Social Security Exhaustion Date, USPS Free Recycling Through Mail, and First Ever Actively Managed ETF

The government today updated its outlook on Social Security and Medicare and there’s no good news for folks who will retire in 10 years from now. According to the annual trustee reports released by The Department of Treasury, the Social Security Trust Fund will run into negative cash inflow in 2017 and exhaust its assets in 2041. The Medicare Hospital Insurance Trust Fund, on the other hand, is projected to run out of money in 2019. With 78 million baby boomers expected to retire in the next few years, the financial strain on the two programs will increase, which could force the government and congress to increase taxes or reduce benefits, or both.

Time to save for our own retirement

Have old PDAs, MP3 players that you no longer use, but don’t want to just threw them away? You can recycle them through USPS mail!

The U.S. Postal Service announced early last week that it has started a pilot program to allow customers recycle small electronics, such as inkjet cartridges, PDAs, Blackberries, digital cameras, iPods, and MP3 players, for free. Currently the program is only available in 10 areas, including Washington, D.C., Chicago, Los Angeles and San Diego. But it could nationwide if the pilot is successful. Envelopes used in the recycle program can be found at 1,500 post offices in these areas and postages for shipping back the recycled items will be paid by Clover Technologies Group.

Finally, the wait is over!

Bear Stearns Asset Management, whose parent company has dominated the headlines of financial news lately, launched the first ever actively managed exchange-traded fund (ETF), the Bear Stearns Current Yield Fund (YYY) today. Triple-Y is a fixed income ETF that invests in “a variety of short-term fixed income instruments.” The fund has an expense ratio of 0.35%.

Since YYY is an actively managed ETF, it doesn’t follow any index. That’s different from all other ETFs previously being offered, which all track some kind of index. The actively managed equity ETFs from PowerShares are expected to hit market next month.

Will you invest in actively managed ETFs?

*Photo from Coxandforkum.com

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