Nevin's Data "Points"

Like many of you perhaps, I suddenly realized this past week that this week is Thanksgiving. For me, 2006 has been an extraordinary year on fronts both personal and professional: turning 50, the death of my father, my 20th wedding anniversary, sending our first kid off to college, #2 turning 16, PLANSPONSOR’s first industry conference, a new adviser magazine…oh, and a little piece of legislation called the Pension Protection Act. Still, as I sit here today preparing to pick my mother up at the airport for her first Thanksgiving visit with us in the northeast – and look ahead to picking up my eldest at college next week – I’m struck by just how much there is to be thankful for. First and foremost, I’m thankful for a loving and patient family – who must all too frequently endure the intrusions of my career-long passion for this field into our daily lives. I’m thankful for the home I have found at PLANSPONSOR , and the warmth with which its loyal readers have embraced me, as well as the

However you feel about the results of last week’s elections, there’s little disputing that things are going to be different in Washington. Amazingly, though perhaps not surprisingly, I’m already getting invitations to presentations, or offers to send me assessments, on what all this change will mean for benefit programs generally, and retirement savings specifically. My initial reaction was a bit like when I walked into the mall last weekend and was confronted with Christmas displays – it’s too soon for this! I doubt that many went to the polls with pensions on their minds (even those of us who make our living supporting them), and with the ink on the Pension Protection Act of 2006 still damp, one is tempted to think that we have all the regulatory help we’ll need until after the next election – at least. Personally, I’m not expecting much out of this Congress, certainly not on pensions (does anyone really think that the momentary comity displayed for the television cameras will last?

If you have turned on a TV, walked by a radio, or driven down a residential street in the past month, you will, of course, be aware that our nation will go to the polls tomorrow. Certainly, politics has never been a pretty business, but I doubt that I would get much argument in stating that this particular political season has been as nasty, vitriolic, and personal as any in recent memory—including not a few of those ads where the candidate’s visage appears to say that he or she “approved this message.” Like a couple of bickering siblings, both sides protest either that they didn’t start it, or that it is the other side’s fault. Lowered to levels of political discourse that once would have gotten your mouth washed out with soap, the verbal free-for-all threatens to obfuscate not only the real issues in this election, but the truth itself. We’re all sick and tired of it—even when they’re dishing the dirt on the candidate we’re hoping is forced to slink off the public stage in disgrace c