipt were you purchasing that item from the the couch at your house or your comfy bed were you laying there when you went to buy that item how did you buy that item? you went to the store right? some of us do buy online but if you went to the store what does that take? it takes gas what else? it takes time if at the end of this month when you pull out all these receipts and you separate them out in categories how many times do you go to Walmart how many times do you go to Target do you shop at HTV where do you shop look at your shopping patterns if you could eliminate one trip in a week to one of those stores still buy what you normally buy you might be able to free up at least an hour what could you do in that hour? or longer if you're like me you go to the store and just ramble what could you do in an hour of your time if you had an extra hour in a week what could you do? think about that you don't have to tell me no one wants to share maybe take a hot bath read that book watch this video that you're going to win here this 20 minute video you could do something fun for yourself take a walk something that gives you pleasure when you go to a grocery store we want you to know where your money goes if you're honest with yourself this could be a real eye-opening exercise because you may find that what you thought you were spending living paycheck to paycheck or not able to set aside anything in savings you may find now, wow I could squeeze out an extra $25 this week I didn't realize it who in here goes to the grocery store and the first thing you do you do that? grab a basket my homework to you guys is this instead of grabbing that basket for those quick run in the store and grab trips or getting milk or bread or snacks for dinner tonight or snack after dinner go in with just your hands go into the store I know, I heard it in that case you might be using that basket and I can understand that too you might need it to help prop you up but then in that case get one of those smaller baskets but try not to grab a basket and go in and buy what you were going to buy with just your hands you stop with the checkout counter don't walk out you pay buy what was in your hands and you leave that could keep you from spending an extra $20, $30 that's what you weren't intending on spending on that trip to the store again now you can set aside we talked about how you save earlier the question was how can we start saving pay yourself first review your credit reports who in your senior personal credit reports in the last 12 months oh good I hope you've seen all three the federal law allows all of us to see our personal credit reports every week, every 12 months many people think I don't need to see it because I know I have good credit how do you know someone else is not using your good name if you're going to need to reestablish credit after a hardship or establish credit for the first time after a hardship your creditors are going to be looking at those credit reports to determine what kind of person you've been in your past life we want you to create a debt worksheet to let you know who you owe and what terms some of you may have a car note right now but you may not have a clue what you're paying for interest if you go and you pull out your contract you may have thought you were getting that 1.9% but maybe you signed for a 5.9 or 7.9% rate maybe you thought you were getting a 3 year term but in reality you signed for a 5 year the payment is very affordable I ask everyone to get a copy read those contracts and if you find that you have a return that you're not comfortable with or you could do better interest rates are very low go to your bank or credit union or you have a relationship with ask them about refinancing maybe you'll free some money up do not close any existing accounts if you're thinking right now I know this hardship is coming I just need to close all my credit card accounts if you need them in the future put them in a ziploc bag get that credit card stick it in a ziploc bag a freezer bag a gallon bag fill it with water stick it in a freezer it'll be safe there for you when you're ready to use it again it's like Thanksgiving turkey you buy it a night before what do we have to do stick it in the back doesn't let it defrost right let the water run on it you can do the same with your car but it may keep you from making a purchase you didn't really want to make although you could return it because you had your receipts but again if you are needing to use that credit in the future you don't want to close it know your assets what do you own? could you possibly if you're coming up with you're thinking of this financial disaster is happening to be our company's hardship what can you sell? what do you have that you own free and clear? your home could you take could you sell your home would you need to downsize? the market right now they say for the sellers are selling quick but what would it cost you to replace that home? would it be more economical for you to stay there or would it be more economical for you to sell and then rent? before you become a renter check out see what are the rents going for in the community you want to live in if employed okay this is where I was going to talk about Cobra but I'm not going there now if you're employed either and you are right now employed but you're looking at the possibility of being downsized but you're not 65 yet or approaching 65 I learned that today thank you do you have Cobra benefits? what are the benefits? do you have many employers have employee assistance funds that will help you either locate new employment or help you find services that may help you in the short term possibly in the long term can you bring in extra dollars by building an emergency save or do you have an emergency savings we just learned that one out of three of us and I'm in that bracket we do not have more than five thousand dollars in savings I feel very good that I'm not alone but I've lived a long life and I've spent a lot of money and I've taken care I've had a good time doing it but now I'm also looking at the future where am I going to get this money from I'm going to be following these tips so hobbies can you declutter and sell again part-time employment you wear scams if anybody is trying to tell you that can help you quickly for a fee run run the other way there is nothing these companies can do for money that you can't do for yourself for free if it sounds too good to be true it most likely is not good for you we see you on K-H-R-E right? we see you on K-H-R-E we see you on many of the TV stations especially gentlemen that there are so many scams out there they're targeting our elderly population but not just the elderly they're tackling all of us and if you did not live in Canada how do you win the Canadian lottery if you don't have family members in Nigeria or Afghanistan or Timbuktu you're not a prince of that country so they're so perfect for these scams make a plan get