Archives for October 21, 2018

4 Things Every Good Boss Should Do

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Many people become the boss without having any specific management training. Sometimes you get promoted for reasons that have nothing to do with being in charge or directing the work of other people.

That’s not an excuse to be a bad boss. You can learn how to manage, and it’s possible to become a good leader by doing just a few things. If you follow these three pillars of conduct, you may not be the perfect boss, but you will have gone a long way toward getting there.

A good boss listens to his or her employees.

1. Listen to your employees

One trait many bad bosses share is that they believe being in charge means deciding what to do and charging ahead without listening to anyone. It’s important to have an idea of where you want things to go, but it’s just as important to not only listen, but solicit opinions from your employees and make it clear you hear what they are saying.

Doing so can protect you from your own worst instincts. Listening also allows employees to feel like they’re part of the process, and that creates buy-in, where your idea now becomes everyone’s.

2. Set an example

Being the boss may give you some perks that your employees don’t receive. Don’t take advantage. You, for example, may have more flexibility when it comes to arriving or leaving. That’s nice, but it’s more important to set a standard for your employees.

Arrive early and leave late. Show your employees what you expect by actually doing it. That makes it very hard for people to justify putting in less effort than you do.

3. Share credit and success

You’re already the boss. That automatically gives you credit for the successes of your team. Make sure you shine the spotlight on other people. Find little things to celebrate. Make your people feel valued for everything they do, and make sure everyone feels like a part of anything that goes well.

4. Be an umbrella

As a boss, it’s part of your job to protect the people who work for you from negativity from your superiors. Sometimes this means shielding people from unfair criticism, and at other times, it means taking responsibility for whatever your department has done.

Sometimes upper management can create a bad attitude or otherwise sow discontent. It’s your job to bear the brunt of that so your people can focus on the job at hand.

Be positive and work hard

As a leader, you set the tone for your team or company. It’s important to lead by example, but it’s equally as important to keep a good attitude. If you can be upbeat when things are difficult, that should set the tone for everyone who works for you.

Remember that being the boss does not make you infallible. Empower people to do the best job possible, and support their success (or help them bounce back from mistakes) in order to create an environment where everyone works toward achieving group goals.

3 Reasons to Consider a Medicare Advantage Plan in 2019

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Millions of seniors rely on Medicare to cover their health-related needs. But Medicare isn’t a one-size-fits-all solution. In fact, the program has several distinct parts that enrollees can sign up for or opt out of.

Those who enroll in original Medicare will generally get free coverage under Part A, which pays for hospital visits. They’ll then pay a monthly premium for Part B, which covers preventive care and diagnostics, as well as Part D, which covers prescription drugs. But there’s an alternative to Medicare that many seniors choose instead, and it’s Part C, otherwise known as Medicare Advantage.

Medicare Advantage essentially bundles all your coverage needs, including prescriptions, into a single plan. The premium you pay for your plan will depend on the level of coverage you choose. But often, Advantage plans end up coming in cheaper than original Medicare, all the while offering at least the same level of coverage, if not more.

In fact, many seniors choose Advantage over traditional Medicare because the former covers dental, hearing, and vision — services original Medicare does not pay for. Many Advantage plans also offer coverage overseas, which is helpful for seniors who travel often. Furthermore, changes to Medicare Advantage set to take place in 2019 make it an even more attractive option. Here are three you should know about:

1. Lifestyle support

As we age, our mobility tends to decline. But effective January 2019, Medicare Advantage plans will have the option to cover things like transportation to and from medical appointments and meal delivery to seniors’ homes. Similarly, Medicare Advantage will soon be able to offer enrollees coverage for home safety features like wheelchair ramps and bathtub/shower support bars. These benefits can no doubt lower seniors’ chance of injury, so if you’re experiencing mobility issues, it pays to see how an Advantage plan might help alleviate some of them.

2. Daily living help

Many seniors struggle to do things like bathe and get dressed, yet want to continue living independently. Soon, Medicare Advantage will be able to offer health-aide coverage for folks who need help with personal care at home, as well as things like cooking, cleaning, and errands.

