Working a second job to save for retirement
Posted: July 5, 2012 at 3:22 am
Working a second, part-time job is a common way to pay down credit card debt or address unexpected bills. But today some middle-age savers are taking a second job for a different reason: to help boost lackluster retirement accounts.
"I see that more and more," says Mike Sena, a certified financial planner in Canton, GA. Sena has multiple clients who are putting the money from a second job into their retirement account because they feel they haven't saved enough to this point.
"For many people, retirement is still ages away and they say, 'I'll have time to take care of it,'" Sena says. But his clients with second jobs are opting to play catch-up in their 40s and 50s in hopes of not having to work past their retirement age.
David Bakke, 45, began working part-time at a restaurant nine months ago with a straightforward savings goal: $500,000 for retirement. Bakke makes $48,000 in his full-time job in the financial services sector, and earns about $1,000 a month after taxes from his restaurant job, which he invests in a mutual fund.
He also contributes 7 percent of his salary to a 401(k) plan and opened a Roth IRA five years ago. He tries to max out his annual contributions to both accounts.
"Working a side job is important to me because my previous level of contributions to my retirement savings would have left me short when I reached retirement age," Bakke says. "I used to simply set aside what I could for my retirement savings and hope that I would have enough money. However, after investigating my situation, I've realized that such an approach was not viable."
Last year he saved $12,000 for retirement. His goal this year is $20,000, which he expects to reach with his current contributions to the Roth, 401(k) and mutual fund. Without the extra job, he calculates that he'd only have about 65 percent of what he needed to enjoy a "decent" retirement.
A divorced father of a 5-year-old son, Bakke says that taking on another job caused other areas of his life to suffer at first, as he was able to spend with less time with his son and almost no time with friends. But he says he's since learned new time-management techniques that give him more free time, which he's written about as a contributor to the site MoneyCrashers.com.
Before retiring, Sena recommends to his clients that they have no consumer debt. He also suggests that they set aside 10 to 15 percent of their income for retirement annually before they consider paying down their mortgage or funding their children's college tuition.
While many retirement savers may be behind on their goals, only a fraction will have the work ethic needed to take on a second job to make up the gap. But for Bakke and others, the peace of mind that comes with a healthy nest egg is enough to make the extra hours worth it.
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Working a second job to save for retirement
How To Achieve Your Goals With Success (Web Lecture) – Video
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How To Achieve Your Goals With Success (Web Lecture) - Video
Evansville fireworks a success after rough day
Posted: at 3:21 am
EVANSVILLE, IN (WFIE) -
Some scattered showers went through downtown EvansvilleWednesday afternoon, but by the time the fireworks went off downtown the skies were clear.
It was a different crowd than other years. Since this is one of the only public firework displays that wasn't cancelled in the tri-state, officials expected a big crowd, but not as many people turned out. However, many didn't seem to mind.
It was a rough start to the day, but in the end the fireworks went off as planned.
For some the Fourth of July fireworks on Evansville's riverfront are a must see.
"We've done this every year for at least ten years or more," said fireworks fan Amy Catt.
No matter the weather conditions.
"As long as they had them on, we'd be down here," Catt said.
Food vendors prepared for the typical large crowds, but instead they waited out in the excessive heat, and then were drenched by afternoon showers and left with a mess to clean up. The showers did drop the temperature dramatically.
"We were considering not coming because of the excessive heat, but it turned out perfect," spectator Chuck Tidwell said."We've got the best seats we've ever had here. We can't understand why there aren't more people here."
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Evansville fireworks a success after rough day
Farming's young champions
Posted: at 3:21 am
YOUNG Farming Champions (YFC) whose task is to take agriculture into classrooms recently gathered at Jamberoo for a weekend training workshop before taking their message into urban communities.
Dairy Young Farming Champion, Jessica Monteith, Berry, said the personal development aspects of the workshop were helpful.
What I learnt about myself was the most invaluable experience of the whole weekend, learning what my strengths and weaknesses are and how to improve on these to better my overall communication skills in my professional and personal life, she said.
The team spent the weekend learning about the aims of the program, honing their public speaking and engagement skills, learning how to craft a memorable message and handling difficult conversations or questions about their chosen industry.
They also started crafting their presentations about their chosen industry and giving consideration to the structure of their videos.
Beef Young Farming Champion, Madie Hamilton, originally from Mudgee but now working in Sydney, was exhausted, but excited at the end of the workshop.
The YFC program is a way for me to give back to an industry that has given me so much. I hope I can entice more people to work in any part of the agricultural industry, she said.
Bega dairy farmer Tom Pearce was looking forward to the opportunity to spread the word about agriculture.
Im looking forward to presenting my story to a classroom full of interested young adults and hope to inspire a few to seek opportunities outside of the city, he said.
The 11 young people were selected as Art4Agricultures 2012 Young Farming Champions, national program director Lynne Armstrong said.
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Farming's young champions
Online Learning Personalizes Education at the Florida Virtual School – Video
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Online Learning Personalizes Education at the Florida Virtual School - Video
Aqua aerobics class provides fun, cool and healthy exercise option
Posted: July 4, 2012 at 5:12 pm
Everyone knows exercise helps keep us healthy and feeling better, but who wants to exercise in the heat of the summer?
The Wayne County Recreation Department has the perfect solution to beating the heat and getting good exercise at the same time: Giana Edens low-impact aqua aerobics class.
