Retirement is not about age, it’s about how much you can save and how long your income will last.
Robert J Russell, Licensed Insurance Broker has helped thousands of people save for their retirement. Isn’t it time to think about your retirement?
http://www.InsurancePricedRight.com
#insurance #retirement #athene #annuity #texasinsurance #insurancepricedright
Want to enhance your benefits package to entice your top performers to hang around and lure new talent to your team? Offer them a half day’s work on Friday — it’s by far the No. 1 perk desired by employees.
This, at least, is what several thousand respondents to a CareerBuilder survey said. Constantly on the prowl for more information on job seekers, CareerBuilder learned that 21 percent of those surveyed have resolved to land a new job in 2016, up from 16 percent in last year’s survey. So what are these folks looking for in a new employer?
Some of the qualities employees on the hunt value can’t be changed on short notice. The five most important characteristics in a new employer — all of which outranked salary — were as follows:
But when asked what perks would sway their decision to either accept or reject a job offer, the list included benefits that almost any employer could offer. The top five:
CareerBuilder also asked respondents what other New Year’s resolutions they’d made for 2016. The top five revealed that more money and better health were their top concerns:
The goals were similar to those set last year at this time. Here’s how they did with regard to their promises to themselves:
President Obama signs PPACA. President Obama signs PPACA.
Few Web users seem to know where they’ll go to get information about the exchanges.
Kev Coleman, an analyst at HealthPocket.com, a health insurance plan information site, has published data on consumers’ thoughts about the exchange system in a summary of results from an online survey of 1,150 consumers.
Coleman collected the survey data by posting a form on about 100 news and information websites.
Only 3 percent said they would use the new crop of navigators — but only 31 percent said they thought they would turn to friends, relatives, the Internet, doctors or pharmacists.
About 67 percent said they would go nowhere for PPACA exchange information or aren’t sure where they’ll go.
In other PPACA exchange news:
– Cover Oregon, the PPACA exchange for Oregon, says it will start selling coverage through agents and “community partners” Oct. 1 but won’t have its website up until later in October. But the exchange does plan to start enrollment for both individual and Small Business Health Options Program small-group plans that month.
– If you run a group that’s to make PPACA exchange “certified application counselors” available in Nevada, you can already use a form to apply for reimbursement for certification-related expenses from Nevada Health Link, that state’s PPACA exchange.
via Consumers clueless about exchanges.
Keeping in touch is one of the most important ways for agents to generate repeat and referral business. Print and eNewsletters are a key way to offer your contacts value, and ensure that they remember your name!
Direct mail is an effective marketing tactic for agents. So are email newsletters. If you want your real estate marketing to be as successful as possible, you should be doing both. In fact, 51% of people prefer companies that use a combination of direct mail and email when communicating with them, according to a recent study commissioned by Canada Post.
Direct mail is the perfect tactic for reaching past clients. It’s an excellent tool to help ensure that they will keep you top-of-mind when it comes to their next real estate transaction or for referrals. Email newsletters are perfect for prospects that you are hoping will turn into clients.
Just remember, the messaging in your direct mail to past clients should not be the same as the email newsletters you send to prospective clients.
When sending email newsletters, you should be specific and cater your message to your audience. For instance, prospects might not already own a home, and, therefore, they might not be interested in reading about home renovations or how to find and hire a reputable contractor.
WASHINGTON (AP) — Prodded to be more candid with Congress, Health and Human Services Secretary (HHS) Kathleen Sebelius said Wednesday the administration’s HealthCare.gov website needed a couple of hundred fixes when it went online more than a month ago.
“We’re not there yet” in making all needed repairs,” Sebelius conceded.
At the same time, she turned aside any suggestion that the system be taken off line until it could be fixed fully. Doing so “wouldn’t delay people’s cancer or diabetes or Parkinson’s” disease, she told the Senate Finance Committee.
Sebelius also said experts had told HHS that letting consumers continue to use the site can help with finding and fixing problems.
Sen. Max Baucus, D-Mont., and the panel’s chairman, said Sebelius must be “candidly, fully totally” forthcoming with Congress about the repair effort, “so that we don’t wake up at the end of November and find out we’re not there yet.”
Sen. Orrin Hatch, R-Utah, the panel’s senior Republican, was harsher.
“While I am glad that you are accepting responsibility for this disastrous rollout, I would have preferred that you and the rest of the administration were honest with us to begin with,” he said.
