Now, more than three decades later, the gold-hued fare card and its notoriously finicky magnetic strip are following the token into retirement.

The last day to buy or refill a MetroCard is Dec. 31, 2025, as the transit system fully transitions to OMNY, a contactless payment system that allows riders to tap their credit card, phone or other smart device to pay fares, much like they do for other everyday purchases.

Transit officials say more than 90% of subway and bus trips are now paid using the tap-and-go system, introduced in 2019.

Major cities around the world, including London and Singapore, have long used similar contactless systems. In the U.S., San Francisco launched a pay-go system earlier this year, joining Chicago and others.

MetroCards upended how New Yorkers commute

The humble MetroCard may have outlasted its useful life, but in its day it was revolutionary, says Jodi Shapiro, curator at the New York Transit Museum in Brooklyn, which opened an exhibit earlier this month reflecting on the MetroCard’s legacy.

Before MetroCards, bus and subway riders relied on tokens, the brass-colored coins introduced in 1953 that were purchased from station booths. When the subway opened in 1904, paper tickets cost just a nickel, or about $1.82 in today’s dollars.

“There was a resistance to change from tokens to something else because tokens work,” Shapiro said on a recent visit to the museum, housed underground in a decommissioned subway station. “MetroCards introduced a whole other level of thinking for New Yorkers.”

The Metropolitan Transportation Authority launched public campaigns to teach commuters how to swipe the originally blue-colored cards correctly, hoping to avoid the dreaded error message or lost fares. Officials even briefly toyed with the idea of an quirky mascot, the Cardvaark, before coming to their senses.

The cards quickly became collectors items as the transit system rolled out special commemorative editions marking major events, such as the “Subway Series” between baseball’s New York Mets and the New York Yankees in the 2000 World Series. At the time, a fare cost $1.50.

Artists from David Bowie and Olivia Rodrigo to seminal New York hip hop acts, such as the Wu-Tang Clan, the Notorious B.I.G. and LL Cool J, have also graced the plastic card over the years, as have iconic New York shows like Seinfeld and Law & Order.

“For me, the most special cards are cards which present New York City to the world,” said Lev Radin, a collector in the Bronx. “Not only photos of landmarks, skylines, but also about people who live and make New York special.”

Perfecting the correct angle and velocity of the MetroCard swipe also became something of a point of pride separating real New Yorkers from those just visiting.

During her failed 2016 presidential campaign, Hillary Clinton, a former U.S. Senator from New York, took an excruciating five swipes at a Bronx turnstile. In fairness, her chief Democratic opponent at the time, U.S. Sen. Bernie Sanders of Vermont, a native Brooklynite, didn’t even appear to realize tokens had been discontinued.

Cost savings and lingering concerns

Unlike the MetroCard rollout, OMNY has required little adjustment.

Riders reluctant to use a credit card or smart device can purchase an OMNY card they can reload, similar to a MetroCard. Existing MetroCards will also continue to work into 2026, allowing riders to use remaining balances.

MTA spokespersons declined to comment, pointing instead to their many public statements as the deadline approaches.

The agency has said the changeover saves at least $20 million annually in MetroCard-related costs.

The new system also allows unlimited free rides within a seven-day period because the fare is capped after 12 rides. It’ll max out at $35 a week once the fare rises to $3 in January.

Still, new changes come with tradeoffs, with some critics raising concerns about data collection and surveillance.

Near Times Square on a recent morning, Ronald Minor was among the dwindling group of “straphangers” still swiping MetroCards.

The 70-year-old Manhattan resident said he’s sad to see them go. He has an OMNY card but found the vending machines to reload it more cumbersome.

“It’s hard for the elders,” Minor said as he caught a train to Brooklyn. “Don’t push us aside and make it like we don’t count. You push these machines away, you push us away.”

John Sacchetti, another MetroCard user at the Port Authority stop, said he likes being able to see his balance as he swipes through a turnstile so he knows how much he’s been spending on rides.

“It’s just like everything else, just something to get used to,” he said as he headed uptown. “Once I get used to it, I think it’ll be okay.”

