For many older Americans, end to the daily grind comes at hefty price
Many cite mortgages, debt, health care for working in retirement
Here’s how many Americans plan to spend their retirement: working. About a third of 45- to 65-year-olds say they’ll work part time in their golden years, and 4% aim to have a full-time job, changing the very meaning of retirement, according to an Ipsos/USA TODAY survey of 1,152 adults in mid-March.
A third of those surveyed plan to delay retirement past the traditional benchmark of 65. Twenty-two percent say they’ll hang it up when they’re between 66 and 70, 7% prefer to hold off until their early 70s, and 3% vow not to give up the grind until after age 75. Eight percent don’t plan to retire at all.
Lingering aftereffects of the Great Recession at least partly explain the widespread desire to put off the traditional rewards of toiling 30 to 40 years. Bouts of unemployment, the housing crash, aid provided to distressed family members and student debt are some of the factors respondents say are making it tough to save for retirement.
“A lot of people got off track with their savings over the course of the recession, and they’re still making up for that,” says Jennifer Schramm, senior strategy policy advisor for the AARP Public Policy Institute.
Dorothy Pope, 52, a special
At Wells Fargo, two former executives are giving back, and some of its once former employees are going back.
Wells Fargo said Monday it is clawing back $75.3 million in additional compensation from top former executives after an internal investigation of the bank’s unauthorized accounts scandal found that the ex-leaders acted too slowly to investigate allegations of “improper and unethical behavior” in retail sales practices reaching back more than a decade.
The clawbacks are among the highlights of a report that said aggressive sales practices in the community banking division of Wells Fargo for years distorted “culture and management performance” and “created pressure on employees to sell unwanted or unneeded products to customers, and, in some cases, to open unauthorized accounts.”
Also on Monday, Wells Fargo CEO Tim Sloan said that roughly 1,000 employees who left the bank over the questionable sales procedures have been rehired.
Produced by independent board members of the bank, along with outside legal investigator, the report blasted Wells Fargo executives for failing to properly investigate the activity, cultivating an atmosphere of unrealistic expectations and hiding information about the extent of the crisis that ultimately led to millions of dollars in fines, plus lawsuits and additional investigations.
Wells Fargo board Chairman Stephen Sanger also acknowledged in a Monday conference call with reporters that board members “could have pushed more forcefully to change leadership at the community bank.”
While conceding he could not “promise perfection” in the efforts to regain trust from customers and regulators, Sloan said, “I’m very confident we’re on the right track.”
Sloan succeeded former CEO John Stumpf, who resigned in October amid the scandal fallout. Stumpf will lose an additional $28 million in compensation beyond the $41 million and 2016 bonus he previously agreed to forgo, the report said.
The report also said the bank has canceled $47.3 million in additional stock options owed to Carrie Tolstedt, who previously headed the community banking division where the scandal erupted. Tolstedt, who previously lost $19 million in compensation, resigned in June.
The report’s findings compound the San Francisco-based bank’s crisis ahead of an April 25 annual meeting, where board members will stand for re-election. Stockholder advisory group Institutional Shareholder Services last week recommended that Wells Fargo shareholders vote against re-election for 12 of the company’s 15 directors. Wells Fargo, which is scheduled to report quarterly earnings on Thursday, last week rejected the ISS recommendation.
The ISS move “fails to recognize the active engagement of the Board and the substantial actions it has already taken to strengthen oversight and increase accountability at all levels of Wells Fargo, including important improvements to corporate governance,” Wells Fargo said in a statement.
Stumpf could not be reached for comment. However, Stumpf “took responsibility” for the improperly aggressive practices and was “totally cooperative” with investigators, said Stuart Baskin, a Shearman & Sterling law firm partner involved in the bank’s internal investigation.
An attorney for Tolstedt, Enu Mainigi, in a formal statement said: “We strongly disagree with the report and its attempt to lay blame with Ms. Tolstedt. A full and fair examination of the facts will produce a different conclusion.”
Tolstedt was not immediately available Monday.
Tolstedt declined to be interviewed for the investigation on the advice of legal counsel, Baskin said.
In all, Wells Fargo has acknowledged it may have opened up to 2.1 million accounts without customers’ permission, along with unwanted credit cards and other financial products. The sales resulted from community bank managers pressing lower level bank employees to meet aggressive cross-selling targets that for years had made Wells Fargo the envy of the banking industry as the sales boosted the bank’s bottom line.
But the sales practices also triggered numerous complaints from employees. Spurred in part by a December 2013 report on the practices by the Los Angeles
Times, the Office of the Comptroller of the Currency, the Consumer Financial Protection Bureau and the Los Angeles City Attorney’s office hit Wells Fargo with $185 million in fines and penalties last year.
At that time, Wells Fargo acknowledged that an estimated 5,300 employees had been fired as the magnitude of the sales excesses emerged.
Many bank workers complained that they had been victimized for acceding to their bosses’ sales demands. Tolstedt allegedly “minimized and understated” the problems in a 2015 report to the board, whose members only learned of the extent of the employee firings when regulators penalized Wells Fargo last year.
“We strongly disagree with the report and its attempt to lay blame with Ms. Tolstedt.”
Enu Mainigi, an attorney for former Wells Fargo executive Carrie Tolstedt, who resigned in June