That institutional-only focus has an important side benefit: Just as individual investors can swing a better deal on investment-management fees when they pool their money together via a mutual fund, so can institutional investors obtain lower fees when they pool together the assets of other institutional investors. Collective trusts don't have to market themselves like mutual funds do, nor are they subject to the same regulatory regime or reporting requirements that mutual funds are.

They're monitored by bank regulators rather than the SEC. Although, this regulation framework has its drawbacks (more on those in a second), the net effect of having to file less paperwork and hire fewer lawyers is that the collective trust fees may be lower than those of mutual funds in the same category. For example, the average expense ratio for domestic-stock collective trusts is 0.62% versus 1.01% for the average institutional share-class domestic-stock mutual fund. [Read the full article]

Paul Skidmore's office is shuttered, his job gone, his 18-month job search fruitless and his unemployment benefits exhausted. So at 63, he plans to file this week for Social Security benefits, three years earlier than planned.

"All I want to do is work," said Skidmore, of Finksburg, Md., who was an insurance claims adjuster for 37 years before his company downsized and closed his office last year. [Read the full article]

Maya MacGuineas is president of the Committee for a Responsible Federal Budget and director of the Fiscal Policy Program at the New America Foundation.

The Social Security trustees released their updated projections last week detailing the financial health of the nation's retirement system.

Bottom line: The program is running a deficit this year, and is projected to run growing deficits after 2015. But it will have money in the trust funds to pay full benefits until 2037.

Some maintain that the findings reinforce the claims that Social Security is basically on sound footing -- no need to rush to make changes and nothing a few minor tweaks won't fix. Others say the need to make changes has grown even larger.

The difference, in many ways, boils down to how you think about Social Security's "trust funds."

The trust funds hold the assets that have accumulated within Social Security from the annual surpluses the program has built up over the years. [Read the full article]

Wealth is a subjective concept, but one thing is universal in most definitions: being able to live a comfortable life without having to work.

"I'd like to have enough money so my family and I wouldn't have to work anymore or worry about the necessities, and maybe travel a bit," said Deborah Veale, a Southern California resident visiting New York City.

One woman from Seattle put it at a "couple thousand dollars a month." Another from New York City wanted a billion (although she'd still fly coach.)

On the high end of that range, a single person living in an expensive part of the country (say, New York City), wanting to retire at 35 would need at least $300,000 a year to feel rich, according to Steven Kaye, president of Watchung, N.J.-based wealth management firm American Economic Planning Group. He based that number on real-life figures his clients tell him they need. [Read the full article]