A recent decision by the Securities and Exchange Commission to begin allowing fund companies to create ETF share classes of traditional mutual funds is expected to lead to a flood of new ETFs on the market, but State Street‘s fund management arm, State Street Investment Management, has other ideas.

The ETF giant, which manages roughly $1.7 trillion in its SPDRs ETF family — including the oldest and most-widely traded S&P 500 exchange-traded fund, SPY, and the biggest gold ETF, GLD — sees the SEC greenlight as an opportunity to bring a new ETF challenge to the retirement plan market.

It’s planning to adopt the SEC decision, in reverse, offering mutual fund share classes of its ETF strategies in the massive U.S. retirement plan market, which has typically been closed to ETFs.

Anna Paglia, State Street Investment Management’s chief business officer, said on CNBC’s “ETF Edge” on Monday that retirement plan markets where ETFs have not to date been represented as core index fund options, including the 401(k) and 403(b) market, are an opportunity she estimated at a size of $4 trillion, and will be a focus.

Some of the benefits of ETFs, such as more efficient tax trading, may not be important to investors in tax-deferred retirement plans. ETFs’ intraday valuation — they trade in real time throughout the day like stocks, as opposed to traditional mutual funds’ once-a-day valuation — has also been an issue for some plan sponsors. But the low fees and massive scale of State Street’s assets under management give it an advantage in offering investors and retirement plan sponsors competitive portfolio offerings.

“We now have $1.7 trillion in ETF assets,” Paglia said, explaining that the company can use its existing scale to create a more competitive offering regardless of share class. “The enemy of efficiency is fragmentation,” Paglia said.

In a Barron’s op-ed recently penned by Paglia to explain the company’s thinking, she noted that while the tax efficiency that attracts many investors to ETFs can’t be replicated in the retirement plan market, what are called the “in-kind flows” used in ETF management can lead to lower costs and better performance over time for retirement investors.

“That is because when large institutions redeem ETF shares, ETFs aren’t forced to sell investments to raise cash like mutual funds. Instead, ETF issuers can transfer securities directly to these large institutions, typically market makers or broker-dealers, through ‘in-kind’ redemptions. By avoiding selling in the open market, this process helps lower turnover and associated trading costs in the underlying portfolio — efficiencies that benefit investors in all share classes,” Paglia wrote.

State Street’s largest ETFs

1. SPDR S&P 500 ETF Trust (SPY)
   Assets: $698 billion
   Expense ratio: 0.0945%
2. SPDR Gold Shares (GLD)
   Assets: $132 billion
   Expense ratio: 0.40%
3. State Street SPDR Portfolio S&P 500 ETF (SPYM)
   Assets: $95 billion
   Expense ratio: 0.02%
4. Technology Select Sector SPDR Fund (XLK)
   Assets: $95 billion
   Expense ratio: 0.08%
5. Financial Select Sector SPDR Fund (XLF)
   Assets: $52 billion
   Expense ratio: 0.08%

Source: State Street

The SEC recently began the greenlighting of ETF share classes of traditional mutual funds with an application from Dimensional Fund Advisors. The mutual fund industry is expected to move in droves to adopt this new ETF provision. More than 70 fund providers have applications pending and the ICI, the main fund industry trade group, recently told “ETF Edge” it has been working with hundreds of fund companies to be prepared to take advantage of the SEC exemptive relief.

However, the current government shutdown has put a hold on any further actions, including State Street’s plans for ETFs to be made available as mutual funds in the retirement market. When State Street Investment Management is able to move forward, there will be a question of which ETFs in particular can stand out in the 401(k) market. While greater trading and cost efficiencies can be gained by trading across more than one share class, many core strategies in the ETF lineup are already offered by State Street to retirement investors in traditional fund portfolio shares.

And in an asset management industry where ETFs and index funds from giants like Fidelity Investments and Vanguard Group have pushed fees literally down to zero, economies of scale across portfolios are already critical to competing for investor assets. Fidelity already offers four zero-fee core index mutual funds. The expense ratio on Vanguard’s record-breaking S&P 500 ETF (VOO), which has set an all-time high in annual flows for an ETF, is three basis points (0.03%). State Street’s SPYM, a new version of SPY, has an expense ratio of two basis points (0.02%).

