Nevin's Data "Points"

So, how much should the plaintiffs’ attorneys who wrangled a $12 million settlement receive for their time, effort and trouble? Well, if you’ve been keeping up with such things, you’ll do some quick math and arrive at a figure of $4 million since, after all, these class action suits [i] —undertaken on a contingent fee basis—generally produce a pay day of somewhere between 25% and 30% of the settlement amount. [ii] In this case, that’s the settlement amount requested by the law firm of Schlichter Bogard & Denton for their work in a suit involving Oracle Corp. and its 401(k) plan (over 6,300 hours—5,631.10 hours of attorney time & 696.5 hours of non-attorney time—according to the filing ( Troudt v. Oracle Corp . , D. Colo., No. 1:16-cv-00175, motion for attorneys’ fees 5/8/20). That’s aside from the requested reimbursement of what those same attorneys characterize as “reasonable out-of-pocket expenses of $410,501.60, [iii]  and $25,000 for each of the named clas...

You have to hand it to the  Washington Post . At a time when millions of working Americans are finding a financial lifeline in their retirement savings, they managed to find in the questionable life choices of a half dozen individuals a condemnation of the nation’s private retirement system. The piece, laboriously titled “ Millions of baby boomers are getting caught in the country’s broken retirement system ” is light (and selective) on data (they managed to get hold of a 2016 report by the Economic Policy Institute subtitled “How 401(k)s have failed most American workers,” some datapoints from the National Institute on Retirement Security (for those who have forgotten some of the issues with their database, see Data ‘Minding’ ” and a couple of quotes from none other than Teresa Ghilarducci). Indeed, the article isn’t really about factual data; rather it’s mostly reliant on the anecdotes of six individuals the author has somehow stumbled upon. Weirdl...

Life has many lessons to teach us, some more painful than others—and some we’d just as soon be spared. But for the graduates of 2020—well, theirs is surely a unique time. So, if you have a graduate—or if you ARE a graduate, here are some thoughts…    My kids have passed those milestones—but I have two nieces that will graduate this year without an “official” ceremony to commemorate the occasion, no capstone to those years in pursuit of education, and preparation for the next of life’s stages, and—while social media, cell phones, TikTok and Zoom provide some solace—this is a class that will, for the moment anyway, be denied the hugs and warm embraces of classmates, friends and family alike. That said, those next steps lie ahead—and if the when, where (and how) remains elusive—the if is surely only a matter of time. And as graduates everywhere look ahead to the next chapter in their lives, it seems a good time to reflect on some lessons learned along the way—m...