3. The ability to try out a plan before you commit

The last thing you want is to sign up for a health plan only to find that it doesn’t meet your needs. Going forward, you’ll have the option to try out a Medicare Advantage plan for up to three months and switch back to a different plan (either another Advantage plan or original Medicare) if you’re not happy. This, in turn, takes some of the stress out of choosing a plan.

There are plenty of good reasons to sign up for a Medicare Advantage plan for 2019, and starting next year, a new open enrollment period for Advantage will kick off on Jan. 1 and run all the way through March 31. If you’re already enrolled in Medicare Advantage, you’ll have the option at that time to move from one Advantage plan to another. Otherwise, you can sign up for Medicare Advantage during the general Medicare open enrollment period, which runs from Oct. 15 through Dec. 7.

Here’s the Maximum Social Security Benefit in 2019

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Social Security has announced changes for 2019 that include an increase to the maximum Social Security benefit payable to recipients who retire next year. In 2018, new retirees could pocket as much as $3,698 per month, but in 2019, they’ll be able to collect up to $3,770 per month.

Your chances of qualifying for that much in Social Security, though, are pretty slim. Read on to find out more about the maximum you can collect in Social Security at different ages next year and steps you can take to maximize your own benefit.

How Social Security works

To qualify for Social Security, you need to accumulate 40 work credits, which works out to about 10 years of work. Once you’ve accumulated the credits you need, you can begin collecting benefits as young as age 62 or wait as late as age 70. You’ll only receive 100% of your benefit amount, however, if you claim at your full retirement age. If you claim earlier than that, your benefit check will be reduced, but if you claim later than that, you’ll get a bonus equal to 8% per year you delay.

Social Security uses a complex calculation to figure out how much you’ll receive in benefits at full retirement age, but the program is designed to replace roughly 40% of your preretirement income.

The calculation begins with adjusting your highest-earning 35 years of employment for inflation to come up with your average indexed monthly earnings (AIME). Then, Social Security reduces your AIME at certain income levels called bend points to come up with your primary insurance amount. This is the amount you can receive if you claim at full retirement age.

If you claim early, your primary insurance amount will be reduced by five-ninths of 1% per month for the first 36 months you claim early and by five-twelfths of 1% for every additional month you claim early. If you wait to claim until after full retirement age, then you’ll get delayed retirement credits that increase your payout by two-thirds of 1% for every month you delay, up to age 70.

The maximum amount payable in 2019

The good news is that the maximum amount payable to new retirees will increase next year, but the bad news is that to qualify for this maximum payment, you need to have had income throughout your career that’s at or above the annual taxable limit, which was $128,400 in 2018 and will be $132,900 in 2019.

If you qualify for the maximum benefit possible, then you’ll receive $2,209 per month if you retire at age 62 or $3,770 per month if you retire at age 70. The following table shows how the maximum payments are changing in 2019 from 2018 at ages 62, 65, and 70.

How to get the most money possible from Social Security

Social Security is intended to supplement a retiree’s income, but because many Americans have limited retirement savings, it often ends up as a major source of income in retirement. For this reason, getting the most you can from Social Security is important.

While it would be nice to get the maximum amount paid by Social Security, the following chart shows that most Americans wind up collecting between $700 and $1,800 per month.

If you want to receive the biggest monthly check possible from Social Security, then you’ll need to maximize your earnings while you’re working so that your AIME is as high as possible. Then, you can delay collecting benefits until age 70 to benefit from delayed retirement credits.

For instance, let’s say Rick has a full retirement age of 67 and he qualifies for a full retirement benefit of $1,000. If Rick claims at age 62, he’d only receive 70% of his full retirement age benefit, or $700 per month. However, if he retires at age 70, he’d receive 124% of his benefit because of delayed retirement credits, or $1,240 per month. The $1,240 payment would be a whopping 77% higher than his age 62 benefit.

Alternatively, if your goal is to collect the most in lifetime benefits possible, then you need to consider your health. If longevity runs in your family, waiting until you’re age 70 to claim can produce the most in lifetime Social Security benefits if you live a long life. However, if you’re in poor health, then claiming earlier may be wise. As you can see in the following chart, the lifetime benefits that a person can collect if they claim at age 70 won’t eclipse the lifetime benefits associated with claiming at age 67 until a person’s in their early 80s.