But ETFs have become the go-to way for many investors to access any kind of market strategy, from core equity to thematic equity to ever-narrower slices of the bond market, as well as alternatives including precious metals and crypto.

“Mutual funds are the way for ETF-oriented companies to … meet investors where they are,” said Todd Rosenbluth, head of research at VettaFi, on “ETF Edge.”

He noted that State Street isn’t the only asset manager planning to create mutual fund share classes of ETFs, with F/M Investments planning a similar approach to benefit from the SEC decision.

Making the world’s biggest gold fund more widely available at a potentially lower cost in 401(k) plans comes at a time when many more investors are adding gold as a bigger allocation in a traditional portfolio, often at the expense of bond funds. But given the existing low-cost stock and bond options across the major fund companies and retirement plan providers, Rosenbluth said State Street’s biggest opportunities to stand out in the 401(k) market at an individual portfolio level beyond GLD may be with its Select Sector SPDRs like XLK and XLF, and newer alternative ETFs it has launched like SPDR Bridgewater ALL Weather ETF (ALLW) and SPDR SSGA IG Public & Private Credit ETF (PRIV) that provide retail investors access to portfolio strategies typically only available to institutional investors.

ALLW, a global multi-asset allocation fund, includes billionaire hedge fund manager Ray Dalio’s Bridgewater Associates as a sub-advisor. PRIV was the first ETF with significant private credit exposure approved by the SEC, though not without some controversy. 

Paglia described the plans as being less about marketing any particular strategy and more in terms of creating a structure for State Street’s fund business that can bring the best of the ETF structure into more markets. “The ETF technology is the most efficient technology in this market but the ETF technology is not the appropriate wrapper for everybody,” Paglia said on CNBC’s “ETF Edge.”

“In my view, the retirement industry is not benefitting from the innovation that the ETF industry is bringing to the market and is benefiting from,” she added.

To be sure, State Street is already a huge player in the retirement market, third overall in assets under management in “defined contribution investment only” assets (those gathered through other third-party managed retirement platforms). State Street does not have its own defined contribution recordkeeping business similar to those offered by Fidelity, Vanguard, and Empower. But in assets within strategies across retirement plans, State Street is behind only Vanguard and BlackRock (which runs the iShares ETF family), according to Cerulli Associates, with over $800 billion and annual growth of 19% in 2024.

State Street historically has had more collective investment trust offerings than traditional mutual funds for the retirement market, and depending on the ETF strategies they are adapting to mutual funds, there is an opportunity for growth in the small and mid market plan segments, which historically have had limited access to CITs due to their size, according to Cerulli.

The fragmentation Paglia cited stems from the fact that there are many legal wrappers for portfolio strategies used across retirement plans, including collective investment trusts, target date funds, mutual funds, and ETFs.

“My IRA is invested in ETFs, but my 401(k) plan is not,” she said. “It’s not a conversation about ETFs vs. mutual funds,” Paglia said. But she added that with the SEC giving the ability, when the government reopens, to asset managers to have different share classes, State Street can take advantage of the size and scale of its ETF business. “We do have the power of scale,” she said. “We also have the power of content because we have hundreds of strategies. … and once you combine content and cost you have something investors may benefit from in the end.”

Correction: An earlier version of this article included incorrect assets under management data for the top State Street SPDR ETFs due to an editing error.

The Cabinet of Ministers has approved the extension of the compulsory age limit of retirement for government medical officers up to 63 years, with amendments to be made in line with the Pensions Act.

This decision allows government doctors who were set to retire by December 31, 2024, to continue serving until the age of 63. 

The extension applies to specialist doctors, all Grades of Medical Officers, Specialist Dental Surgeon, all Dental Surgeons, all Medical Officers in Medical Administrative Grade, and all government-registered medical officers.

Previously, the compulsory retirement age for government medical officers was lowered  from 65 to 60 years by then government in 2022. 