“It is simply inexcusable that the members of this committee were not told earlier that these problems were occurring,” Hatch said.
Sebelius acknowledged that using HealthCare.gov — the troubled Patient Protection and Affordable Care Act (PPACA) exchange plan enrollment system — “has been frustrating for many Americans.”
But she told the Senate Finance Committee that the site’s problems are being steadily fixed and will operate smoothly for most people by the end of this month. And she said the insurance marketplaces that PPACA is setting up are resulting in lower rates, citing figures for some premiums that she said are 16 percent lower than estimates from the nonpartisan Congressional Budget Office and other data from Oregon, New York and elsewhere.
“The fact is that the Affordable Care Act delivered on the product: quality, affordable health insurance,” she said.
To the chagrin of increasingly nervous Democrats, Republicans are also on the attack about the millions of Americans whose health insurers have told them their current policies are being canceled. Obama has said that people who liked their coverage would be able to keep it.
Sebelius testified a week ago to the Republican-run House Energy and Commerce Committee.
At that confrontational session, she apologized for the troubles dogging the website where uninsured Americans and those buying coverage privately are supposed to be able to purchase health insurance. The secretary, who numerous Republicans have said should resign, has promised the site would be fixed by the end of this month and says it is secure.
Insurers are sending cancellation notices to customers whose current policies lack enough coverage to meet the law’s more demanding standards — at least 3.5 million Americans, according to an Associated Press survey of states.
The Obama administration has said people facing cancellations will be able to find better coverage from their current insurance company or on state or federal exchanges where competing policies are being offered.
Lawmakers of both parties have introduced rival bills that would let people retain their existing health insurance policies. But administration officials refused to state their views Tuesday on those proposals.
“The fact is that the Affordable Care Act delivered on the product: quality, affordable health insurance,” she said.
To the chagrin of increasingly nervous Democrats, Republicans are also on the attack about the millions of Americans whose health insurers have told them their current policies are being canceled. Obama has said that people who liked their coverage would be able to keep it.
Sebelius testified a week ago to the Republican-run House Energy and Commerce Committee.
At that confrontational session, she apologized for the troubles dogging the website where uninsured Americans and those buying coverage privately are supposed to be able to purchase health insurance. The secretary, who numerous Republicans have said should resign, has promised the site would be fixed by the end of this month and says it is secure.
Insurers are sending cancellation notices to customers whose current policies lack enough coverage to meet the law’s more demanding standards — at least 3.5 million Americans, according to an Associated Press survey of states.
The Obama administration has said people facing cancellations will be able to find better coverage from their current insurance company or on state or federal exchanges where competing policies are being offered.
Lawmakers of both parties have introduced rival bills that would let people retain their existing health insurance policies. But administration officials refused to state their views Tuesday on those proposals.
White House spokesman Jay Carney suggested the White House would resist letting insurance companies continue offering substandard plans, saying that would undermine the law’s fundamental promise of better health care.
“We’re focused on implementing the Affordable Care Act,” Carney said, using the law’s formal name.
Senate Majority Leader Harry Reid, D-Nev., kept his distance from a measure by Sen. Mary Landrieu, D-La., who faces re-election next year, that would force insurers to reinstate canceled policies.
“There are hundreds of bills introduced every week, and we have to sort through those that have opportunity to be voted on,” Reid said.
On the defensive about the law, Democrats have started trying to refocus Americans on its benefits.
The law requires most Americans to have health coverage by the start of 2015 or face fines. Middle-class people who don’t get health insurance at work will qualify for federal subsidies for the private coverage they buy. More lower-income people will qualify for Medicaid in states that have agreed to expand that federal-state health care program for the poor.
“The real train wreck is what people are experiencing every day because they can’t afford care,” Sen. Tom Harkin, D-Iowa, said Tuesday at a hearing of the Senate Committee on Health, Education, Labor and Pensions, which he chairs.
At that hearing, Marilyn Tavenner, who runs the agency most directly involved in implementing the health care law, said the website was being improved.
“We obviously underestimated demand,” said Tavenner, who heads the Centers for Medicare and Medicaid Services. She added, “We obviously had more bugs than we realized.”
WASHINGTON (AP) — President Barack Obama says he\’s sorry Americans are losing health insurance plans he repeatedly said they could keep under his signature health care law. But the president stopped short of apologizing for making those promises in the first place.
