Nevin's Data "Points"

My wife is fond of recounting one of our early dates when we ran out of gas.  Now, we were in the heart of a Chicago suburb at the time, not the middle of nowhere, and while the hour was late, I continue to maintain that it was a simple case of my misreading the gas gauge in a relatively new car with which I hadn’t yet gained a full appreciation for just how far I could push such things.  My wife, of course, has always accused me of a more “nefarious” purpose. It would be more difficult to explain such an outcome these days.  We’ve gone from vehicles that simply had a floating gauge and a range of red at the 1/8 tank line, to those that have a solid and then a blinking yellow light, to ones that beep and flash and tell you how many miles you have left before you run out. As inconvenient as running out of gas late at night can be, it surely pales in comparison to the prospects of running short of money in retirement.  EBRI has, for more than a decade now, used h...

After a winter filled with predictions of winter weather that never quite measured up to the forecasts, the nation’s capital (and the Southeast) finally got a taste of what those in the Midwest and Northeast have been contending with for weeks.  Not that there haven’t been close calls here, but up until this week, the multitude of factors that have to come together to produce a significant snowfall here—hadn’t.  Much to the discomfiture of those who ply their trade making such predictions, it should be noted. While Mother Nature can be notoriously fickle, technologies like Doppler radar are able to discern with greater precision real-time activity which can be fed into sophisticated computer models that draw on the experience of the past to extrapolate a series of potential outcomes—some deemed more likely than others.  Projected outcomes that, despite the recent experience here, do an increasingly accurate job of helping each of us plan our daily commute or that vacati...

Having just concluded a long driving trip, I was reminded again just how helpful the technology under the hood of today’s automobiles can be: the warning lights when you’ve still got enough gas left to find a gas station, the low tire pressure light that tells you of a slow leak before you have a flat tire, the binging that lets you know you’ve left your headlights on (again), and my personal favorite, the klaxon-like bell that alerts you that your parking brake is still engaged (since that red “brake” light on the dashboard clearly wasn’t sufficient notice). Before such warning signs were standard features, I’ve had the decidedly unpleasant experience of running out of gas in the middle of nowhere, finding myself driving on (two) flat tires, and—many years ago—I’m pretty sure I was responsible for ruining the brakes on my Dad’s car simply because I didn’t realize that the smell of burning rubber was coming from the car I was driving. For some time now, the Federal Reserve has held...

Last week I was speaking at a conference on the West Coast when a weather pattern emerged that threatened both my connecting flight, and my arrival at home. Alerted to the potential problem, I began seeking alternatives. Eventually, I was able to reroute my connecting flight—though doing so meant a later arrival at my home airport and, based on the trajectory of the storm, that later arrival increased the likelihood of running into problems there. I continued to check in back home during the day—trying to gauge the storm’s progress, and to (re)evaluate my alternatives. As I boarded that final leg of the trip home, I knew a couple of things: The flight was (still) departing on time, and while it wasn’t snowing at home (yet) the forecast was now for more snow, starting later. The trip home wasn’t exactly restful (despite the hour), but having done what I could to minimize the impact of the storm on my travel, having attended to the things I could control, I boarded the plane, hopeful t...

As a growing number of Americans near and enter retirement, concerns about the cost of post-retirement health care expenses loom larger.   In fact, worker confidence about their ability to pay for medical expenses after retirement was just half what they expressed about their ability to pay for basic retirement expenses (see EBRI’s2012 Retirement Confidence Survey ).   Little wonder, since a recent EBRI Issue Brief noted that health-related expenses are not only the second-largest component in the budget of older Americans, they are the only component which steadily increases with age (see “ Expenditure Patterns of Older Americans, 2001 ‒ 2009 ”).    Recognizing the potential financial impact, recent industry surveys have put a figure on the cost of post-retirement health care expense 1 —a figure above and beyond that of merely living in retirement.   EBRI has gone to great lengths to model the major risks to retirement income adequacy all the way back ...