Nevin's Data "Points"

   It’s been said that politics makes strange bedfellows — but it doesn’t get much stranger than President Trump and Teresa Ghilarducci. At least temporarily, they appear aligned on one of retirement policy’s most persistent challenges: how to reach workers who don’t have access to a retirement plan at work. President Trump’s April 30 executive order directs Treasury to develop a federal IRA savings framework aimed at uncovered workers — contract workers, part-timers, the self-employed, and employees of small businesses. And while the proposal is still light on details, it has drawn enthusiastic support from one of the nation’s most consistent critics of the employer-based retirement system: Professor Teresa Ghilarducci. The Trump initiative — hinted at in the State of the Union address — would synchronize with the expanded Saver’s Match included in the SECURE 2.0 Act of 2022. The Saver’s Match is one of the more consequential — if still underappreciated — changes in that leg...

  Mother’s Day tends to come packaged in the usual ways — cards, flowers, reservations, and a few familiar phrases about gratitude. There’s nothing wrong with any of that. But it also flattens something that, in real life, is anything but simple: the steady, unglamorous work that holds everything together long before anyone thinks to acknowledge it. A recent driving trip out West brought that into sharper focus for me. Now, my wife and I had been talking about making this particular trip for years. We had specific things we wanted to see, and a rough idea of their proximity to each other. And, thanks to a speaking engagement, we had a departure date, and a “jumping off” point.  Now, on paper, a road trip sounds straightforward enough — pack the car, set the route, go. In practice — and especially when you’re traveling with two dogs who are very much part of the family structure (and not very accustomed to travelling), it becomes something closer to project management. Timing, ...

   If you read only the headlines from the latest Employee Benefit Research Institute Retirement Confidence Survey, the takeaway feels familiar: confidence is slipping, worries are rising, and concern about retirement readiness is once again in focus. Seriously? Look, once you move past the year-over-year decline [i] and look at the levels themselves, the picture changes shape. Yes, confidence is down from recent highs. But retirees, in particular, remain broadly confident in their ability to live comfortably in retirement despite all the “noise” about inflation, Social Security, and volatile markets. Roughly three-quarters still say they feel secure about their financial footing in retirement. That is not a fragile number. It is a resilient one. ad space What stands out even more is how consistently the survey shows a gap between expectations and actual experience. Workers — still on the near side of retirement — are meaningfully less confident than those already in it. That...