Nevin's Data "Points"

A recent MarketWatch article poses the intriguing question: “Why does TikTok hate the 401(k) so much?” Now, as social media platforms go, I’ve pretty much avoided TikTok. Oh, I’ve swung by it from time to time just to see what the “fuss” is, but generally speaking (and even in “retirement”), I’ve better ways to spend my day than scrolling through two-minute videos of—well, to my eyes, pretty insipid stuff. On the other hand, I’ve long “dabbled” in social media platforms, and by dabbled, I mean I have established accounts, moseyed around, and ultimately “engaged” (some of you may (hopefully) even have noticed that I’ve been doing two-minute videos on LinkedIn for the past several months)—it’s just never been my “day job.” I’ve been on Twitter since 2008—LinkedIn even longer. Facebook (yes, I AM a Boomer, after all) since my kids got on it, and Instagram once Mr. Zuckerberg shackled that app to Facebook. I’ve read books on the subject of social media, attended conference...

You may have missed it, but there’s been a bit of a “hub-bub” brewing on social media…about the impact of, and perhaps even the utility of, social media. Here’s some thoughts—and some tips.  JD Carlson of Retireholics “fame” kicked things off with a post intriguingly titled “Forget About Social Media Content and Run Your 401(k) Business.” Oh, there were words [i] that followed, but you really didn’t have to read more than that to see where he was going. Well, about a nanosecond after that post appeared on…social media… Sheri Fitts who, as you may know, spends a fair amount of her time and energy helping advisors (and other retirement professionals) be more effective on…social media… pushed back on JD’s basic premise. A bit. Her argument was basically that while social media was important (we’ll come back to that), doing so without a clear focus or strategy was a mistake—but that ignoring the marketing impact of social media was perhaps a larger one.  And then, ...

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 ...