Nevin's Data "Points"

With lightning speed, the House managed to cobble together an economic stimulus package last week, the Senate will take it up this week, and President Bush seems anxious to sign it. Even more amazing in the current political environment (and in an election year, no less), there appears to have been true compromise on both sides of the aisle in pulling it all together. But for those of us who focus not only on the importance of saving for retirement, but on trying to remedy the inefficient (and non-existent) savings behaviors of working Americans, there were huge ironies in the logic behind this particular stimulus, IMHO. I fully appreciate the economic spiral that sometimes sets in – people get worried about their personal finances, quit spending on non-essentials, which leads to less revenues for businesses, whose employees get worried about THEIR personal finances, and who subsequently quit spending on non-essentials, which leads to…well, you get the point. I’ll also confess ...

After months of research, informal talks with vendors, and not a few inquiries to a few “trusted advisers,” just before Christmas, we finally made our decision. We bought a Blu-Ray DVD. Now, that may not mean much to many of you. However, even the most casual renter of DVDs these days is frequently subjected to a commercial for that “next level” of viewing experience. The problem, of course, is that there are two levels: HD and Blu-Ray. The former has been around longer and, at this writing, that means that there are more movies in that format. The latter, if one is to believe the research, is “better” technology (you can put five times as much content/material on a Blu-Ray as on regular DVD versus just two times as much on an HD)—but your movie selection in that format (today) is smaller (none of this matters unless you also have a high-definition TV capable of displaying all this grandeur, by the way). The other problem, of course, is HD and Blu-Ray are not compatible. You can’...

Back in 2003, when then-New York Attorney General Eliot Spitzer launched his investigation into mutual fund trading practices, two distinct areas were highlighted: late trading, which was illegal on its face (particularly so when facilitated by the fund companies themselves), and market-timing, which, as we were reminded in a parenthetical comment in nearly every story regarding the scandal, was not (though nearly every fund prospectus claimed to discourage such patterned trading and promised to take steps to deter it). That distinction was frequently glossed over in the coverage that followed—and the settlements that ensued. When all was said and done, a large number of chastened fund complexes had forked over a large amount of money (much of it to the coffers of the Empire State) and agreed to adopt new controls and procedures designed to ensure that the wrongdoing they never admitted to doing never happened again. So much commotion was raised, in fact, that the Securities and Exc...

Just after Christmas my family flew to Chicago for a surprise – my mother-in-law’s 85th birthday. It was a huge success – she wasn’t expecting us – in fact, wasn’t expecting to have all three of her children and their families in town on that day. Over the course of our time there, I heard her tell several people “I never thought I’d make it this long.” Now, my mother-in-law doesn’t look (or act) 85. Still, even by today’s lengthening longevity standards, 85 is a long time – and, even as we planned our surprise trip “home”, we couldn’t help but wonder how many more birthdays we’d have together. None of us know how many birthdays we’ll have – and how many of those will happen during retirement. Indeed, contemplation of our personal mortality is something that most, IMHO, reserve for special, isolated occasions (some not even then, of course). And yet, one of the most important aspects of planning for a financially secure retirement is making some attempt to predict just how long th...