Nevin's Data "Points"

Just when you thought retirement plan projections couldn’t get any worse… Last week the National Institute on Retirement Security released a report – “ Retirement in America | Out of Reach for Most Americans? ” that claimed that the median retirement account balance among all working individuals is… $0.00. Moreover, that same report claims that “57 percent (more than 100 million) of working age individuals do not own any retirement account assets in an employer-sponsored 401(k)-type plan, individual account or pension.” It’s not the first time the NIRS has produced reports finding significant problems with the nation’s private retirement system. Indeed, this report “builds on previous NIRS research published in 2015,” though the conclusions presented here seem unusually stark. Then, as now, the NIRS conclusions rely heavily on self-reported numbers from the Federal Reserve’s Survey of Consumer Finances (SCF) and the U.S. Census Bureau’s Survey of Income and Program P...

It’s hard to believe it’s now been 10 years since the 2008 financial crisis. Let’s face it — no matter how busy or hectic your week has been, I’m betting it’s been a walk in the park compared to those times. Yes, it was just 10 years ago this week that Lehman Brothers filed for bankruptcy — the same day that Bank of America announced its plans to acquire Merrill Lynch, and a day on which, not surprisingly, the Dow Jones Industrial Average closed down just over 500 points. That, in turn, was just a day before the Fed authorized an $85 billion loan to AIG — and that on the same day that the net asset value of shares in the Reserve Primary Money Fund “broke the buck.” This was made all the more surreal to me because it was going on while I — and several hundred advisers — were in the middle of an adviser conference. Not that the folks on the panels were getting much attention. The funny thing is, looking back (and armed with the prism of 20/20 hindsight), there were lo...

Early on a bright Tuesday morning in September, I was in the middle of a cross-country flight, literally running from one terminal to another in Dallas, when, much to my dismay, my cell phone rang. It was my wife. It was September 11, 2001.   I had been on an American Airlines flight heading for L.A., after all — and at that time, not much else was known about the first plane that struck the World Trade Center. I thought she had to be misunderstanding what she had seen on TV. Would that she had… It’s been 17 years since then – and yet every year on September 11, I can’t help but recall the events of that day.   How on that day in particular, when family and friends were so particularly dear and precious, I spent stranded in a hotel room in Dallas. It was perhaps the longest day — and loneliest night — of my life. In fact, I was to spend the next several days in Dallas — there were no planes flying, no rental cars to be had — I was literally separated from hom...

Over the coming weeks, a question that you’re likely to see posed (again and again) about the President’s Executive Order is – “will it work?” “Work” in this case means to expand access to workplace retirement plans, for that is the stated policy of the Trump administration in issuing the order . The answer, of course, will depend in no small part on what emerges as a result. While it’s hard to argue with the underlying principle, and even less with the foundational arguments (“Enhancing workplace retirement plan coverage is critical to ensuring that American workers will be financially prepared to retire” and “Regulatory burdens and complexity can be costly and discourage employers, especially small businesses, from offering workplace retirement plans to their employees”), at this point the order is no more than a directive to the Labor and Treasury Departments to consider and recommend some alternatives. That said, the directives  are reasonably specific – t...

Several years back, I was talking with a colleague about the current state of the U.S. economy – and as a comparison point, I pointed to the mid-1980s. “I wasn’t even born then,” she said. At which point I realized that what I considered to be a relevant point of comparison was, to my coworker, ancient history. That memory comes back to me every year with the release of Beloit College’s annual “ Mindset List .” As that coworker discussion reminds me, a lot can change in (just) 18 years, but these same 18 years also make up the mindset – or “event horizon” ­– of today’s entering college students. The kids many of you just dropped off at college – the Class of 2022 – were (for the most part), born in 2000, the first year of the new millennium. The folks that compile this list know that those differences in experience and points of reference have an impact on the (perceived) relevance of the points we might try to make in college teaching – and even in terms of fina...