If you haven’t worked the maximum 35 years used by Social Security to calculate benefits or have a lot of low-income earning years in your past, then continuing to work later in life also can make sense.

When you have less than 35 years of work history, Social Security uses zeros in its calculation for determining average monthly benefits. Replacing those zeros on your record can give your primary insurance amount a boost. Similarly, if you earn more now than you did in the past, continuing to work so that you replace lower-income years on your work record can also increase your benefit.

This strategy can be used even if you’re collecting Social Security because Social Security recalculates your primary insurance amount to take into consideration changes in your work record every year. However, if you’re younger than full retirement age, working, and collecting Social Security, some of your benefit can be withheld until you reach full retirement age if you earn over $17,640 next year because of Social Security’s earnings test.

The above strategies could help you achieve financial security in retirement.

This Valuable Retirement Savings Hack Just Disappeared Forever

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It’s tough to save for retirement, and savers have to work hard in order to take full advantage of all the resources at their disposal. Tax-favored accounts like IRAs and 401(k)s are useful tools in helping you build retirement savings, and Roth IRAs, in particular, offer unparalleled benefits like tax-free growth and withdrawals after you retire.

For years, retirement savers have used a valuable strategy that let them convert regular retirement savings in traditional IRA and 401(k) accounts into Roth IRA assets. One reason this was particularly useful was that savers could use what’s known as a Roth recharacterization to undo the Roth conversion if it didn’t work out as well as they had hoped. However, the tax reform package that became law in late 2017 started the clock on eliminating Roth recharacterizations. With the Oct. 15 effective date now behind us, retirement savers can no longer use this strategy, making it much more difficult to assess whether Roth conversions are a good idea.

How Roth recharacterizations used to work

The Roth recharacterization strategy started with the decision to convert existing traditional retirement assets into a Roth IRA. That decision is still available to anyone who has money in a regular retirement account, as tax reform didn’t change the conversion rules. The upside of a conversion is that once you do it, any further growth becomes tax-free.

The downside is that when you convert, you have to include the value of the converted assets in your taxable income for the tax year in which you make the move. In other words, you pay taxes now on what you convert in exchange for not having to pay taxes later.

The challenge with Roth conversions is that, unless you wait until the last few days of the year, it’s difficult to predict whether having to include the converted amount as taxable income will be a smart move. Unexpected income or deductions can turn what seemed to be a good idea into a situation that’s less than ideal. In addition, if you convert investment assets and they subsequently lose value, you’ll have to pay taxes on money that you don’t even have anymore.

Roth recharacterizations used to give retirement savers an out when a conversion went wrong. Under the old rules, you could recharacterize a past Roth conversion until the final due date for the tax return in the year in which you did the conversion. Because that included extensions, it meant that those who converted to Roth IRAs in 2017 had until Oct. 15, 2018 to do a recharacterization.

How tax reform took away this strategy

The tax reform package put an end to Roth recharacterizations. Beginning in 2018, those who convert assets to a Roth don’t have the ability to reverse the move.

  • Under the old law, if your converted investments dropped in value, you could recharacterize and undo the adverse tax impacts. Later on, you could convert again at the lower value, paying less in taxes. If that happens now, you’ll be stuck with the bigger bill.
  • Recharacterization also helped avoid the difficult situation in which it turned out you couldn’t afford the tax on the converted assets. Now, if you can’t pay the resulting taxes, you won’t be able to undo the conversion and you’ll have to find money from somewhere. In some cases, that’ll mean paying taxes from the converted retirement assets themselves — a decision that can generate even more in tax.
To be clear, you’ll still be able to use Roth conversions if you want. If you’re 100% sure that your tax rates now will be unusually low, then converting is usually smart because you’ll avoid having to pay higher rates of tax later on when you retire.

However, for many, tax rates go down after you retire. In that case, the traditional vs. Roth decision gets a lot closer. Now that you can’t change your mind after the fact, you’ll have to be more cautious about making the initial decision to convert in the first place.