“I am sorry that they are finding themselves in this situation based on assurances they got from me,” he said in an interview Thursday with NBC News.
He added: “We’ve got to work hard to make sure that they know we hear them, and we are going to do everything we can to deal with folks who find themselves in a tough position as a consequence of this.”
The president’s apology comes as the White House tries to combat a cascade of troubles surrounding the rollout of the health care law often referred to as “Obamacare.” The healthcare.gov website that was supposed to be an easy portal for Americans to purchase insurance has been riddled by technical issues. And with at least 3.5 million Americans receiving cancellation notices from their insurance companies, there\’s new scrutiny aimed at the way the president tried to sell the law to the public in the first place.
Much of the focus is on the president’s promise that Americans who liked their insurance coverage would be able to keep it. He repeated the line often, both as the bill was debated in Congress and after it was signed into law.
But the measure itself made that promise almost impossible to keep. It mandated that insurance coverage must meet certain standards and that policies that fell short could no longer be sold except through a grandfathering process, meaning some policies were always expected to disappear.
The White House says under those guidelines, fewer than 5 percent of Americans will have to change their coverage. But in a nation of more than 300 million people, 5 percent is about 15 million people.
Officials argue that those people being forced to change plans will end up with better coverage and that subsidies offered by the government will help offset any increased costs.
“We weren’t as clear as we needed to be in terms of the changes that were taking place,” Obama told NBC. “And I want to do everything we can to make sure that people are finding themselves in a good position, a better position than they were before this law happened.”
The president’s critics have accused him of misleading the public about changes that were coming under the law, which remains unpopular with many Americans and a target for congressional Republicans.
Obama dismissed that criticism, saying “I meant what I said” and insisting that his administration was operating in “good faith.” He acknowledged that the administration “didn’t do a good enough job in terms of how we crafted the law” but did not specify what changes might be made.
Sign-ups for the new health care marketplaces opened Oct. 1. People have six months to enroll before facing a penalty.
Some lawmakers — including Democrats — have called on the White House to delay the penalty or extend the enrollment period because of the website woes that have prevented many used from signing up. Obama said he remains confident that anyone who wants to buy insurance will be able to do so.
“Keep in mind that the open enrollment period, the period during which you can buy health insurance is available all the way until March 31,\” he said. \”And we\’re only five weeks into it.”
The first of the year always brings with it the promise of new beginnings and the burden of self-improvement. Fueled by the nostalgia of the holidays, armed with a year’s worth of regrets, and unleashed by the ceremonialism and ritual of the calendar’s turn, some 45 percent of Americans decide to make New Year’s resolutions each January, according to research from the University of Scranton.
They are, it seems, taken by the spirit that led Benjamin Franklin to write that one should, “Be always at war with your vices, at peace with your neighbors, and let each New Year find you a better man.”
We all certainly have our fair share of vices, especially as they relate to money. Financially-themed promises for improvement are, unsurprisingly, always among the most popular resolutions made each New Year. Unfortunately, only about 8 percent of resolution-makers are ultimately successful in their endeavors – a statistic that does not fare well for money management improvements.
Neither historically low odds of success nor uncertainty about the best resolutions to make should discourage you from improving your financial habits in 2016, however. We at WalletHub have come up with the following list of the 16 Best Financial Resolutions for 2016, along with some helpful pointers for bringing them to fruition.
The first step toward financial improvement is to get the lay of the land. That means carefully reviewing at least one of your major credit reports, in addition to checking the status of all your financial accounts, taking stock of your assets and debts, and evaluating your monthly cash flow.
Going over your finances at the account level will enable you to identify spending trends that need adjustment as well as determine whether a new account would save you money. Not only are your financial needs bound to change from year to year, but there are also a number of interesting market developments that you would do well to take advantage of.
For example, credit card companies are offering extremely lucrative sign-up perks – such as a $625 initial bonus or 0 percent for 21 months – to new customers with above-average credit standing. Online-only bank accounts now offer vastly superior terms to branch-based accounts as well, and you can still save a lot of money by refinancing your mortgage in the current low-rate environment.
It’s quite stressful to be a consumer in this day in age, with our new digital economy spawning unfamiliar financial threats and extending the timeframe for vigilance well beyond traditional banking hours. But new tools have also emerged to ease our transition to this new 24/7 personal finance environment, and credit monitoring is among the most helpful.