your whole household involved in it ask your household members some of us are single wager in our household some of us are just single households we don't really go to our dog at our cat and ask what can we do here can I change our benefit to somebody else but understand that your household that you live with you share your information with you tend to buy in on this reduction if a reduction is necessary and last but not least seek help from the free sources that are out there 2-1-1 are you not a way upline no matter which community you live in you're not away as a upline that you can dial from your home phone or your cell phone you tell them what you're your cousin is going through this problem my sister has this problem maybe you're talking about yourself they'll provide the information and the resources for you and the United Way also has online a job they are local in the United Way of Greater Houston has a job resource center where you don't have to sign up for it but you just go and look at the job connection board the jobs listed last 90 days a lot of nonprofits it's a lot of listed salaries and reach out to the head of the housing county agencies we are here to help you for free you see oh I'm sorry okay I'm sorry okay may I thank you okay I love this paying attention thank you contact your creditors if you are in a situation where you think you may be missing a payment you haven't missed yet it's very important to call that mortgage company call those credit card companies and let them know that you are potentially going to have this issue you want to place it in the notes let them know that this issue might be happening it's done I'm still making my payment but I just want to let you know that I'm getting ready to lose my job is there anything that the company can do to help me through this crisis they may be willing to give you a forbearance period a time off one or two months of no payments but understand this they may still report it as late to the credit bureaus but a late on the credit bureau is something minor compared to being able to feed yourself feed your family and take care of yourself so again it's very important open up that line of communication always write down date, time and who you talk to and what the conversation has said which you said both sides keep notes I would suggest so just keep notes get a notebook and you meet by the date I called this one I called that one I called this one and that one this is who I spoke to this is what they said now will they always be in agreement to assist not the first time pick up the phone and call the second time you might have to call the third time ask for a supervisor again they're there they want to get paid and you want to pay them but maybe this time you're just having an issue and you just need some help it's a little bit of time off last thank you here's my information if you need us outside of this we'd be glad to answer any questions let me just tell you I'm an agency staff myself people get personnel email me we're here all of us are here to answer your questions and again thank you very much I'm sorry about my time thank you sure they have a question cool question yeah okay I bet there were questions out of the audience is that hard we'll take a minute to show some of them down these are the answers we were talking about earlier who can really help you address questions directly so this is your opportunity now while we're gathering some questions maybe we'll ask a couple here first well let's I know Jane went over this a little bit earlier but if I'm going to be 65 still working and have health insurance do I need to sign up for Medicare you want to use the microphone Jane if you are still working your company must continue to ensure you just as the company insured you before you turn 65 so you do have that insurance plan but remember I said that the government differentiates between large and small companies they give a break to those small companies of less than 20 employees and those companies do not have to ensure you as primary that means you would sign up for Medicare and carry Medicare as your primary insurance and carry the company plan as secondary I also said you may have worked there a while and they like you a lot they may say oh no you don't have to sign up for Medicare we will continue to ensure you as primary that's the small company there's flexibility there but it is up to the company and that means communication between you and your boss right to find out and then you'll find out if you need to actually sign up for Medicare and carry it as primary for those companies of 20 or more employees your group plan will be your primary insurance you do not need Medicare you can just carry your group plan and continue to be insured by your group plan until you leave or retire or whatever and that would also apply to a spouse who has a who is working in his group plan now we've got we have some of the questions for the audience so let's go ahead and take this for Sherry would you really advise seniors to do the reverse mortgage PS full disclosure IMA tax real estate broker alright first of all as a reverse mortgage counselor is not my place or any of our places to talk anyone in or out of any loan product our places to make sure folks understand the good the bad the pretty and the ugly about the reverse mortgage product as well as other alternatives that may be available to them that may not be as costly we do not advise and provide only information so the answer is we do not advise we only provide information and just say HUD is very clear that their counselors must pass certification exams we have to meet a standard and I'm just really glad that HUD has seen that sometimes we see people that don't quite believe that our place is still only provide information but that's the role and we just provide information okay this one I think probably is going to be for Sherry if there how much can you earn how much can you earn what? sorry I heard you while working how much can you earn while working and while drawing social security I'm sorry they wrote Sherry how much can you earn while working while drawing social security am I understanding this question okay okay I think that maybe that was mentioned a little bit earlier so the website has a calculator I'm almost 65 within the enrollment period at work part time my younger husband is covered by a large group plan any penalties for waiting to do Medicaid, BUD or C I guess that was the game and it's Medicare sorry Medicare and everybody gets those confused that's why I need some no there are no penalties and you know when I have more time to talk I always like to pick out someone in the audience who has a younger spouse who still is working and that person is turning 65 and the 65 year old is insured through the younger spouse we love it if it's a younger husband and as long as your spouse is working you can carry to be insured by that we're planning you don't