Nevin's Data "Points"

As the New Year begins, we are often of a mind to think about making a fresh start. If you are an individual, you may (finally) be ready to be serious about saving for retirement - or you may have mailed in that last tuition check - or crossed that age 50 threshold where you can start " catching up " on retirement savings. If you're an employer, you may well have established new goals for your retirement plans this year—a new threshold for participation, perhaps—or maybe you’ve just rolled out a new fund menu for your participants. But whether your plans - or your programs - have undergone change or not, this is a good time of year to help participants reexamine their savings goals—and perhaps even some of their “bad” retirement savings habits. Here’s a short list of “resolutions” that can help you get started. ___ Resolve to participate in your workplace retirement savings plan. If you are not already saving for your retirement in your workplace program, you ar...

A few years back — well, now it’s quite a few years back — when my kids still believed in the reality of Santa Claus, we discovered an ingenious website that purported to offer a real-time assessment of their "naughty or nice" status. Now, as Christmas approached, it was not uncommon for us to caution our occasionally misbehaving brood that they had best be attentive to how those actions might be viewed by the big guy at the North Pole. But nothing we said ever had the impact of that website — if not on their behaviors (they were kids, after all), then certainly on the level of their concern about the consequences. In fact, in one of his final years as a "believer," my son (who, it must be acknowledged, had been particularly  naughty that year) was on the verge of tears, worried that he'd find nothing under the Christmas tree but the coal and bundle of switches he so surely deserved. One could argue that many participants act as though at retirement some...

In recent years, the notion that the ways in which choices are presented to individuals — known as “choice architecture” — can influence their decisions, has been widely embraced. Well before the advent of the Pension Protection Act of 2006, the retirement plan industry had acknowledged the positive influences of those behavioral finance techniques on overcoming, or at least countering, certain human behaviors. Based on the evidence of several decades of adoption, we know that automatic enrollment — even with the ability to opt out — transforms voluntary participation rates of roughly 70% to near-unanimous participation. And yet, even with the structure and sanction of the PPA, today fewer than half of the roughly 7,000 plan sponsor respondents to the 2013 PLANSPONSOR DC Survey have implemented that design (large plans being significantly more likely to do so than smaller programs). Even plan sponsors that have adopted automatic enrollment tend to do so with a default deferral ra...

At a recent event, one of the speakers was taking our industry to task for expecting too much from participants. “We don’t expect individuals to diagnose and treat their own illness,” he said, going on to note that with 401(k)s we expect people who don’t have any knowledge or training in investments to decide how to invest those balances. Admittedly, those 401(k) investment decisions can be complicated for some — and, since it (mostly) is their money, after all, most do give individual participants the ability to decide how it will be invested. As nice as it would be if individuals were exposed to the basics of finance — saving, budgeting, investments — sometime in their lives ahead of that workplace plan enrollment meeting, or the pages of that 401(k) enrollment kit, that’s not the current system’s fault. In reality, individuals are routinely asked to make decisions on things in which they have no real knowledge or training. On numerous occasions, I’ve had plumbers and mechanics ...

This may be the time of year when thoughts turn to stockings hung by the chimney with care, but it’s also the time of year when parents have to deal with assembling some of the things in those packages. And while Santa may have elves on staff to undertake the construction of a tricycle, dollhouse or Little Tykes airplane seesaw, in our house, that "elf" was named “Dad.” A painful lesson learned over those years was the importance of following the instructions. No matter how self-evident the process appeared at the outset, or how much I thought I remembered assembling something similar in the not-too-distant past, lurching ahead and tackling things in the order I thought made most sense was inevitably a formula for disaster. And then there was the year some miscreant had apparently “liberated” the assembly instructions from the package. Since it was Christmas Eve by the time I discovered this, all I had to go by was common sense and the picture of the finished product on the...

Thanksgiving has been called a “uniquely American” holiday, and one on which it seems fitting to reflect on all for which we should be thankful. Here’s my 2014 list: I’m thankful that retirement plan coverage and participation is up, if slightly, and that there seems to be a expanding national dialogue about how to expand that. I’m thankful that a growing number of policy makers are willing to admit that the “deferred” nature of 401(k) tax preferences are, in fact, different from the permanent forbearance of other tax preferences — even if the governmental accountants and academics remain oblivious. I’m thankful that so many employers offer access to a retirement plan in the workplace — and that so many workers, given an opportunity to participate, do. I’m thankful that most workers defaulted into retirement savings programs tend to remain there — and that there are mechanisms in place to help them save and invest better than they might otherwise. I’m thankful that thos...

