Nevin's Data "Points"

The future is an uncertain thing, and planning for uncertainty inevitably involves making some assumptions. Here are seven that, done improperly, can—yes, derail your retirement realities. How Long You’ll Work Perhaps the most important assumption is when you plan to quit working, or perhaps more accurately, when you plan to start drawing down your retirement funds. Today most Americans are doing so at 62, though 65 seems to be the most common assumption—and while using 70 (or later) will surely boost your projected outcomes (it both gives you more time to save and reduces the time that you will be drawing down those savings), it may not be realistic for many individuals. Indeed, the 2022 Retirement Confidence Survey from the nonpartisan Employee Benefit Research Institute (EBRI) notes that the age at which workers expect to retire has been slowly rising. In 1991, just 11% of workers expected to retire after age 65. By 2022 that number had nearly quadrupled; 41% of wor...

Retirement planning can be a complicated process – and surveys suggest that most workers haven’t even attempted a guess. But even those who have can overlook some pretty significant factors that can have a dramatic impact on retirement readiness. Here are some critical factors that are easy to get “wrong.” The Cost of Inflation Twenty or 30 years from now, prices are likely to be different than they are today, and for many, those prices will increase – and perhaps particularly costs of critical life aspects like health care. Consider that, overall, the average inflation rate for 2018 was 1.9%. It’s not that all prices will always go up – but they often do, and might increase faster than your income. Think of it as the “magic of compounding’s” evil twin… There’s a calculator that you might find interesting at  http://www.usinflationcalculator.com/ . The Cost of Taxes A key part of the incentive for retirement saving in a 401(k) is the ability to postpone payin...

There have been many different solutions put forth over the years to remedy the nation’s retirement ills, but regardless of your perception of the coming crisis (including those who believe such notions are overblown), there is a constant in every estimation of our retirement future.[1] Yes, I’m talking about Social Security. Indeed, we rely on the inevitability of those benefits with a certainty generally accorded only to death and taxes (both of which play a significant role in Social Security eligibility and claiming, as it turns out). And yet, for all its centrality in planning, Social Security faces its own funding crisis, or is projected to, according to the trustees of the program, in a report formally titled, “The 2019 Annual Report of the Board of Trustees of the Federal Old-Age and Survivors Insurance and Federal Disability Insurance Trust Funds. ” That the program will run short of funds is no secret, with the only variable being at what exact poi...

Did you hear the one about loan defaults adding up to $2.5 trillion in potential retirement savings shortfalls over the next 10 years? How about the “$210 Billion Risk in Your 401(k)”? Those reports were based on an “analysis” by Deloitte that claims to find that “…more than $2 trillion in potential future account balances will be lost due to loan defaults from 401(k) accounts over the next 10 years…” That’s right, $2 trillion lost “due to loan defaults” (the Wall Street Journal  apparently picked the figure that matched the impact on a “typical 401(k) borrower” – more on that in a minute). Now, when you see headlines putting a really big number on what you already suspect is a problem – in this case “leakage” – roughly defined as a pre-retirement withdrawal of retirement savings – well, you could hardly be blamed for simply accepting at face value the most recent attempt to quantify the impact of the problem. A closer look at the assumptions behind that analy...

The future is an uncertain thing, and planning for uncertainty inevitably involves making some assumptions. Here are six that, done improperly, can wreck your retirement. How Long You’ll Live The good news we are living longer – but that means that retirements can last longer, and medical costs can run higher. But while we’re living longer, studies indicate that we tend to underestimate how much longer we will live. The Social Security Administration notes that a man reaching age 65 today can expect to live, on average, until age 84.3, a woman turning age 65 today can expect to live, on average, until age 86.6. But those are just averages. About one out of every four 65-year-olds today will live past age 90, and 1 out of 10 will live past age 95. How Long You’ll Work Perhaps the most important assumption is when you plan to quit working; today most Americans are doing so at 62, though 65 seems to be the most common assumption – and while using 70 (or later) will surely bo...