Nevin's Data "Points"

I don’t know about you, but I’ve always had a certain ambivalence about what are generally termed “Hallmark holidays.” You know the ones I’m talking about – the ones that seem crafted for the sole purpose of generating sales for greeting card sellers. Of course, after a while you no longer question their existence – and if one still struggles to remember exactly when “Grandparent’s Day” is, well, we’ve pretty much got Mother’s Day, Father’s Day, and Valentine’s Day down to a science (one that might not be on your calendar is National Slap Your Irritating Co-Worker Day, October 23). Indeed, these days there are months on the calendar devoted to a whole series of acknowledgements and remembrances. There are also a number of occasions set aside to recognize the importance of saving ( America Saves Week –February ), the importance of planning for retirement (National Retirement Planning Month – July, and National Retirement Planning Week – April), and the issue of retiremen...

Retirement planning can be a complicated process – and surveys suggest that most workers haven’t even attempted a guess. But even those who have can overlook some pretty significant factors that can have a dramatic impact on retirement readiness. Here are some critical factors that are easy to get “wrong.” The Cost of Inflation Twenty or 30 years from now, prices are likely to be different than they are today, and for many, those prices will increase – and perhaps particularly costs of critical life aspects like health care. Consider that, overall, the average inflation rate for 2018 was 1.9%. It’s not that all prices will always go up – but they often do, and might increase faster than your income. Think of it as the “magic of compounding’s” evil twin… There’s a calculator that you might find interesting at  http://www.usinflationcalculator.com/ . The Cost of Taxes A key part of the incentive for retirement saving in a 401(k) is the ability to postpone payin...

We really hadn’t been focused on making a change, though the subject had come up from time to time.  In fact, considering how long we had been thinking about making a change without actually doing anything about it, the change itself felt almost accidental in its suddenness. So sudden, in fact, that, in hindsight, I found myself wondering if we were “hasty” – perhaps too hasty. Make no mistake – we had been happy enough with our current provider, certainly at first. In fact, we had been with them for a number of years and had, over time, expanded that relationship to include a fully bundled package of services. That made certain aspects simpler, of course – though we discovered pretty quickly that the “bundle” was presented as being more seamless than it actually was. Still, net/net, we were ahead of the game financially, and certainly no worse on the delivery side; we were just a bit disappointed in the disconnect between the sale and the service levels. And...

Do plan sponsors really know what participants want? Back in the early 1990s, there was a very popular “self-help” book on relationships titled “Men Are From Mars, Women Are From Venus.” The basic premise, of course, was that men and women have different means and styles of communication – that, in essence, they might as well be from different planets (hence the title). It suffers, as most such works do, from over-generalizing (to say the least – the hidden points system ostensibly maintained by each gender struck me as truly bizarre, even in the 1990s) – but it no doubt stimulated some relationship conversations, and if it opened some of those doors – well, that’s a good thing. The relationship between plan sponsors and participants isn’t generally fraught with the same layers of complexity, but every so often a survey comes out that makes me think otherwise. The latest was a report by American Century which surveyed (separately, but both during Q1 2019) 1,500 re...

I’ve never played the lottery. But there are days… I tell myself it’s because I know how remote the odds are, that the rules are too complicated, that they “feed” on the aspirations of people who should be spending their money on “better” things – and even that I don’t have enough “lucky” numbers to bet on consistently. But those are rationalizations. The simple fact, despite the screaming billboards and nightly news reminders about the size of the latest “mega” jackpot, is that I simply find it inconvenient. Oh, it’s not like I never frequent the convenience stores or even grocery checkouts that these days beg for the cash/credit card that hasn’t yet been put away. I’ve never really regretted walking away from those “temptations.” And yet…     As an industry, we spend a lot of time focused on a wide variety of considerations that impact the likelihood of having a financially satisfying retirement. But what about those who don’t have access to a...