Building a Better World, Together

What's at stake: Consumers are 15 times more likely to save for retirement if they can have the money deducted from their paychecks. But almost half of American private-sector workers—an estimated 87 million people—work for an employer that doesn't offer them that option.

That dynamic is partly to blame for our country's massive retirement savings shortfall. A recent Government Accountability Office report says nearly half of Americans approaching retirement have saved nothing at all.

New Jersey is the latest state to try tackling the problem. In March, Gov. Phil Murphy signed a law requiring businesses with 25 or more employees that currently don't offer a retirement plan to enroll their workers in the new NJ Secure Choice Retirement Savings Program.

The 1.7 million workers who may be eligible will be able to contribute to Roth individual retirement accounts (IRAs) through automatic paycheck deductions. They can select the type of investments and their contribution level—or decide to opt out altogether—but if they do nothing, 3 percent of their pay will go into investments tailored to their projected retirement date. The funds will be managed by the state, so the cost to businesses is minimal.

How CR has your back: CR advocated for the New Jersey program, circulating key information to legislators. And we successfully supported the enactment of a similar retirement savings program in New York in 2018. Ten states have now enacted laws to expand retirement savings options; six use an automatic IRA model.

What you can do: Get tips on saving for retirement without a 401(k).

What's at stake: Refrigerators, microwaves, lightbulbs. These and other household goods and appliances are often designed to meet federal energy standards, which end up saving Americans a lot of money on utility bills—about $63 billion in 2015, says the Department of Energy.

And those efficiencies pile up even as the products we buy deliver more features and performance. Today, for example, the average new refrigerator uses a quarter of the energy it did in 1973, while offering 20 percent more capacity.

But today's DOE has fallen behind on updating and strengthening many of these standards, and it proposed a rule that could slow or freeze further updates for some appliances.

How CR has your back: CR has advocated for efficiency standards for decades. When the federal government dragged its feet on them in the 1980s, we joined a lawsuit to push for implementation.

Now we're taking our case to Capitol Hill. In February, David Friedman, CR's vice president of advocacy, urged Congress to reject efforts to weaken the standards, citing DOE's own data showing that the average consumer saves $321 a year—thanks to efficiency standards. The DOE projects that if the standards are properly updated, that number will reach $529 by 2030. "Updating and enforcing these standards is required by law and is in the best interest of U.S. consumers," Friedman said.

What you can do: Check out our latest appliance ratings which includes tests of appliances' energy efficiency.

What's at stake: A nationally representative 2017 CR survey revealed what consumers do when the price of their prescription drugs goes up: About 1 in 3 spends less on groceries, 1 in 3 takes on additional debt, and 1 in 8 delays retirement. In short, even modest variations in the cost of drugs can have a huge impact on consumers' lives.

That's why the results of a recent CR investigation (published in the January 2019 issue) were so troubling. It found that the amount consumers pay for medications using Medicare Part D insurance coverage can vary by hundreds and even thousands of dollars a year, depending on which pharmacy a consumer uses and whether he or she makes a small mistake in the online sign-up process.

How CR has your back: Our investigation involved sending dedicated CR "secret shoppers" to price five common medications in six U.S. cities. We used the Medicare Plan Finder Tool to identify the three drug plans that would offer the least expensive retail drug costs in each city, then compared what a consumer would pay under each plan at two area pharmacies.

The variations were staggering, as Lisa Gill, the CR journalist who led the investigation, said in her testimony before the U.S. Senate Special Committee on Aging in March. In Denver, for example, the annual cost of the five drugs at one pharmacy was $688. At another just four miles away, the same plan charged $1,687, or $999 more, for the same drugs.

One result of our testimony: The Senate committee has asked the Centers for Medicare and Medicaid Services for changes to the Plan Finder Tool.

What you can do: Using our guide to choose the right Medicare Part D drug plan can help you save hundreds of dollars each year.