Hawaii fares poorly in retirement study

Hawaii fares poorly in retirement study

A new study ranks Hawaii 49th out of the 50 states and the District of Columbia for retirement, making the state the third worst in the U.S. in which to retire.

Researchers for personal finance site WalletHub.com analyzed 24 factors, including adjusted cost of living, public hospital rankings and entertainment options.

Hawaii has the highest adjusted cost of living and the 49th-highest annual cost of in-home services, and the state is in the bottom five for number of museums per capita.

Conversely, Hawaii’s life expectancy rating tops the nation, and the Aloha State has an overall health care rank of fourth among all states and Washington.

Despite that, Hawaii is not ranked among the states having the highest percentage of the population age 65 and older. The state with the lowest life expectancy is Mississippi.

The overall winner of the best states for retirement study was Florida, with a total score of 70.75, compared with Hawaii’s 46.17. Florida’s affordability and quality-of-life rankings were second and third, respectively, while Hawaii’s were 49th and 42nd. Compared with Hawaii’s fourth-ranked health care status, Florida’s is at 15, according to the WalletHub analysis.

4 Twitter execs leave amid turmoil

SAN FRANCISCO >> Four of Twitter’s key executives are leaving the company in an exodus that has escalated the uncertainty facing the messaging service as it struggles to broaden its audience and lure back disillusioned investors.

Twitter CEO Jack Dorsey announced the management shake-up late Sunday. The departures were characterized as voluntary, by both Dorsey and three of the four exiting executives.

The upheaval leaves Twitter without its top engineering executive, top products executive, its head of human resources and leader of the company’s media partnerships.

McDonald’s gets lift from breakfast sales

NEW YORK >> McDonald’s says offering breakfast around the clock helped jolt its sales.

Sales at the world’s biggest hamburger chain rose 5.7 percent in the U.S. for the final three months of 2015, boosted by unseasonably warm weather and the launch of an all-day breakfast menu in October.

That marked the second straight quarter of domestic growth as McDonald’s fights to win back customers, and the best showing since early 2012. Globally, sales rose 5 percent at established locations.

Ford pulls out of Japan, Indonesia

DETROIT >> Ford Motor Co. is pulling out of Japan and Indonesia, saying that market conditions in each country have made it difficult to increase sales or make sustained profits.

Ford said Japan is the “most closed, developed auto economy in the world” and that in Indonesia it struggled to compete without local manufacturing and vehicles to sell in key market segments.

Neither market is large for the automaker. Last year Ford sold only 6,100 cars and trucks in Indonesia and only 5,000 in Japan.

Sprint axes 2,500, closes call centers

NEW YORK >> Cellphone company Sprint is eliminating more jobs as it tries to cut costs and turn around its business.

Sprint spokesman Dave Tovar says the country’s No. 4 wireless service provider has cut about 2,500 jobs since fall, or about 8 percent of its workforce. Last week it notified employees at six customer service centers around the country that it would be closing those locations or reducing the staff there.

The latest round of layoffs follows 2,000 job cuts announced in November 2014.

Economists expect slower sales, growth

WASHINGTON >> Business economists are more pessimistic about their firms’ future sales and profits than they were last fall, and more predict slower economic growth, a survey found.

At the same time, a majority of economists surveyed by the National Association for Business Economics said their firms plan to raise wages in the January-March quarter. That is the largest proportion that expects to raise pay since mid-2014.

Aside from the planned pay rise, the survey paints a mostly gloomy view of the economy at the start of 2016.

On the Move

Honolulu Community Action Program Inc. has named Shari Martin program manager for its Ha Initiative: Creative STEM After-School program. She has 30 years of experience in education, including teaching, administration and curriculum development and implementation. Martin recently served as a grant curriculum developer for Kawaiaha‘o School and Samuel Kamakau Charter School.

St. Andrew’s Schools has named the following to its board of trustees: U.S. Rep. Colleen Hanabusa; Bettina Mehnert, president and chief executive officer of Architects Hawaii Ltd.; and Mary Sellers, Bank of Hawaii vice chairwoman and chief risk officer.