Nevin's Data "Points"

A few years back – well, now it’s quite a few years back – when my kids still believed in the reality of Santa Claus, we discovered an ingenious website that purported to offer a real-time assessment of their “naughty or nice” status. Now, as Christmas approached, it was not uncommon for us to caution our occasionally misbehaving brood that they had best be attentive to how those actions might be viewed by the big guy at the North Pole. But nothing we said ever had the impact of that website – if not on their behaviors (they were kids, after all), then certainly on the level of their concern about the consequences. In fact, in one of his final years as a “believer,” my son (who, it must be acknowledged, had been particularly naughty that year) was on the verge of tears, worried that he’d find nothing under the Christmas tree but the lump of coal he so surely “deserved.” In similar fashion, must of those responding to the ubiquitous surveys abou...

In most professional sports, the clock – the time remaining in the contest – is a factor (baseball being a notable exception – those nine innings are going to be played, regardless of how long it takes). The clock can be your enemy if you’re trying to hang on to a slender lead – or it can be your friend – if your team needs some extra time to catch up. Retirement also has a clock – the problem is, we generally can’t see it. Little wonder that time – our retirement clock – is perhaps the biggest uncertainty when it comes to retirement planning. Not just the when it starts, but mostly the “how long” aspect. Surveys suggest that fear of outliving one’s assets is a primary concern about retirement – little wonder since so few have stopped to figure out how much they have, not to mention the uncertainty as to how long it has to last. I recently read an interesting article by Dr. Joe Coughlin, founder and director of the Massachusetts Institute of Technology AgeLab (and closing keyno...