Nevin's Data "Points"

  The most recent “debate” was inspired by a recent Wall Street Journal article by Derek Tharp — an associate professor of finance at the University of Southern Maine —   titled “ Why Delaying Your Social Security Benefits May Not Make Sense .” Shortly thereafter,  Schroders 2025 U.S. Retirement Survey  stated that 44% of non-retirees plan to file for Social Security benefits before reaching age 67 (the full retirement age for everyone born in 1960 or later) — and “just” 10% plan to wait until age 70 (when an individual reaches their maximum monthly benefit). And, sure enough, the retirement industry commentary that followed was largely in the vein of “can you believe people are ignoring all this free money?” But it was the Wall Street Journal article that appeared to draw the most critical fire — largely from academics, and mostly (it seemed to me) quibbling about some of Tharp’s math assumptions (when you’re guessing, even rationally, at things that can’t be precis...

It’s hard to believe that just two years ago many of us went into our places of work, packed up, and went home for what most thought would be a week, maybe two—and wound up being a lot more than that. In March 2020, my wife and I had just returned from a funeral in the Boston area. While the worst of what we would come to learn about COVID was—well, yet to be learned—we knew that cautions were in order. So we drove, rather than flew to the event—which wound up being full of strangers (many of whom were in what would come to be acknowledged as “vulnerable” health categories). Throughout we were aware, conscious of a certain risk, but we were not overly cautious—about on the order of what you would do when you come into contact with someone who had a cold.  In hindsight, what might have been a “super spreader” event didn’t turn out to be one—even though less than 48 hours later the governor of the Commonwealth was putting in place lockdowns and restrictions that wo...

It’s obvious why participants have a vested interest (literally) in the retirement income — the outcome, really — of their retirement savings plans. Here are four reasons why plan sponsors should care about outcomes. You want your employees to appreciate your benefit plan(s). If you’re responsible for benefit plans in your organization, you have a very real interest in how your workforce (and management team) view those benefits. Plan sponsors have long used participation rate as the plan success metric — after all, what better measure of success in plan design, education and communication than the objective data as to how many employees have chosen to participate. But in a time when a growing number of plans have adopted automatic enrollment — well, while credit is certainly due plan sponsors who have taken that step, the resulting bump in participation rates owe more to the inertia of human behavior than innovative plan design. There is, however, little question that the bet...

Ask any benefits manager why their organization offers benefits to their workers, and my experience suggests that the reliably consistent answer is “to attract and retain the best workers.” Indeed, as the 2013 Health and Voluntary Workplace Benefits Survey (WBS)¹ bears out, the benefits package that an employer offers prospective employees is an important factor in their decision to accept or reject a job. In fact, a full third of employees say the benefits package is extremely important, and another 45 percent say it is very important. Moreover, a quarter of employees report they have accepted, quit, or changed jobs because of the benefits—other than salary or wage level—that an employer offered or failed to offer.² However, the WBS also found that many workers are not especially satisfied with the benefits package offered by their employer: 31 percent are only somewhat satisfied, and one-quarter are not too satisfied (12 percent) or not at all satisfied (14 percent). It is, of ...

A couple of weeks back, the Social Security Administration announced that, for the second year in a row—but only for the second time since 1975—there would be no cost of living adjustment (COLA) for Social Security recipients. Of course, this close to an election, it should come as no surprise that some went scurrying to introduce legislation that would provide some kind of supplemental funding to the nation’s seniors; similar actions were undertaken a year ago, ostensibly in the interests of economic stimulus, as well as the importance of supporting those on fixed incomes. But this election year is one unlike most, perhaps any, in our memory—and concerns about the federal budget deficit have, thus far, overcome the political class’s natural inclinations in such matters. Whether or not you are on a fixed income, it’s hard to credibly argue that prices aren’t rising on everything from food to gasoline to utilities; from real estate taxes (those reassessments never come as rapidly when ...