Be smart with your retirement savings

Constant changes to retirement savings rules create both opportunities and obstacles for savers in their efforts to plan for their financial futures. The loss of the ability to do Roth recharacterizations makes it a little tougher to manage your retirement portfolio effectively, but it shouldn’t stop you from doing everything you can to save and invest to make your retirement more financially secure.

Technology presents insurers with many fresh opportunities

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Kenya National Congress party leader Peter Kenneth (left) and former two-time Boston Marathon champion Moses Tanui during the opening of Mayfair Insurance Eldoret Branch in Uasin Gishu County on October 12. Mr Kenneth said insurance is about how fast a claim is settled.

Technology has moved to the top of emerging issues ahead of regulation, and if insurers do not innovate, they risk falling behind, analysts say.

And with the rise of the new middle-class and digital natives, this is presenting opportunities for insurers, and using technology, they can better understand their customers and use customer data for more relevant product design and better pricing for risk.

Underwriters need to ensure that they can do so while navigating increasing regulatory compliance issues, overhauling legacy Information Technology systems, and investing in talent for the future.

Industry analysts say as regulations become more stringent, and the shift to client protection becomes more evident, business models will need to become more customer-focused.

A report by audit firm PricewaterhouseCoopers (PWC) on Africa insurance industry shows that the sector is facing more disruption than any other, posing challenges for some while opening up business opportunities for others.

The report says the pace of change in the industry has taken place more rapidly than originally anticipated and will accelerate further.

PWC Africa long-term insurance leader Victor Muguto said insurers, who are client-centric, innovative, technologically up-to-date, and who invest in a workforce of the future, will lead the change to increase insurance penetration levels in Africa.

In Kenya, PwC’s financial services leader Richard Njoroge, said insurers in the country and across Africa face exciting new opportunities for growth on the back of a rising middle-class and increased demand for new and innovative solutions.

“Most insurers know what to do, the winner will be those that are best at execution,” said Mr Njoroge.

Technology and data are now considered the most important global trend disrupting the industry, but they are also increasingly being used by the industry to accelerate growth.

Across all of Africa, the increased use of technology, on the back of the exponential growth of mobile phones, has significantly contributed to the large amount of new customers and more tailored products.

Technology is presenting insurers with powerful tools to better understand customer needs and expectations through data mining capabilities and artificial intelligence (AI).

However, it is expensive and not always easy for insurers to “go it alone”.

Thus, some insurers have formed partnerships with technology companies to improve operational efficiency and respond quickly to changing customer expectations.

Last week, African Reinsurance Corporation (Africa Re) group managing director and chief executive Corneille Karekezi said adoption of technology will benefit both insurers and clients.

“Technology must be embraced, it is the only way … because we have tried over the last 50 years to multiply the number of sales agents, branches and even staff, and we are yet to achieve our desired goals,” said Mr Karekezi.

“A software can explain better than a person and respond to all queries within a short time and effectively. Training people to respond to questions, identify the needs of clients and explain to them appropriately requires huge investments and currently this is not cost-effective to many insurers,” added Mr Karekezi.

Africa Re, the Pan-African reinsurance based in Lagos, Nigeria is pushing insurers to embrace technology to reach more people, and redeem their image, which has been shrouded in fraud and delayed claims settlement. Locally, penetration is still low due to high cost of premium, fraud, lack of trust and ignorance by members of the public.

Insurance Regulatory Authority data shows that last year the penetration rate declined to 2.68 per cent from 2.71 per cent in 2016.

Data from Swiss Re Sigma Report, shows South Africa has the highest penetration rate at 13.76 per cent, with Nigeria which has the highest economy in the sub-Saharan region recording a penetration rate of 0.25 per cent.

Lately, some insurers have made substantial investments in the development of the transmission of claims electronically, wider use of biometric identification cards and digital mobile apps and artificial intelligence.

Technology, specifically mobile phones, social media, and data analytics are seen as the top enablers to increase access to new customers, at reduced cost and to analyse behavioural data, in order to design new, more appropriate products.

Millennials are also reshaping the insurance industry both as employees and consumers due to their attitudes and preferences and this will definitely impact on how the industry operates in future.

