Nevin's Data "Points"

Millennials have had a rough week of it, at least in the financial press. First there was a report that they had established asset allocations that mirrored that of their grandparents (the respondents apparently never heard of a target-date fund). Then a separate survey that indicated they (70% of them, anyway) were ashamed to ask their parents for financial advice (we’ll set aside for a minute whether that would have been a good source), and then the pièce de résistance was a report that painted a pretty bleak retirement picture for a generation that “entered the workforce around the Great Recession, which began in late 2007, and experienced a difficult economy early in their careers. Now, they are confronting pandemic-related setbacks while trying to manage work-life balance.”  Indeed, the only bright note for this group—identified as those born between 1981 and 1996 - was a report that said the retirement savings gap between genders in that demographic was a m...

I was recently taken to task for last week’s column about retirement savings regrets. More precisely, my column about the regrets expressed in a recent American Century survey drew the attention of Faith Teope in a LinkedIn post titled, “ Dear Finance Experts: We Would Listen, But We Don't Care .” In fairness, it wasn’t so much my  column  (“boring but true”), or even the American Century survey’s  findings  that came in for criticism, but more the head-scratching that the survey set off among financial professionals (including, I suppose this one) as to why people aren’t paying more attention to things like… saving for retirement. Her premise—that we’re using language that doesn’t resonate with those we hope to motivate—is, frankly, unassailable.  In fact, it’s a topic I broached (at least at a high level) earlier this year in a post titled, “ Is it Time to Retire Retirement? ” As I noted then, for all but the most financially astute, trading off ...

Those “kids” who were just dropped off at college for the first time? By their sophomore year, their generation will constitute one-quarter of the U.S. population. How will their retirement be different? That’s according to the authors of the so-called Mindset List – now housed at Marist College, having relocated from Beloitt College – has been published each August since 1998 . Originally created as a reminder to faculty to be aware of dated references, the list provides a “look at the cultural touchstones that shape the lives of students entering college.” Not to mention those who will go on to be workers and – eventually – retirees. This fall’s college class of 2023 is the first class born in the 21st Century (2001) – and thus lack a personal memory of the September 11 attacks. According to the authors of the Mindset List: This group has never used a floppy disk (heck, they’ve probably never even seen one, except at that “save” icon). Their phone has a...

I’ve learned two things about Millennials over the years: first, that there are few things they find more bothersome than having Boomers tell them  what they should be doing – and if there is anything more bothersome than the first, it’s being called “Millennials.” Setting that aside, I was recently asked to participate in a forum focused on the challenges to retirement savings faced by Millennials. That event, “The Millennial Perspective: An Intergenerational Discussion on Retirement Savings,” was sponsored by Women for a Secure Retirement (WISER), centered on the organization’s iOme Challenge to develop a comprehensive proposal to address the challenges Millennials face in saving for retirement. Of course, the definition of a Millennial has proven to be surprisingly elusive over time. But those in the forum were willing to accept the definition recently put forth by the Pew Research Center, that it would apply to those born between 1981 and 1996 – which, ...

You may have missed it, but there was a bit of a “twitter storm” regarding retirement last week. More specifically, a relatively innocuous post about how much a 30-year-old should have saved toward retirement got a lot of 35-year-olds stirred up. The CBSMarketwatch article  quoted Fidelity as saying that you should have a year’s worth of salary saved by the time you’re 30 – but the real point of controversy  appears to have been driven by the premise that by the time you’re 35, you were supposed to have twice your salary saved. 1 The point, of course, is that it’s easier if you start early. But honestly, devoting 15% of your pay to retirement savings at any age is a daunting prospect, much less at a point when college debt and the prospects of a mortgage, kids and setting aside money for the kids’ college savings loom large. If this is “easy,” imagine what hard looks like! I’ve been a consistent saver over my working career – never missed an opportunity to s...

