Sometimes Maggie Smith worries that she may outlive her savings.
"It's an uncomfortable feeling to realize that everything is going up except your income," said the 74-year-old from Galloway, New Jersey.
Rising home and car insurance costs have forced her to dip into savings which have been earning less than 1.0 percent.
That isn't likely to change for some years.
The Federal Reserve said on Wednesday that it is likely to keep its key interest rate near zero until late 2014. That would make more than five years of rock-bottom rates.
For Smith and other pensioners struggling to cope with inflation higher than the rate of interest they earn on their savings, all of this amounts to, as she puts it, "being punished" for being prudent.
She is a casualty of the Fed's strategy to keep rates low in an attempt to generate the economic growth needed to lower the nation's jobless rate. Low borrowing costs also prevent the federal government's debt burden from getting even further out of control.
Central banks in other developed nations, including the European Union, have adopted similar policies.
http://news.yahoo.com/insight-today-pays-owe-money-while-savers-suffer-174742432.html
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