Nevin's Data "Points"

By now, most brackets tied to NCAA March Madness   are already busted . That didn’t take long. Then again, it never does. Every March, millions of us confidently — or at least optimistically — predict outcomes in a tournament defined by unpredictability. We study matchups, trends, seeding history, and (too) often assume that the track record of colleges of our youth remains constant — and then watch a 12-seed dismantle our assumptions before the first weekend is out. Though in fairness,  alumni  affections DO plan a role (well, for those of you whose alma mater makes it into the tournament, anyway). If that sounds familiar, it should. Because in a lot of ways, retirement planning isn’t all that different. It’s focused (or should be) on projections based on reasonable assumptions — expected returns, steady contributions, rational behavior over time. And then reality intervenes. Markets don’t cooperate. Emergencies emerge. Excrement occurs. Life happens. And ...

  After years of anticipation — and months of litigation — the Department of Labor’s latest attempt to expand the definition of fiduciary investment advice is now dead. That said, and with apologies to Mark Twain, reports of the “death” of the fiduciary rule are somewhat exaggerated. The 2024 version — the so-called Retirement Security Rule — was  vacated , which, in legal terms, means we treat it as if it never existed. But ERISA’s fiduciary framework remains very much alive. Indeed, for advisors already serving as fiduciaries for retirement plans under the Employee Retirement Income Security Act of 1974, the practical impact of the recent court ruling is minimal. Advisors serving as 3(21) fiduciaries or 3(38) investment managers were — and remain — subject to ERISA’s duties of prudence and loyalty.  Many advisory firms, frankly, had already adopted procedures and business models that would likely have satisfied even the Obama-era fiduciary rule. Where the rule...

   Every few months another headline pops up lamenting the inadequacy of the “average” 401(k) balance. The implication is usually the same: Americans aren’t saving enough, retirement is in peril, and the numbers prove it. The problem isn’t that the math is wrong. The problem is that the math is answering the wrong question. I’ve noted before how misleading averages can be — and, frankly, medians aren’t a lot better when it comes to tracking 401(k) savings. The issue isn’t the arithmetic; it’s the reality of how people actually work and save. Because people change jobs. And when they change jobs, they change 401(k)s — and 401(k) providers. They might leave the balance behind with the old employer (something that happens a lot). They might roll it over to an IRA (which probably happens a lot as well), in which case it disappears from 401(k) tracking altogether. Or they might roll it into their new employer’s plan — though that still seems to be the minority outcome. Regardless o...

  It’s hard to believe that I’ve now been “retired” for three years. That said, there are some things that, in hindsight, I wish I had known and/or acted on sooner. And a couple that I actually did - but might easily have overlooked.  Here they are: Do More Roth — Sooner I’ve long been a huge fan of Roth. It’s not hard to look at the federal government’s finances, the current tax brackets, and figure out that the rates aren’t likely to get any lower in the future. And yes, for the last decade or so of work, I went all Roth, including catch-ups. In fairness, Roth wasn’t an option for most of my retirement savings career. Even so, in those first years, recordkeepers weren’t really ready — and I, like most of my generation, had by then been so thoroughly coached on the advantages of pre-tax accumulations — well, it was easy to shrug off Roth as one of those things of which only the wealthy could afford to benefit. But — and particularly as I got closer to retirement — the questio...