have to go with Medicare at all you will not be penalized alright so Cougars keep working what kind of retirement investments do you suggest for someone who's just beginning to save for retirement stop funds, mom funds don't do anything we're going to have to take a pass on this one alright for AARP are you working to limit companies from reneging on retirement promises are you working to place the onus of correcting credit reports on the reporting agencies is there anybody from AARP junior that's true do you want to take that one are you working to limit companies from reneging on retirement promises are you working to place the onus of correcting credit reports on the reporting agencies we do have a lot of work that we do in different states it is frankly we have a litigation unit AARP that does public litigation but in many instances there is no legal basis for stopping the company so if there is no legal basis then you're kind of stuck we do work particularly on public employee pensions where there are efforts to reduce them we work with we work with the entity that creates the pension we try to make things the best we can for our members and for people who have these pensions but in many instances you are in a situation particularly for those who are not yet retired where there is no legal basis to keep something that you thought you might get okay and the second question I it's not yeah it's not something it's not something that I'm aware that we work I have a question for Sherry Johnson AARP said that it believes older workers will change the American workplace on a level comparable to the change that women workers have had on the past couple of decades as their ranks grew do you think that's accurate and what can both employers do to track to retain older workers and what can older workers do to stay active and engaged to make themselves valuable you spoke about that huge gaps that a million people thank you for the question yes I do think that over the next two decades as I mentioned a moment ago the number of baby boomers who will be leaving the workforce will have a significant impact on the workforce and on the economy here in the United States just as the women in the workplace have had over the years there are some strategies that employers can put into place to attract and retain older workers in the workplace one of them would be workplace flexibility that would be the first one that I would want to highlight for you you may have heard the term before work-life balance well the trend is really shifting you'll notice the experts in the field have stopped saying work-life balance and they started to shift that towards work-life fit realistically there's never going to be a balance it's more about making life and work fit together in a way that are conducive for the family and being able to continue to work we heard a moment ago about the sandwich generation those are the individuals who are currently caregivers for both young children as well as providing care to their elder loved ones and the baby boomers find themselves in that situation more and more a good workplace flexibility program will allow that employer to retain that talent within the organization so that older worker is not forced to leave in order to provide that care to their loved ones, younger or older it also allows the older worker to continue to work in the workplace reducing the level of stress you see one of the things that the statistics show which is indicated is older workers are actually healthier and happier and more productive than younger workers in the workplace and so if you can keep them in there you're benefiting them and their families as well as the organization something else tied to that is there's been a question about do older workers cost more for the employers in terms of healthcare insurance well actually the research indicates that older workers can be less costly to the employer for insurance and things begin typically the costly age group within a workforce is that group that are between like 30 to 45 or 50 years of age and that's because of children and the other health related medical needs older workers who stay in a workforce are inactive and become healthier and so if you can continue work your health will benefit from that and some other strategies for the employers alternative work arrangements job sharing job shadowing internships mentorships phase retirement now you need to look at things related to the pension protection act of 2006 has some legal implications that you might want to consider in the program but that is a strong way to keep the older workers in the workplace longer and if you are considering retiring and you've not had those conversations with your employer it behoots you to go to them and say what options do I have can I go into partial retirement gradually get into full time retirement can I come back on a hard time on a temporary basis after retirement what are my options so it's helpful for you to start the conversation health and wellness opportunities training and development maybe it's a shift of career so the older worker actually starts we heard about it what's my something new what's something new that you can continue to do for the current employer but in a less stressful capacity or a less full time capacity so those are some ideas thank you and I think I'm going to take one second how many people here are Facebook anybody? oh yay anybody Twitter? this is a blatant shameless plug as I try to you know keep up with the young kids at my office I'm going to just ask you if you would like me please on Facebook, KTOU, Sherman or Twitter yes, I'm trying to be two of myself you know I'm a mature worker and we get report cards on social media like how many people we have followers and likes and all that and I am not doing very well in this department I'm laughing behind the kids oh I see questions happening today you see more resources right here and then those steps alright thank you so much lazy informative, motivational you made it a couple of hours we've just had an excellent array of presenters our speaker from Cheryl, from AARP and Sherman we want to say thank you because you have brought some ideas to us and you've given us a lot of food for thought to take back and to really start giving more serious to you know thought to you know it's not some of these things that we have thought about but probably not giving it the level of thought and attention that we need to explain it so we do thank you for taking time and more you know so we also thank you for taking time to be here to stay with us this afternoon this evening we have prepared our presenters we hope you have enjoyed it we certainly want to recognize our AARP staff members who have worked so hard to put this together don't forget your parking validation tickets and if you have any follow-up questions you have your AARP staff members who are here to help you and thank you again for attending