Credit monitoring is essentially a surveillance system for your credit report, notifying you anytime key information on your file changes. It therefore increases the odds that you will find out about any administrative errors or suspicious activity before it can cause much damage. The biggest thing to watch out for is the frequency with which the underlying reports that are being monitored get updated.
Only about 40 percent of adults have a budget, according to survey data from the National Foundation for Credit Counseling. The fact that we’re on pace to rack up nearly $68.5 billion new credit card debt during 2015 is perhaps a bit less surprising as a result. But those statistics also signal the need for greater urgency on our part.
The $8,071 that the average household with credit card debt is expected to owe when the final data from 2015 comes in is just about $350 below the level that our sister site CardHub previously identified as the tipping point at which existing balances would become unsustainable, defaults would increase and another would recession become more likely. In short, we need to cut back if we want this prolonged economic recovery to continue.
The best way to make a budget is to gather together all of your bills from the past few months and then make a list of your recurring expenses in order of importance – with true necessities like housing, food and health care obviously taking precedence. You can then compare the cost of these expenses against your monthly take-home and eliminate any outlays that would outpace your spending power. After that, just make sure to compare your ensuing monthly spending to your planned budget to make sure you’re abiding by it.
The Island Approach is a personal finance technique based on the theory of compartmentalization that encourages consumers to isolate different financial needs on different financial products – as if they are a chain of related islands. For example, this might entail getting one credit card for everyday purchases that you can pay off in full by the end of the month and another for revolving debt.
Doing so will enable you to get the best possible terms on each card (i.e. a great rewards earning rate on your everyday card and an extended 0 percent term on your debt card) rather than compromising for middling terms on a single card. It will also help you reduce the cost of your debt, since everyday purchases won’t be inflating your average daily balance, and garner valuable perspective on your finances – if you ever incur interest on your everyday card, you’ll know you spent too much that month.
One of the most easily avoidable mistakes that people make in regards to their finances is missing due dates. Often due to pure forgetfulness, tardiness can have serious ramifications on your financial life – such as missed credit card payments fostering credit score damage.
Luckily, avoiding such a negative event is as simple as setting up recurring monthly payments from a checking account. You can do so for your full balance, the minimum amount required or a customized amount, and this applies to a variety of different types of bills – from credit cards to cable. Of course, you’ll have to remember to review your monthly statements in order to avoid being overcharged or missing a sign of fraud, but you’re not on the clock for that like you would be with payment.
Roughly 56 percent of Americans do not have a rainy day fund, according to the Financial Industry Regulatory Authority’s National Financial Capability Study. Like someone without insurance, folks who lack an emergency fund are merely tempting fate and putting themselves at risk of financial catastrophe in the event of prolonged job loss or significant emergency expenses. Building up some monetary reserves should therefore be one of the first orders of business for any financial makeover.
While we recommend ultimately building a fund with about 12-18 months’ take-home income, it’s important to understand that won’t happen overnight. As a result, you needn’t put the rest of your financial life on hold until your emergency fund is complete, but rather chip away at it over time. That is key because we actually recommend creating a 6-month safety net before beginning to even pay down your debts in earnest. Doing so will help ensure that you do not end up right back where you started upon finally reaching debt freedom.
“Just as you might dress for success, spend for failure,” said Scott C. Hammond, a clinical professor of management at Utah State University. “Assume you will go 6 to 12 months every ten years without a pay check. Save accordingly. Live on a budget. Store a little food. Have a solid savings account with liquid assets.”
We clearly have a problematic, sordid love affair with debt. After curbing our enthusiasm for overleveraging during the struggles of the Great Recession, we have reaffirmed our affinity for it as the economic skies have cleared. We racked up an average of $41.1 billion in new credit card debt – a useful indicator of consumer spending habits – each year from 2011 through 2013, in addition to $57.4 billion in 2014 and a projected $68.5 billion in 2015. Something must change.
Some of the steps mentioned above – including budgeting, automation and the Island Approach – will obviously help in terms of reducing your future reliance on debt, but the problem of what to do about existing balances still remains. The combination of a 0 percent balance transfer credit card and a credit card calculator can help the average household save more than $1,000 in finance charges and get out of debt months sooner than they would otherwise. Taking aim at your highest-interest balances first, while attributing only minimum payments to the rest, is also a strategic way to pay off what you owe at the lowest possible cost in terms of both money and time.
