CBS News
For those in their 40s, navigating finances should mean putting an emphasis on retirement
For 48-year-old Rowan Childs of Wisconsin, a recent divorce turned her financial life upside down.
“Initially, I was really nervous and had a lot of anxiety about it, but ultimately now I feel so much more empowered,” Childs told CBS News.
Like others in their 40s, Childs, who runs her own literacy nonprofit, was already anxious about juggling personal debt and putting away college tuition for her two children. She then joined the roughly half of married women around her age in the U.S. who have dealt with a divorce, a seismic event that can jeopardize retirement planning.
“That has completely changed my initial vision, you know?” Childs said. “…Where am I going to be in my 60s or my 70s or 80s?”
Childs said retirement wasn’t necessarily something she thought about when she was first married.
“It was too far away, I think,” Childs said. “Definitely looking at what my parents were doing, though, was definitely something that I was observing.”
Teresa Ghilarducci, a labor economist at the New School for Social Research in New York City, has a sobering perspective.
“People who are in their 40s and 50s will do worse than their parents and their grandparents,” Ghilarducci said.
Ghilarducci explains that those two previous generations could at least bank on government-sponsored retirement programs.
“Two generations, because people had grandparents that were living through an expansion of Social Security and Medicare,” Ghilarducci said.
Both of those programs are now facing funding challenges, something Childs considered when she had to make a series of tough financial decisions. The costliest was to buy her ex-husband’s share of their Wisconsin home by borrowing more than $100,000 from her 401(k).
It was a decision partly spurred by the desire to keep her daughter in the same school district.
“To me, it didn’t make sense to sell the house and then buy a house in the same school district, probably at even more,” Childs said.
Borrowing from a retirement plan, as Childs did, should be a last resort, because if you lose your job, the loan must be repaid in full or you may have to pay taxes and penalties. And if you’re in your 40s, paying for a child’s college should take a back seat to protecting your own savings. That may come across as tough love, but otherwise you might end up relying on your children later on.
“Jokingly, I told my kids I could move in with them,” Childs said. “…My son was like, ‘Well, maybe you could live close by.'”
The key in your 40s is to take deep breaths, regardless of the challenges.
“Relax,” Ghilarducci said. “Planning for retirement is best for the daylight hours, not in the middle of the night. And when you wake up, take some action steps. Worrying is not action.”
With plenty of time to get back on her feet, Childs says that she has finally stopped worrying.
“Maybe working longer could be on the table,” Childs said. She is also entertaining the possibility of working part time later in life.
“I think outside the box,” she adds. “…I don’t necessarily know exactly know how I’m going to get there, but if I see something, or that’s what I want, I often will find a way.”
CBS News
Head of Russia’s nuclear defense forces killed in Moscow blast triggered by device hidden in scooter, officials say
Moscow — The head of Russia’s Nuclear, Biological, and Chemical Defense Forces, Lt. General Igor Kirillov, was killed along with his deputy early Tuesday in an explosion in Moscow, Russia’s Investigative Committee said.
An explosive device hidden in an electronic scooter went off outside a residential building as the two men left the structure, Agence France-Presse cites investigators as saying.
ALEXANDER NEMENOV / AFP via Getty Images
“Investigators, forensic experts and operational services are working at the scene,” committee spokesperson Svetlana Petrenko said in a statement. “Investigative and search activities are being carried out to establish all the circumstances around this crime.”
ALEXANDER NEMENOV / AFP via Getty Images
The committee carries out responsible major investigations in Russia.
Kirillov was sentenced in absentia by a Ukrainian court on Dec. 16 for the use of banned chemical weapons in Ukraine during Russia’s military operation in Ukraine that started in Feb. 2022.
AFPTV / AFP via Getty Images
Ukraine’s Security Service, the SBU, said it had recorded more than 4,800 uses of chemical weapons on the battlefield since February 2022, particularly K-1 combat grenades.
During the almost 3-year operation, Russia has made small but steady territorial gains to the nearly one-fifth of Ukraine it already controls.
Kirillov had been in his post since 2017, AFP notes.
A powerful earthquake hit the Pacific island nation of Vanuatu Tuesday, smashing buildings in the capital, Port Vila, including one housing the embassies of the U.S. and other nations. A witness told Agence France-Presse of bodies seen in the city.
Dan McGarry, a journalist with the Organized Crime and Corruption Reporting Project based in Vanuatu, told the Reuters news agency in an interview that police said at least one person had been killed and injured people had been taken to hospital.
“It was the most violent earthquake I’ve experienced in my 21 years living in Vanuatu and in the Pacific Islands. I’ve seen a lot of large earthquakes, never one like this,” he said.
The 7.3-magnitude quake struck at a depth of 35 miles, off the coast of Efate, Vanuatu’s main island, at 12:47 p.m. local time, according to the U.S. Geological Survey.
The ground floor of a building housing the U.S, French and other embassies had been crushed under higher floors, resident Michael Thompson told AFP by satellite phone after posting images of the destruction on social media.
“That no longer exists. It is just completely flat. The top three floors are still holding but they have dropped,” Thompson said.
“If there was anyone in there at the time, then they’re gone.”
Thompson said the ground floor housed the U.S. embassy, but that couldn’t be immediately confirmed.
A photo showed significant damage to the building:
STR / AFP via Getty Images
The United States has closed the embassy until further notice, citing “considerable damage” to the mission, the U.S. embassy in Papua New Guinea said in a message on social media. “Our thoughts are with everyone affected by this earthquake,” the embassy said.
The New Zealand High Commission, housed in the same building, suffered “significant damage,” a statement from Foreign Minister Winston Peters’ office said, adding that, “New Zealand is deeply concerned about the significant earthquake in Vanuatu, and the damage it has caused.”
Thompson, who runs a zipline adventure business in Vanuatu, said, “There’s people in the buildings in town. There were bodies there when we walked past.”
A landslide on one road had covered a bus, he said, “so there’s obviously some deaths there.”
The quake also collapsed at least two bridges, and most mobile networks were cut off, Thompson said.
“They’re just cracking on with a rescue operation. The support we need from overseas is medical evacuation and skilled rescue, (the) kind(s) of people that can operate in earthquakes,” he said.
STR / AFP via Getty Images
Video footage posted by Thompson and verified by AFP showed uniformed rescuers and emergency vehicles working on a building where an external roof had collapsed onto a number of parked cars and trucks.
The streets of the city were strewn with broken glass and other debris from damaged buildings, the footage showed.
Nibhay Nand, a Sydney-based pharmacist with businesses across the South Pacific, said he had spoken to staff in Port Vila who said most of the store there had been “destroyed” and that other buildings nearby had “collapsed.”
“We are waiting for everyone to get online to know how devastating and traumatic this will be,” Nand told AFP.
A tsunami warning was issued after the quake, with waves of up to three feet forecast for some areas of Vanuatu, but it was soon lifted by the Pacific Tsunami Warning Center.
Earthquakes are common in Vanuatu, a low-lying archipelago of 320,000 people that straddles the seismic Ring of Fire, an arc of intense tectonic activity that stretches through Southeast Asia and across the Pacific Basin.
Vanuatu is ranked as one of the countries most susceptible to natural disasters such as earthquakes, storm damage, flooding and tsunamis, according to the annual World Risk Report.
Watch CBS News
Be the first to know
Get browser notifications for breaking news, live events, and exclusive reporting.