If you’re still struggling to figure out how to reach Millennials (even if you are a Millennial), take heart – there’s (already) another generational cohort entering the workforce. This new cohort is called Generation Z (at one point, Millennials were referred to as Gen Y, so…) – they are, generally speaking, children of Gen X – born in the mid-1990s, and separated from Millennials by their lack of a memory of 9/11. Gen Z is, in fact, already entering the workforce – and, according to the U.S. Census Bureau, they currently comprise a quarter of the population. They are seen as being more “realistic” when it comes to life and working than Millennials, who have been characterized as more “optimistic.” Gen Z is said to be more independent and competitive in their work than the collaborative Millennials, more concerned with privacy (Snapchat versus Facebook), and are said to have a preference for communicating face-to-face. It’s said they’ll eschew racking up big college debt, and are...

To judge by the headlines, if there’s anybody in more trouble when it comes to retirement planning than Boomers, it’s Millennials. But are they really? Consider this: Millennials are saving for retirement – likely earlier, and at higher rates than you did when you were their age. I’ve seen a number of surveys that suggest that Millennials are, in fact, saving earlier – and saving at higher rates than their Boomer parents. A recent Natixis survey says that on average, Millennials first enrolled in a retirement savings plan at age 23, while Boomers didn’t until 31. Another – this one by Ramsey Solutions – finds 58% of Millennials are actively saving for retirement, and they began saving at an average age of 23. Consider also that, of the Millennials who are actively saving, 39% set aside up to 9% of their income for retirement — $5,000 of the average annual Millennial household income of $55,200. This higher and earlier rate of saving exists despite high levels of college debt...

If you’re a Millennial (or know one), you’ve surely heard about (or seen in action) the recent outbreak of Pokémon Go . It’s not even a week old, but it’s quickly dominating social media. If you’ve managed to avoid the media barrage, it’s a new (free) interactive online game that builds on the basics of the Pokémon card and video games past – catching Pokémon, battling at Gyms, using items, evolving your creatures. These creatures (151 unique ones at present) have even been spotted hanging out with a certain renowned ERISA attorney (see below)! The object of the game is to find these Pokémon (they’re fictional animals – the name is said to be from a contracted Romanization of the Japanese Poketto Monsuta, a.k.a. “pocket monsters”), and then catch them, by throwing a sphere called a Pokéball in their general direction, after which they can grow via battles with other Pokémon in Gyms, and then do battles with still yet more Pokémon in Gyms, etc. All of which is to the benefit of thei...

Retirement seems a long time off — particularly when you’re young. However, Millennials — generally defined as those born between 1978 and 2004 — are living longer, and many will have to finance retirements that are actually longer than their working careers. So, while it can hardly be expected to be top-of-mind for most of this group, here are five things worth knowing about saving for retirement — now. 1. Social Security won’t be as much as you think it will be. Okay, some of you don’t think it will be anything at all, certainly not by the time that you are old enough to collect. But set aside for a moment the questions you may have as to whether or not Social Security is financially viable without reform, or if you should even count on it at all. Your parents — who are either now, or soon hope to be, collecting Social Security — had the same concerns, after all. However, even if you assume that the program remains largely unchanged from what it pays today, if you retire at...

On more than a few occasions in my youth, I would misplace some object of importance. Generally it was just something I set aside for just a moment in pursuit of some more interesting endeavor—and sometimes it was something I set down and forgot about until much later. Regardless, being unsuccessful in locating the object, I was frequently inclined to suspect that the culprit responsible for the disappearance was my mother, who—as mothers do, spent more than a little of her existence picking up objects that had been left unattended in unsuitable places. There were, however, times when she had played no role in the “disappearance,” and she’d admonish me to look more diligently—that “it didn’t just get up and walk away on its own…” Now, while there were times when I was certain that the object in question had done just that, once I was able to retrace my steps, to recall where I had been and when—and, inevitably, there it was. That said, I wasn’t always happy to find things where I ...