“I think credit card debt is one of the most difficult obstacles that people face,” says Deena B. Katz, associate professor in the Department of Personal Financial Planning at Texas Tech University. “It’s very easy to pull out a card and buy, particularly online or during the holiday season when you want to do special things for your family and it doesn’t need to come out of your pocket today. I believe that if you were buried in debt that a priority resolution would be to pay off your debt as quickly as possible to avoid overpaying for the things you bought on credit.”
In case you weren’t aware, the annual difference in cost between good and bad credit is roughly $650 in credit card payments, $1,400 on your auto loan and $2,300 on a mortgage. The savings inherent to good credit extend well beyond that as well, considering that your credit standing impacts your insurance premiums, your ability to buy a car or rent an apartment and the types of jobs you can get – in addition to the loans you’re eligible for.
The best way to improve your credit is to maintain an open credit card account that is in good standing. The card will then report positive information to the major credit bureaus each month, either building out your thin credit profile or helping to devalue mistakes from the past. You don’t have to get into debt to benefit from the credit building capabilities of a credit card, unlike with a loan, and you don’t even need to make purchases with your card. If you don’t have the credit standing necessary to qualify for a normal credit card, you can always place a refundable deposit on a secured credit card and benefit from what’s tantamount to guaranteed approval.
Most people are pretty good at wasting money. Many of us don’t have budgets or emergency funds; we rack up expensive credit card debt by the billion; and we prioritize short-term desires over long-term needs. After all, 1 in 4 people nearing retirement age have absolutely no money saved up, according to the Federal Reserve. Well, why don’t we take some steps to change that in 2016?
Retirement obviously isn’t your only savings need. You also need to save for college, weddings, vacations, etc. The best approach to meeting all of these savings needs is to establish separate accounts for each, which you fill with automatic monthly contributions from a bank account. This gives you some useful perspective on each of your goals and enables you to better track progress. Your goal for the year should be to boost the value of each of your accounts by 15 percent. This will obviously take hard work and sacrifice, but figure out how much you’ll need to put away each month in order to meet that goal and get cracking.
Charitable giving is beneficial in terms of self-perception, tax liability and basic humanity. Perhaps that is why monetary donations totaled more than $358 billion in 2014, according to data from Giving USA and Indiana University. Even though that represents a 60-year record, we should make it our mission to be even more benevolent in 2016, with a special emphasis on donations involving money rather than time.
Why? Well, most people can actually make a bigger impact on charities by spending extra time at work and donating cash than by volunteering, according to WalletHub’s Charity Calculator. More specifically, the average American – who earns $30,176 annually and volunteers one hour per week – would be able to donate more than 8,350 meals to hungry children, provide roughly 2,040 measles vaccinations or give nearly 170 refugees a year of clean water just by working an extra hour instead of volunteering, and then donating the proceeds. Unless you’re the Iron Chef, you’re probably not going to cook over 8,350 meals in 52 hours!
Up to 25 percent of Americans wait until April to file their taxes each year, according to the IRS. As with anything else, procrastination breeds mistakes and 2.6 million people made math mistakes on their taxes in 2013 – the most-recent statistics available.
Many people also end up filing late and underpaying, incurring expensive penalties along the way. Starting your tax prep early is the best way to avoid these unfortunate events, not to mention lowering your stress levels. Not only can getting organized take a considerable amount of time, but foresight will also enable you to adjust your withholdings in order to avoid a tax deficiency as well as ensure that you are not over- or underpaying.
While gradually improving in many ways, financial literacy levels in this country are still rather anemic. In fact, the U.S. ranked 14th globally for financial literacy in a 2015 survey by Standard & Poor’s, behind the likes of Canada, the United Kingdom and Germany – just to name a few. What’s more, roughly 41 percent of Americans grade their financial know-how at a C-level or below, according to the National Foundation for Credit Counseling.
This is important not only as it relates to our own finances, but also in terms of how our children will manage money once they mature. Children tend to learn by example, which means yours are likely continuously internalizing how you handle money – information that will serve as the foundation for their future relationships with finance. You therefore need to do your best to improve your own financial performance in order to impart beneficial lessons upon your children.
You should also take steps to give your kids hands-on monetary experience while they’re young. This should begin with games – like Financial Football or Savings Spree – that are designed to teach kids about the value of money and encourage positive habits like saving regularly. Then, as your children age, you can provide them an allowance on a series of financial vehicles – starting with a prepaid card, progressing to cash and a checking account, and ending with a student credit card – while requiring them to pay some of their own discretionary expenses.