The time bomb is in the form of the huge tax bill many savers will owe when they start taking distributions from widely-used tax-deferred retirement accounts like 401(k)s and traditional IRAs—and that bill is only likely to increase, says IRA expert Ed Slott, who recently released the book The Retirement Savings Time Bomb Ticks Louder.

As it stands, those who invest in a 401(k) or traditional IRA don’t pay taxes on the contributions, with the understanding that the bill will come due in retirement when they withdraw funds. But that means that the amount displayed on account statements is far higher than what savers will actually be able to spend on living expenses, says Slott. And many people don’t understand just how much they could owe.

“None of these accounts have been taxed, that’s the deal we made with the government. We get a tax deduction, but we’ll pay for it later,” Slott, who worked as a certified public accountant for 40 years, tells Fortune. “The IRA is an IOU to the IRS.”

And thanks to a soaring stock market, sizable inheritances, and a growing emphasis on investing early, Americans have an astounding amount of wealth tied up in these accounts. In the first quarter of 2024, Americans had $7.8 trillion invested in 401(k)s and $14.3 trillion in IRAs, according to the Investment Company Institute. Meaning retirement savers owe trillions in taxes.

While many people are focused on how much they should be saving now, Slott says more need to start accounting for their tax bill in retirement.

“If you don’t fix this now, you’re going to pay a lot later,” says Slott. “You have to look at the big picture. Don’t look at, ‘what I can save now,’ look at, ‘what I can get and my family can get longer-term.’”

Now’s the time for a Roth conversion

One way to defuse the bomb? A Roth IRA conversion. Savers will pay taxes now, but that’s better than waiting, says Slott. Especially because tax rates are “on sale right now,” with the top federal rate maxing out at 37% (many people pay rates as low as 10 or 12%). It’s the best deal many may ever get.

“We’re at the lowest historical lowest rates many of us are likely to ever see,” says Slott. “You don’t realize how good you have it now. These are the good old days.”

A Roth conversion involves transferring assets from a traditional IRA to a Roth IRA. Taxes are paid at the time of conversion (ordinary income taxes on the fair market value of the assets that are converted, as part of the saver’s tax bill the following April), and while no one likes to pay taxes upfront, says Slott, it’s never made more sense to do so. In over 40 years, he’s never had a client regret a Roth conversion, he says. And while the highest earners are restricted from contributing to a Roth outright, there is no income limit on Roth conversions.

“As long as you’re paying the tax, it will grow for the rest of your life income-tax free,” he says. “All that compounding is growing in your favor, you don’t have to share it anymore with Uncle Sam. That’s what you get for paying now at bargain basement rates.”

Potential tax law changes make today’s rates look doubly good. While many people expect to fall into a lower tax bracket in retirement, that isn’t always the case—Slott calls the belief you will be in a lower bracket the “number one retirement myth”). And given that the individual tax cuts implemented as part of the 2017 Tax Cuts and Jobs Act expire after 2025, many people may see their tax burden increase. (Depending on the outcome of this year’s presidential election, they may not be renewed.)

Slott also points to the country’s current debt level—it sits at more than $35 trillion—as another reason he believes tax rates will increase. He argues that the last thing many people want is their retirement savings subjected to the uncertainty of what tax rates could be in the future.

“Either Congress is going to keep kicking the can down the road, or they’ll have to raise taxes,” he says. “And the people at the highest risk of getting hit with those taxes are the ones with the most money in these tax-deferred vehicles.”

Recent tax law changes also make traditional IRAs less appealing retirement savings vehicles, says Slott. Savers will start taking required minimums distributions (RMDs) at age 73, and the so-called stretch IRA was eliminated.

“When you do Roth conversions, you are controlling your tax rates. You can control each year what you’re paying,” he says. “With RMDs, you’re not controlling anything. It’s a forced distribution.”

Other planning options include charitable giving and purchasing life insurance. Whatever planning savers are spurred to do now, it’s better than standing idly by and getting a surprise in retirement, he says.

“There’s an opportunity now to get that money out,” says Slott. “After next year, rates are supposed to go up again. So you still have [around] two years at the rock bottom tax rates.”

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