At a recent conference, our luncheon table got to talking about savings trends and the unique challenges of Millennials, specifically the impact of graduating with so much college debt. While several at the table had graduated with (and since paid off) college debt, the sums paled in comparison to the kinds of figures bandied about in recent headlines — or did, until I loaded up an online calculator that allowed us to see what our college debt at graduation amounted to in today’s dollars. To the collective astonishment of the retirement experts at that table, the totals, adjusted for inflation, were very much in line with the figures reported for today’s graduates. Factoring in those kinds of cost-of-living adjustments is, of course, a crucial aspect of retirement planning. Unlike Social Security, there is no annual cost-of-living “adjustment” for retirement savings—no systematic means by which those accumulated savings are increased to offset the increased costs of things like ...

The Nov. 7 issue of The   New York Times included a story about “ Finding, and Battling, Hidden Costs of 401(k) Plans .” The story focused primarily on the plight of Ronald Tussey, the named plaintiff in Tussey v. ABB, Inc. , one of the so-called “excess fee” revenue sharing cases. Tussey, now 70, claims that he was told that his retirement plan was “free,” even though, according to the Times article, “middlemen 1 were deducting expenses from his savings.” The story also notes that Tussey “never thought that his retirement plan might be flawed,” and that “he trusted his company so much he kept his money in his 401(k) long after he left.” Over the years, I have been astounded at the allegations of fiduciary misconduct in these revenue-sharing cases. Each has its own flavor, of course, but for the most part they have struck me not so much as the outcomes of bad acts, per se, but rather steps that should have been taken in keeping with their fiduciary duty to ensure that t...

Though I’ve now spent more than three decades working with employment-based benefit plans, I’ve also worked for some very different employers, ranging from organizations that employed tens of thousands of workers to those that were a fraction of that size. Those organizations were all very different, of course, but they all had at least one thing in common: All offered a workplace retirement savings program. That’s apparently not as common as one might think, certainly among smaller employers. In fact, a new study from the Employee Benefit Research Institute (EBRI) notes that the probability of a worker participating in an employment-based retirement plan increased significantly along with the size of his or her employer. How significantly? Well, the EBRI report notes that for wage and salary workers ages 21‒64 who worked for employers with fewer than 10 employees, just 13.2% participated in a plan, compared with 57.0% of those working for employers with 1,000 or more employees. ...

Several months back we acquired an aquarium, and I looked forward to filling it up with all kinds and sizes of exotic fish – only to be disappointed to find out that, despite the massive displays of what appeared to be whole schools of fish in similar sized tanks at the pet store, our tank would only support a handful of the fish I had hoped to display. The reason; they need room to thrive and grow. The more fish you want to have (and live), the bigger the tank. The IRS has now announced the new contribution and benefit limits for 2015 . Most were increased, notably the annual contribution limits for 401(k), 403(b), and 457 plans (from $17,500, where it has been for the past two years, to $18,000) and the catch-up contributions for those over age 50 (from $5,500, where it has remained since 2009, to $6,000). But since industry surveys suggest that “only” about 9%-12% currently contribute to those levels, does it matter? It’s worth remembering, of course, that these adjustments ...

As you may have heard (but may not), we recently celebrated National Save for Retirement Week. Of course, there’s no “magic” to a week dedicated to a focus on saving for retirement — even one that Congress has seen fit to acknowledge with a resolution . That said, saving for retirement — which seems far away for some (though likely not as far away as some think) — is something that many find easy to defer for another day, a more convenient time, a more settled financial situation. We all know we should do it — but some figure that it will take more time and energy than we can afford just now, some assume the process will provide a depressing, perhaps even insurmountable target, while others don’t even know how to get started. You deal with these objections all the time. However, in recognition of National Save for Retirement Week, here are five simple reasons why you, or those you care about, should save — and specifically save for retirement — now: Because you don’t want to ...

Before target-date funds were “cool” (or widely available), I had steered my mother toward an asset-allocation fund as a good place to invest her retirement plan rollover balance. The logic was, I thought, impeccable: A professional money manager would be keeping an eye on and rebalancing those investments on a regular basis. The fee was reasonable, and the portfolio was split about 60/40 between stocks and bonds, which also seemed reasonable in view of her investment horizon. From time to time Mom would call and ask if we needed to rebalance that investment — and I confidently assured her that there was no need to do so, that the fund’s design took that into account. Then at some point (though definitely between 2006 and 2008) that professional manager decided that a “better” allocation was to shift the asset allocation to be invested nearly entirely in stocks. Now, knowing how such things work, I can’t imagine that a shift that dramatic wasn’t clearly and concisely communicated to...