‘They can’t help it’: Australians struggle with technology ‘addiction’

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Australians readily admit to technology addiction even though it is not a medically recognised health condition.CREDIT:

A growing number of Australians are checking their screens from the moment they wake and every 12 minutes throughout the day – and they’re not happy about it.

The Korn Group’s Switching Off survey found Australians readily admit to over-dependence on technology and are concerned about the incursion of screens into their daily lives.

“Checking their screen is the first thing they do in the morning and the last thing they do at night,” the survey said. “They can’t help it. Their device is always with them.”

The survey found that Australians were uncomfortable about their use of technology, which they “rationalised as necessary but [had] little control over own use”.

Joshua Rosenthal, the senior counsellor at The Cabin, an outpatient addiction treatment clinic in Sydney, usually deals with severe cases.

In one case, he met parents in despair because their teenage son’s compulsive playing of computer games had reached a point where he had dropped out of university, no longer socialised and would miss meals.

The teen threatened to harm himself after his parents cut off the internet at home in an effort to deal with his technology addition, according to “He just went berserk,” Mr Rosenthal said. “He was threatening them: ‘If you don’t do this, I’m going to harm myself’.”

It’s easy to read about extreme technology addiction and dismiss it as different to the experience of everyday Australians who compulsively check their phones.

But Mr Rosenthal said increasing numbers of people were seeking treatment for their obsessive use of technology to check social media, play games or pore over news and other online sites.

He added many people were in denial about how this behaviour affected their relationships, work and capacity to pursue their lives, reasoning it wasn’t a ‘serious’ addiction.

“Especially with tech addiction, it’s like ‘I’m not a cocaine or heroin addict so I’m not that bad’,” Mr Rosenthal said. “Yet they’re spending just as much, if not more, time engaging in addictive behaviour.”

Mr Rosenthal said technology facilitated other addictions such as sex and gambling. Technology addiction can also be difficult to treat because, unlike drugs, alcohol or gambling, it is an integral part of daily life.

Yet it is not a medically recognised health condition, according to Dr Liliana Laranjo, a research fellow at the Australian Institute of Health Innovation at Macquarie University.

The decision by the World Health Organisation to recognise gaming disorder – compulsive and obsessive playing of video games – triggered controversy.

“Many researchers disagree that technology itself is harmful, and view ‘technology addiction’ as a symptom of other underlying disorders, such as depression, anxiety, and attention problems,” Dr Laranjo said.

But research has found aspects of technology deliberately designed to encourage compulsive checking, with users of digital media exhibiting signs of behavioural addiction.

Dr Laranjo said technology was not harmful, but had to be used in a healthy way that did not interfere with personal, social or professional lives.

Disabling social media notifications is one way of dealing with a potential problem.

“With this strategy, I am able to guarantee that I am not interrupted by social media when I’m trying to focus on work or when I’m trying to spend quality time with someone,” she said. “And I also have more control over my time, only checking social media when I want to, not because I received a cue for that.”

Drivers and cyclists face fines and demerit points for using smartphones. The Switching Off survey suggested the use of smartphones in shops, public transport, restaurants and while walking were a source of annoyance.

The survey’s participants were particularly incensed by people using smartphones at the dinner table.

“People are just selfish, they’re rude, they’ve got bad manners, going out for lunch people just take calls while they’re talking to you,” one respondent said.

Joanne Orlando, a researcher in technology and learning at Western Sydney University, said the majority of adults and young people she had interviewed as part of her research said they were addicted to their phone: “At the same time they also say how important using technology is for them.”

Dr Orlando said people checked their phone, on average, every 12 minutes when bored or procrastinating, while teenagers fear being left out of social activities.

She said technology companies had devised solutions to address what she called the “zombie check”.

Apple’s Screen Time, for example, provides information on how much time a person spends using an app, how many notifications they receive and how often they use their smartphone or tablet. Google introduced similar features for its Android phone operating system.

“I’m using these strategies with teens right now,” Dr Orlando said. “And what’s good is that they are open to trying because it’s based on self-regulation and giving them the responsibility and control.”