Nevin's Data "Points"

A quarter-century is a long time. Long enough for children born after Sept. 11, 2001, to have now finished college, entered the workforce and begun building lives and families of their own.    Long enough for the images that remain painfully vivid to some of us to have become history to millions of others. ad space But 25 years is not long enough to forget. Those of us who lived through that day still remember where we were when we heard — or, perhaps more accurately, when we finally understood. We remember the images, the uncertainty and the urgent need to hear the voices of those we loved. We remember a day on which thousands of people left home for an ordinary Tuesday and never returned. As it happened — and I have shared this story before — I was travelling from one coast to the other — heading to speak at a conference early on that bright Tuesday morning in 2001. In fact, I was in the middle of that cross-country flight, literally running from one terminal to another in D...

What does it mean to have a 75% probability of success? I’ve never been particularly fond of the probability-of-success measures commonly used in retirement planning. It’s not that the calculations aren’t useful — or that I have a better crystal ball. I’m just not convinced that most people understand what the resulting percentage means, much less how to apply it to their retirement decisions. After all, a 75% probability of success sounds like a grade — and not a particularly good one. It also sounds as though there is a 25% chance that your retirement will be a complete and unmitigated failure. Neither interpretation is necessarily accurate. ad space A new paper from David Blanchett at PGIM, aptly titled “Successfully Failing,” takes on that conventional measure and suggests that it may not simply be confusing. It may actually lead retirees — and those advising them — to make less-than-optimal decisions. Success ‘Measures’ Probability-of-success calculations generally run a retireme...