Is there a retirement crisis or not?  Though you may have missed it, last week a  Wall Street Journal  op-ed  (subscription required) claimed that there was an “imaginary” retirement income crisis that was being pushed by some who want to boost Social Security benefits and reduce tax incentives for saving (such as those available to 401(k) plan participants). In fact, authors Andrew Biggs and Syl Schieber claimed that the statistics relied on by the crisis were “vast overstatements, generated by methods that range from flawed to bogus.” Within a day, New School economics professor Teresa Ghilarducci responded, claiming in an opinion piece on the Huffington Post website that “ The Retirement Crisis Is Real ,” referring to the WSJ op-ed as making “startling and misleading claims.” Ultimately, those who believe (or who want to believe) that there is no retirement crisis will likely draw comfort from the assertions of Biggs and Schieber, who have made similar poin...

I’ve never been big on leftovers. Now, I know that many relish the taste of cold pizza for breakfast, while others swear that a desirable marinating takes place during storage. As for me, no matter how good the original dish, and despite the wonders of microwaving, I have a hard time getting excited about sitting down to a meal comprised of things that (at least in some cases) weren’t good enough to finish the first time. When it comes to retirement savings, most still seem to “begin” with whatever is “left over” — after bills, living expenses, food and the like. Not that we’re comfortable with that approach. A recent Wells Fargo/Gallup survey found that, taking their savings and Social Security income into consideration, more than two-thirds (69%) of investors say they are “highly” or “somewhat” confident they will have enough money to maintain their desired lifestyle throughout their retirement years. However, nearly half (46%) are still “very” or “somewhat” worried about outl...

In response to concerns that tomorrow’s retirees will run short of money, we are often told to save more, to work longer, or — as often as not these days — to work longer and save more. Certainly working and saving longer can do wonders in terms of stretching your retirement nest egg. It should probably come as no surprise that American workers are expecting to work longer. The Retirement Confidence Survey notes that in 1991, just 11% of workers expected to retire after age 65. This year that was up to 33% of workers, and another 10% who said they don’t plan to retire at all. However, the timing of the retirement decision is often not within an individual’s control. A recent survey conducted by Merrill Lynch and Age Wave found that a majority of retirees surveyed (55%) say they retired earlier than they had expected — just 7% later than they expected. Similar trends were found in EBRI’s 2014 Retirement Confidence Survey (RCS), where while more than one-in-five (22%) of workers ...

Have you heard this one? “Only about half of working Americans are covered by a workplace retirement plan.” Sure you have. It’s a statistic that is widely cited and reported, both in the mainstream press and on Capitol Hill. It comes from a reliable, objective source (the U.S. Census Bureau’s Current Population Survey) and conjures up a compelling need for action by advisors (and others) hoping and working to expand the availability of workplace retirement plans. In reviewing the Census Bureau data, the Employee Benefit Research Institute (EBRI) recently noted that , in 2011, 78.5 million workers worked for an employer or union that did not sponsor a retirement plan. That is the “less than half” number cited, and reported, with such vigor. However, when you look at the data underlying that aggregate number, you find it includes: 8.9 million people who were self-employed (and thus arguably are prevented from being covered by their own inaction); 6.2 million who were under the...

Pensions were not on my mind in 1974, certainly not on Labor Day of that year.   While I was pondering my new college textbooks, President Gerald Ford, less than a month in that role, signed into law the Employee Retirement Income Security Act of 1974 – better known to most of us as ERISA. Little did I know at the time that that law – and the structure it provided to the nation’s private pension system – would, in the years to follow, play such an integral role in my life. ERISA did not create pensions, of course; they existed in significant numbers prior to 1974.   Rather, it was designed to regulate what was there and would yet come to be – to protect the funds invested in those plans for the benefit of participants and beneficiaries with a consistent set of federal standards.   And, as part of that protection, to establish the Pension Benefit Guaranty Corporation (PBGC).   As President Ford said at the time, “It is essential to bring some order and humanity ...