The class is offered Monday, Wednesday and Friday each week from 10:45 a.m. to 11:45 a.m. at the Cracker Williams pool. The fee is $3 per class.
The students were enthusiastic following the class last week about the virtues of the program, which is geared for seniors or others with physical limitations but is open to anyone.
Beth Hatton, 80, said, Ive been coming 12 years and its wonderful! It has helped me with my arthritisIve had arthritis since I was about 40in my hip joints. Your buoyancy keeps the weight off of those joints, and youre just so relaxed!
Sally Glass also has arthritis and was advised by her doctors to avoid impact exercise. She says the aqua class is a great help to her.
Eden says the program is an excellent way for anyone to begin an exercise program, especially people who are out of shape or have arthritis, joint replacements or other health issues, following a doctors permission to exercise.
The buoyancy of the water lessens the impact, she said, but the water resistance makes it very good exercise. The emphasis is on building core strength strengthening the abdominals and the back and its very good for the joints.
She explains that the joints get gently exercised with the support of the water as the student is building endurance. Its easier on your body to do 20 minutes of aerobics in the water. Students are able to jog and do jumping jacks and other exercises that would not be possible for them out of the water.
Eden noted that another advantage of the class is that it allows exercising in the water without requiring the ability to swim. A recreation department lifeguard is on duty for the classes, but no swimming is involved.
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Aqua aerobics class provides fun, cool and healthy exercise option
Microphone Excercise #3 (Jeff2thaD) – Video
Posted: at 5:12 pm
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Microphone Excercise #3 (Jeff2thaD) - Video
Life Coach Says "Everything Happens For a Good Reason" – Episode 20 – Video
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Life Coach Says "Everything Happens For a Good Reason" - Episode 20 - Video
Data Intelligence Limited Recognized as Winner of 2012 Microsoft Life Sciences Innovation Awards
Posted: at 4:16 pm
LONDON, July 4, 2012 /PRNewswire/ --
Data Intelligence today announced it is a 2012 winner of Microsoft Corp.'s Life Sciences Innovation Awards.
The awards, announced at the Drug Information Association's (DIA) 48th annual meeting in Philadelphia, honor companies using Microsoft solutions to realize business and information technology benefits. This year's notable winners are revolutionizing medicine by bringing therapeutic breakthroughs to the market faster, to fight serious ailments, improve healthcare and enhance people's quality of life.
"Now more than ever, the life sciences industry is faced with many challenges including cutting costs and bring new drugs and therapies to market faster," said Andrea McGonigle, national managing director, Life Sciences, Microsoft Corp."We are impressed with how the winners demonstrate sustainable impacts through technology, and are proud that Microsoft's software plays an important role in enabling these achievements in life sciences."
Data Intelligence' innovative sales force coaching application PharmaCOACH, built on Microsoft technology including Silverlight, helps healthcare companies align to their medical and non-medical customers by equipping the field teams with the right blend of knowledge, skills and behaviors needed for successful professional interactions. Data Intelligence alongside their pharmaceutical client, a leading global provider of specialty medicines, developed PharmaCOACH to meet the client's demanding professional standards in terms of ethics, clinical knowledge, professional selling skills and above all healthcare customer partnering behaviors. All of these capabilities were built in against a backdrop of a rapidly changing healthcare environment (the UK NHS currently undergoing major reconfiguration). The capabilities delivered by PharmaCOACH and the client's highly effective training and coaching team helped the client grow their business and retain their most important accounts and customers. Now in its fourth major version, PharmaCOACH has been proven to add significant value and competitive advantage to medical sales teams again and again.
Tony Cox, Head of Client Effectiveness at Data Intelligence said "winning the Microsoft Innovation Award in recognition of PharmaCOACH and the difference it has made to our most important clients is the realization of a long term ambition for excellence in sales coaching. This award underlines the fact that we're aligning closely to our customers' needs, what their end users need, and importantly we're collectively adding value to patients by being more aligned, more skilled and closer to our customer".
Award participants consisted of worldwide life sciences corporations in pharmaceutical, biotechnology and medical device companies that are innovatively applying technology to create therapeutic innovations. Winners were selected by an esteemed panel of industry experts and will be highlighted on the Microsoft website at http://www.microsoft.com/lifesciences and on the Microsoft in Health blog at http://blogs.msdn.com/b/microsoft_in_health/.
Notes to Editors
Data Intelligence is a double Microsoft award winning healthcare solutions provider based in London, UK with a global client base. Their solution suite is completely oriented toward pharmaceutical and healthcare business intelligence and sales force effectiveness, comprising a range of highly innovative "software as a service" (SaaS) platforms all based on the Microsoft technology stack. Products include PharmaANALYTICS, a highly scalable business intelligence analytics framework operated as a real time service; PharmaKAM, an end-to-end key account management enabling and collaboration platform; PharmaCOACH; PharmaTALENT an employee development and appraisal optimization platform; and finally PharmaPRECISION a range of specialist consulting services aligned to healthcare companies requirements in the BI and SFE disciplines.
For More Information, Press Only: Jason Bryant, +44-7887-686392, Jason.Bryant@Data-Intel.co.uk, http://www.data-intel.net
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Data Intelligence Limited Recognized as Winner of 2012 Microsoft Life Sciences Innovation Awards
Jason Venckus: My Health and Fitness Story – Video
Posted: at 4:15 pm
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Jason Venckus: My Health and Fitness Story - Video