This will confer a range of practical benefits, from building account management skills to encouraging budgeting – especially if you actively participate and make the process fun.
“Having an open dialogue about money early and often can lay the groundwork for financial planning,” said Nicholas Prewett, director of financial aid at the University of Missouri. “Individuals who know the value of a dollar and what it takes to earn those dollars are more likely to respect the idea of financial planning. Parents sharing experiences (good or bad) on taking out loans, paying those off and the sacrifices made to get what they want is also important.”
Cybercrime has become a major theme for both the modern consumer and corporate America, with a number of notable banks, retailers and entertainment companies getting hacked in recent years. In fact, there were roughly 750 data breaches in 2015 through mid-December, resulting in the exposure of nearly 188 million personal records, according to the Identity Theft Resource Center. And while there is only so much you can do if your credit card information get pilfered from a store – all credit cards offer $0 fraud liability guarantees anyway – there are a number of steps that you can take to otherwise make yourself a much harder target for fraudsters.
Perhaps the most important, yet underrated measure you can employ in defense of identity theft is a strong password for your primary email account that you change on a regular basis. You can also add your cell phone number to your account contact information and enable two-factor authentication to take things to the next level. Protecting your email is essential because it is likely what you will use to reset passwords for other accounts, and thus serves as a gateway to your finances.
Robust email security does not, however, represent the extent of the simple changes you can make to improve your anti-identity theft protections. For instance, shredding sensitive financial documents before throwing them away and putting a lock on your mailbox when you’re out of town will shield you from opportunistic criminals targeting your trash or correspondence.
Making a credit card your primary spending vehicle and only signing for debit card purchases (rather than entering your PIN) will confer the most robust fraud liability benefits on you as well. Checking your credit report every few months will also enable you to spot fraudulently opened accounts before they do too much damage.
There is a clear connection between physical, emotional and financial health. Not only are health care expenses the leading cause of bankruptcy in the U.S., but they also comprise a great deal of our annual spending between insurance premiums, out-of-pocket costs, gym memberships and more. Money, work, the economy and family responsibilities – all financial concerns in one way or another – are also the most commonly reported causes of stress, according to the American Psychological Association.
This all serves to underscore the importance of getting our financial houses in order as well as getting regular exercise and engaging in other healthy practices aimed at keeping our health care costs low. It won’t be easy, but this is one resolution that will certainly pay dividends across the scope of your life.
“If you begin to make small healthy changes to your diet, increase exercise in small increments, and practice yoga and meditation, you will feel better,” says Deborah Bauer, the Powell Distinguished Senior Instructor of Finance with the University of Oregon’s Lundquist College of Business. “Feeling better will lead to wiser financial decisions that focus on the long term.”
We consumers need to stick together. After all, it’s hard enough trying to lead a financially responsible lifestyle in this era of economic turmoil, political obstinacy and unbridled spending without some support. One of the best ways to aid others in the pursuit of financial responsibility is to share your experiences with different financial products, companies and professionals.
Reviews have the power to drastically improve transparency in the personal finance space – as has been the case with the hospitality industry – enabling people to avoid the bad apples, gravitate to the best deals and ultimately save money. That is especially true now that the Securities and Exchange Commission is allowing financial advisors to interact with consumer reviews for the first time. The financial industry is ripe for disruption in this regard, as there are likely more reviews for dog walkers than for the professionals managing our retirement plans.
People are generally optimistic in nature, which means it can be difficult to imagine and prepare for worst-case scenarios. Responsible financial management is all about preparation, though, which means it is very important that you put your personal finances through the paces – much like banks and other financial institutions are required to do in order to verify their stability.
For example, you may wish to determine if your finances are equipped to handle job loss or the death of the family’s breadwinner. This clearly isn’t an uplifting exercise, but it will enable you to determine if you have the savings, insurance policies and contingency plans necessary to overcome potential hardship.
“Recessions and economic downturns are no longer global or regional, but they are local to the point of being personal,” Hammond said. “Your work, your career, your employer is booming. You get raises and bonuses. Your neighbor is downsizing and hoping that unemployment is extended. With one or two changes, you could be your neighbor. In fact, you will be your neighbor. Eventually we will all be hit. So get ready to recover in advance.”