It is routinely reported that 10,000 Baby Boomers are retiring every day, and yet surveys continue to indicate that Americans plan to postpone retirement. This raises the question: are more older Americans working? A recent Wall Street Journal article notes  (subscription required) that one of the biggest changes in the U.S. labor market over the past two decades has been the increasing number of people working over the age of 55. As recently as 1993, only 29% of people that age were in the labor force, but by 2012 more than 41% of that age group were still in the labor force, the highest since the early 1960s. It’s hard to find a workplace survey these days that doesn’t find workers planning to work past the traditional retirement age of 65. For example, a recent survey by the Federal Reserve found that fewer than one in five workers age 55 to 64 planned to follow the traditional retirement model of working full time until a set date and then stop working altogether. A re...

The use of assumptions was the focus of a recent report from the Employee Benefit Research Institute (EBRI), which not only highlighted the assumptions used in two separate retirement studies, but illustrated a real problem with their results. The EBRI report examined two earlier  studies — one by Pew Trusts, the other by the Center for Retirement Research at Boston College — that purported to show that the retirement prospects for Gen Xers were worse than those of the Baby Boomers. The EBRI report not only highlighted the questionable assumptions, but took the time to quantify the impact (see “ EBRI Report Calls Out Pew, CRR on Retirement Conclusions ”). Such public criticisms are a rarity, as evidenced by the media coverage accompanying the release of the EBRI report. As recently as a few years ago, I would have assumed that findings published by credentialed individuals associated with a reputable institution of higher learning could be taken at face value, if only because I...

I joined EBRI with a passion for the insights that quality research can provide, and a modest concern about the dangers that inaccurate, sloppy, and/or poorly constructed methodologies and the flawed conclusions and recommendations they support can wreak on policy decisions.  While my tenure here has only served to increase my passion for the former, on (too) many occasions I have been struck not only by the breadth of assumptions made in employee benefit research, but just how difficult – though not impossible – it is for a non-researcher to discern those particulars. We have over the past couple of years devoted some of this space to highlighting some of the most egregious instances, but as I close this chapter of my professional career, I wanted to share with you a “top 10” list of things I have learned in my search to find reliable, objective, actionable research: There are always assumptions in research; find out what they are. Garbage in, garbage out, after all (the harde...

A few months back, I was intrigued to catch several episodes of “Cosmos,” an updated version of the classic 1980 Carl Sagan series.  Along with the significantly expanded and enhanced visuals and (to me, anyway, generally annoying) animations, the series recounted the work, travails and accomplishments of Edmond Halley, who, even today, is probably best remembered for the comet whose 75-year cycle he identified and which still, as Halley’s Comet, bears his name. Halley wasn’t the first to see the comet, of course – in fact, it had been recorded by Chinese astronomers as far back as 240 BC, noted subsequently in Babylonian records, and perhaps most famously shortly before the 1066 invasion of England by William the Conqueror (who claimed the comet’s appearance foretold his success).  Halley noted appearances by the comet in 1531, 1607 and 1682, and based on those prior observations – and the application of the work and mathematical formulas of his friend Isaac Newton – pred...

My wife and I recently celebrated our wedding anniversary.  It was a special day, as they all are, but as I thought back on the events of our life together, I was struck by the realization that I have now been married for about half my life.  Not that I didn’t expect to remain married, or to live this long; if someone had asked on my wedding day if I thought I’d still be alive and married this many years hence, I’m sure that I would have expressed confidence, likely strong confidence, in both outcomes.  However, if someone on that same day had asked me to guess then where I would be living now, what I would be doing, or what my income would be (or need to be)—well, my responses would likely have been much less certain. In just a few weeks we’ll be making preparations to launch the 2015 Retirement Confidence Survey (RCS) [i] .  It is, by far, the longest-running survey of its kind in the nation.  Indeed, this will be its 25 th year.  Think for a moment ...

While the prospects for “comprehensive tax reform” may seem remote in this highly charged election year, the current tax preferences accorded employee benefits continue to be a focus of much discussion among policymakers and academics. The most recent entry was a report by the Urban Institute which simulated the short- and long-term effect of three policy options for “flattening tax incentives and increasing retirement savings for low- and middle-income workers.”  The report concluded that “reducing 401(k) contribution limits increases taxes for high-income taxpayers; expanding the saver’s credit raises saving incentives and lowers taxes for low- and middle-income taxpayers; and replacing the exclusion for retirement saving contributions with a 25 percent refundable credit benefits primarily low- and middle-income taxpayers, and raises taxes and reduces retirement assets for high-income taxpayers.” However, and to the authors’ credit, the report also noted that “the behavioral ...