Unclaimed lottery prizes: $2 billion a year-Chris Isidore

In this Thursday, July 17, 2014 photo, lottery tickets line the counter area at Eagles Express in Knightdale, N.C. North Carolina’s lottery has steadily grown over its first decade and its leaders say it has room to grow even more in the coming years. (AP Photo/Gerry Broome)

Stashed in desk drawers, the tops of dressers, under refrigerator magnets and in piles of accumulated scrap paper lie millions of winning lottery tickets worth billions of dollars.

Brett Jacobson knows that better than anyone.
The creator of a smart phone app that alerts people if they have a winning lottery ticket, Jacobson filed public records requests with lottery commissions around the country to find out just how many prizes go unclaimed.
The total is astonishing: $2.04 billion went unclaimed in 2013 alone. Since each state runs its own lottery independently, the nationwide total had been a mystery until now. Lottery officials have estimated in the past that unclaimed prizes nationwide might approach $800 million annually.
Most of the winning tickets are worth only a couple of bucks, maybe $50 or $100 each. Many are $2 or $4 winners. But there are plenty of tickets worth thousands, even $1 million or more that never are turned in.

And Jacobson says that the annual total is likely to only grow larger.
"They're selling more and more lottery tickets every year," he said. "People don't even realize there are secondary prizes."
Jacobson said he decided to create the app when he and a group of friends rounded up a bunch of old lottery tickets and took them down to the corner store to see if they had any winners.
"We had something like $200 in winning tickets. But all but $51 of that had already expired. That was the impetus," he said.

The app, Lotto Lotto, allows lottery players to take a picture of their tickets in order to record their numbers. If the lottery was already held, it'll let them know of any prize on the ticket. If the drawing hasn't happened yet, the app will send an alert if it's a winner.
The app is free. Jacobson makes money with payments from retailers who sell lottery tickets. The app tells users where they can buy tickets, and can also alert them when jackpots reach a level at which they'll want to buy a ticket. And the retailers also benefit when the apps' users find out about a winning ticket, Jacobson said.

"The retailers and even the state lotteries want people to cash in secondary prizes," said Jacobson. "You're not going to take $4 and go home. You going to buy more tickets."

Culled from CNN money

The High Costs of the Retirement Dream-Emily Brandon

Prohibitive expenses

Retirement typically involves saving enough money to pay all your bills without working. Retired households spend an average of $40,938 per year, according to the most recent Consumer Expenditure Survey conducted by the U.S. Bureau of Labor Statistics. Here's how much it costs to retire in the U.S.:
Housing
Housing is typically the largest cost retirees face, averaging $14,034 among people age 65 and older. This amount includes $5,194 per year for owned property versus $1,818 for rented apartments. Utilities cost retirees $3,411 annually, with electricity being the largest charge. Mortgage interest and charges ($1,475), property taxes ($2,026) maintenance and insurance ($1,693) and household furnishings ($1,260) also add to the housing costs of retirees.
Food
Retirees age 65 and older spend an average of $5,126 annually on food. Most of this money is spent on meals at home ($3,301), with meat, poultry, fish and eggs ($687) and fruits and vegetables ($661) being the most expensive categories of food older Americans eat. They spend another $1,825 on food away from home.
Transportation
Driving costs tend to decline in retirement because retirees no longer need to commute to work. But retirees still need to get around. They spend an average of $6,651 annually on transportation, including the costs for gasoline, insurance, maintenance and repairs. Retirees also spend an average of $500 per year on public transportation.
Health care
Health care costs can increase in retirement, especially if your health care needs change due to illness. Retirees spend an average of $5,094 on health care, including health insurance, medical services, drugs and medical devices.
Entertainment
Retirees have a lot of newfound free time to fill, and often that ends up costing money. Those age 65 and older spend an average of $2,026 on entertainment, such as fees and admissions, audio and visual equipment and hobbies. They also spend an average of $403 on their pets.
Clothing
Although seniors no longer need work clothes in retirement, they still need to purchase new articles of clothing as they wear out. Retirees spend about $1,029 per year on apparel, including footwear.
Personal care
People age 65 and older purchase an average of $566 worth of personal care products and services, including shampoo and other hair care products, toothpaste and similar oral care tools, cosmetics, shaving and bath products.
Education
Retirees spend an average of $278 annually on education costs and $140 on reading materials, including books, newspapers and magazines. Retirees in the West and Northeast spend the most on continuing education.
Smoking
Seniors age 65 and older buy tobacco products, including cigarettes, cigars, loose smoking tobacco and smoking accessories that cost an average of $189 each year. Retirees in the Midwest and South spend more on smoking than retirees in the Northeast and West.
Charity
Retirees give away an average of $2,515 per year as cash contributions, perhaps as gifts to family members or donations to charitable, religious, educational or political organizations. Retirees in the Midwest are the most charitable, giving away $3,083.

Culled from US news

Obamacare Could Face Large Numbers of Dropouts-Brianna Ehley

Obamacare Could Face Large Numbers of Dropouts

More than half the people who enrolled in Obamacare last year don’t plan to sign up again—and that’s bad news for the president’s  health care law. 

A new Bankrate survey reveals that 53 percent of current Obamacare enrollees who signed up through the exchanges said they would not be enrolling for 2015. Their reason--“much higher prices for health plans.”
There could be many reasons for this, among them—more people are working and could have received health care benefits; more people have aged into Medicare and no longer need Obamacare as a bridge; more people find high deductibles along with an average 6 percent increase in premiums as too high burden.

An analysis by Bloomberg released last week found that premiums for plans sold on the Obamacare exchanges are going to rise by just 6 percent next year. That’s well below the “double digit” increases that some insurers had predicted earlier this year. Bloomberg noted that the lower than expected premiums in part were a result of increased insurer competition. Some 77 new insurance providers were added to the marketplace for 2015.

Bankrate also found that another reason some current Obamacare enrollees said they wouldn’t enroll in the exchanges again was the website problems they dealt with last year. Still, government officials, for their part, say the federal website has been improved and though it won’t be perfect, it will provide consumers with a better experience than last year.

Obamacare’s second open enrollment season begins in just two weeks, and unlike last year’s nightmarish website problems, the biggest challenge could still be getting people to sign up.

That’s also the conclusion of a survey from the Kaiser Family Foundation, which found that nine out of ten uninsured Americans are unaware that open enrollment for individual plans starts in November. Some two-thirds of uninsured respondents said they know “only a little” or “nothing at all” about the law. More than half of the uninsured people said they had no idea that federal subsidies were available to help make coverage more affordable. 

This is an alarming finding, since the key goal of the law is to expand coverage to qualified uninsured people. If those people are unaware of the law and its specific provisions to help them afford coverage, then the administration’s outreach efforts may be failing. 

"I think a lot of work needs to be done," Kaiser’s Mollyann Brodie, told CNBC. "We're at the very early stages of the second enrollment period, and right now one of the main target audiences is not primed or focused on it."

Culled from Fiscal Times in Yahoo Finance