Here is an email that I received from a lender. With home loans given to people with this low a credit score, is a real estate crash right around the corner?
Lots of apartments in New York City are micro, but Carmel Place—the prefab building that’s now being leased after two years of development—will be the city’s first official micro-apartment complex. The distinction comes down to zoning: when the Bloomberg Administration announced in 2012 that it wanted to experiment with this new, tiny housing model, the Department of City Planning granted the project a waiver, allowing it to build studios with floor plans smaller than 400 square feet.
Three years on, we’re finally getting our first real glimpse inside these tiny homes. Carmel Place apartments range from 260 to 360 square feet in size. The concept for the interiors comes from Stage 3 Properties, a housing-solutions platform for rental units, and a partner in the Carmel Place project along with nArchitects and Monadnock Development, whose micro-apartment design won the city’s adAPT NYC competition in 2013. This is the first foray into micro-housing for the last two companies says Chris Bledsoe, a founding partner at Stage 3. As for his company, he says, “we’re specialists. That’s what we do.”
The apartments have neutral, minimal furnishings—there’s a lot of white, gray, and pale wood—and are unobtrusive. It’s about what you’d expect to see in an apartment that’s trying to make 300 square feet feel like 600. The more interesting features here are the ones you can’t see. Bledsoe says Stage 3’s work on outfitting micro-units isn’t just about living in a small space, but about living life well in a small space. That’s why, along with sofas that turn into fold-out beds and extendable kitchen tables, the new New York City micro-apartments will come rigged with a new lifestyle brand. It’s called Ollie, and Stage 3 is unveiling it in tandem with the leasing and eventual opening of Carmel Place.
Ollie (a word play on “all inclusive”) is a lineup of quality-of-life services that will come included in the rent at complexes like Carmel Place. It includes high-end furniture sourced from Italian designers, a housekeeping service, Wi-Fi, cable, and a weekly errand handled by a personal “butler,” coordinated through a partnership between Stage 3 and Hello Alfred, the on-demand assistant service. The first set of units will rent for between $2,500 and $2,800 a month, Bledsoe says. For reference, the average rent right now for a studio apartment in Manhattan is $2,738, and $3,499 for a one bedroom.
New York City lags behind other metropolises when it comes to institutionalized micro-living, but it needs it: According to a press release issued in 2012, when then-Mayor Bloomberg launched the adAPT Competition, the city had 1.8-million one- and two-person households, but only one-million studio and one-bedroom apartments. Nonetheless, Manhattan is notorious for its shoebox-sized apartments. “Small-space living is not new,” Bledsoe says. There’s been a certain glamour attached to it in recent years, especially in the media, but, New Yorkers have been cramming into small dwellings for decades. In other words: With Ollie, Stage 3 isn’t inventing this housing model. They’re streamlining it. “On Craigslist, [the ‘Rooms and shares’ sub-section] has become the de facto market for people moving to New York City for the first time,” says Bledsoe. “Half of what you find is furnished, so I don’t think that furnished units, among this group… is a totally foreign concept.”
But Stage 3 will soon launch a more unique feature of Ollie, that it’s calling Bedvetter. (You read that right; it’s a pun.) It’s a “compatibility driven household formation” service that will let landlords at Ollie residences facilitate roommate match-ups in shared suites. The platform sounds like a cross between a dorm room assignment form and a dating app, although “I feel that it’s more important that you have a matchmaking algorithm for cohabiting than dating,” Bledsoe says. “You’re skipping right over dating and going straight to living together.”
Matchmaking algorithms aren’t bulletproof, but Bledsoe’s Bedvetter idea speaks to the rise of a larger lifestyle trend in co-living, namely the “dorm-ification” of cities. Startups like Common and Commonspace are trying to supplant the Craigslist subletting market by making safe and clean room-rentals as easy to find as co-working spaces. Bledsoe says these kinds of services are an “equally important aspect of addressing housing affordability,” in that they help establish fair, above-water renting practices.
But they also come with a funny side effect: By redesigning how we find our homes, these companies hint at a version of the future in which our homes, themselves, are less designed than ever—at least, by us. These new apartments are homogenized, because they need to be. After all, the “essence” of Ollie properties is to “bring micro-studios to market and eliminate all the hassle and conveniences that come with that,” Bledsoe says. “It’s more like hotel branding.”
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