Nevin's Data "Points"

This past week, my son graduated from high school. It was a big deal for our family, as any graduation would be. However, this was in some ways a particularly special night, since my son is our youngest, and thus—well, it will be our last high school graduation (until grandchildren come along, anyway). The weather chased us inside for the ceremony, which also afforded us one more time to walk the halls that my kids had gotten so familiar with (and which still seem like a maze to me). Mostly, it was an occasion to look back one more time before turning our attention to the future. For me, it was a chance to look back and try to bring to mind my own high school graduation—and all the things that have happened in my life since then. So, for my son—and all the other graduates out there—here are some things I wish I had known when I was your age: If you don’t speak up, people will assume you’re happy with the way things are. If you don’t love yourself, nobody else will. If you wouldn...

The underlying theme of last week’s PLANSPONSOR National Conference was “measuring up,” a reference not only to the need to measure the performance and outputs of a retirement plan’s designs, but also to the opportunity to increase and enhance it in the process. Of late, fees are very much on everyone’s mind, as we all prepare for a new series of plan, and ultimately, participant, disclosures. Just ahead of those disclosures, the industry has launched a new generation of plan fee benchmarking services. Each looks at different things, each has its own set of weightings and assumptions, and each draws from a different source. But for my money, here are 10 things you should know about any service that purports to help you benchmark your plan: What is the source of the database that serves as a point of comparison? Is the database itself large enough to be relevant? Does it include relevant points of comparison with your program in terms of plan size, industry, and/or geographic loca...

I’ve long adhered to the wisdom of having a “Plan B,” a fallback position if the things you hope will work out—don’t. Now, sometimes those fallbacks aren’t completely well-formed (ask my wife), but to my way of thinking, assuming that everything will work out “according to plan” is just tempting fate. When it comes to saving for retirement—or, more accurately, to having enough saved for retirement—workers have long had a set of “Plan Bs,” though not always completely well-formed, to put it mildly. They have assumed that if they weren’t saving enough at present, they would “catch up” by saving more “later”; they have assumed market returns to grow their accounts that defied reality (if not common sense); and some have gone so far as to assume they had a pension coming in situations where it was clear that no such safety net would be present. 1 And then, this past week, a study published by the Employee Benefit Research Institute (EBRI) threw cold water on what has, IMHO, been a “bes...

Much to my surprise, my son went to prom this weekend. Now, I realize that a lot of kids go to prom—and I also realize that more don’t go than is generally appreciated by those who do. But my son, who at present isn’t in a relationship (and certainly not one serious enough to make prom attendance a “requirement”), has long been of the mindset that prom was just a lot of “bother,” and an expensive bother at that. Having committed himself to this event, however, we of course had to contend with all those things that constitute that “bother”: renting a tux, selecting flowers for his date, etc. Later there emerged items like the expectations around the table at which (and with whom) he and his date would sit and the gathering(s) beforehand—and afterwards. For the very most part, he dealt with each new “decision” calmly, though as time went on, you could see him taking deep breaths as he contemplated just how much more of this “bother” he would have to endure (girls seem to have a lot mo...