Safety Net

BOSTON -- Lynn Smith-Lovin was listening in the back seat of a taxi when a woman called the radio talk-show hosts to confess her affairs with a new boyfriend and a not-yet-former husband. The hosts, in their best therapeutic voices, offered their on-air opinion: "Give me an S, give me an L, give me a U." You can spell the rest. It was the sort of exchange that would leave most of us wondering why anyone would share her intimate life story with a radio host. Didn't she have anyone else to talk with?

Gael Miller is fairly sure $2 million will bankroll "a modest, not movie star" existence. Steve O'Donnell wavers between his "realistic" $1 million and his "fantasy" $4 million. Then there's Francis McAndrews, who says a cool $2.5 million should do it. The digits differ, but the dreams are the same: to accumulate a pot of dough large enough to live on comfortably after retirement. It used to be called your "life's savings." Then it became your "nest egg." These days, it's simply known as The Number, or what Lee Eisenberg describes in his recently released and buzzed-about book of that title: How much money do you have to save before you can safely retire?

WASHINGTON -- Computer glitches involving the new Medicare drug benefit could leave thousands of frail, impoverished seniors without prescription coverage on Jan. 1, a coalition of consumer groups alleged in a lawsuit against the government filed yesterday. "Because many of these persons need prescription medications to function or survive, the consequences of no longer receiving prescription drug coverage will be calamitous," warned the 19-page complaint filed in U.S. District Court in Manhattan by the Medicare Rights Center and seven other organizations.

If a new initiative by Republican Sen. Sam Brownback of Kansas to provide a marriage bonus to low-income Washington, D.C., couples becomes law, it not only would mark the first time that federal funds have been used exclusively to promote marriage but it also would set the stage for a $1.5 billion marriage promotion initiative supported by President Bush. Both proposals have been contentious. While few would disagree that a healthy marriage is good for children, adults and society, marriage promotion is rife with controversy.

UNTIL a few years ago, Debra Potter made sure that her family could cruise the Caribbean, watch the NFL on a big-screen TV and keep her elderly mother and in-laws at home in comfort. She did so by earning $250,000 a year selling more insurance than almost anybody else in Virginia, virtually all of it disability and health policies that she thought put a safety net under middle-class and affluent families such as her own. Potter so believed in the protection she was providing that she made sure she was covered under a policy her employer, Southeastern financial services giant BB&T, had with UnumProvident Corp.

Public schools, charter schools have same goal Last year, I was a guest at an event for an East Baltimore charter school that is trying to open this fall. I was invited because the charter school movement and programs such as Children's Scholarship Fund Baltimore, a school choice program, have always been mutually supportive. Our goals are the same: a quality education for our children. A speaker at the event said, "This charter school will be good for the students, the parents and even Baltimore City public schools.

Spring is here, and you're feeling festive. So you decide to have the neighbors over for a barbecue. It's all fun and games until someone is hurt on your property, loses his ability to earn income and wants yours. Will your insurance cover it? "Let's say somebody trips and falls, or worse, they jump in the pool and become a paraplegic," said Cary Carbonaro, a certified financial planner in New York and Florida. "You're getting sued.". Those three little words could end up costing you a lot of money.

WASHINGTON - When the redoubtable Newt Gingrich was speaker of the House, before a sea of troubles persuaded him suddenly to give up his official megaphone and become a private citizen, he loved to rant about the evils of "the welfare state." The phrase was his putdown of every manner of Democratic Party program that sought to help the nation's poor, elderly or otherwise disadvantaged soul, embodied in the party's self-congratulatory label as the party of the people. Mr. Gingrich still rants about the welfare state with less influence, but it doesn't matter much.

Anne Arundel County Executive Janet S. Owens has given the County Council two choices on the fate of a financially troubled Pasadena golf course: take over the complex or let a quasi-state agency keep running it with the county providing a monetary safety net. Owens' administration has submitted each solution in bill form, and both are slated to be discussed at the council's Dec. 20 meeting. Administration officials say an immediate takeover of the Compass Pointe Golf Course would be better financially for the county.

CONTINUED TERROR threats, a coming election, long-dormant inflation knocking on the door: It's enough to send even the steadiest investors running for cover. Trouble is, the old havens aren't what they used to be. Gold has already experienced a huge run-up. Utilities that once were the domain of widows and orphans have deregulated and many still are favoring growth rather than plowing cash into shareholder dividends. And in a rising-rate environment, loading up on bonds can spell disaster.