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Guaranteed Income
The Treasury Department has blown out the candles on the first birthday cake for myRA, the retirement plan the federal government implemented in November 2015. The retirement toddler earned a mixed report card according to a recent report.According to 401kspecialistmag.com, myRA’s Treasury parent...
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The good news: a new survey finds that a majority of Americans are making long-term plans — far more than are making New Year’s resolutions. The bad news? What they consider long-term.The New York Life survey of more than 1,800 adults ages 30 or older (conducted by Ipsos Public Affairs) found that...
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Are workers who have a financial plan more likely to save, or are workers who save more likely to have a financial plan?A new study found that, regardless of their incomes, people who have a financial plan reported saving a median of 10% of their salaries toward retirement, while those without a...
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Life is fraught with inconsistency, and a new study by Lincoln Financial Group (LFG) shows that extends to providing services to governmental retirement plans. But the study also suggests the antidote to those inconsistencies and to participation and deferral rates that are not as high as plan...
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Automatic enrollment can be an effective, low-impact way to increase participation in employer-provided retirement plans — and, in the process, further the real, ultimate goal of boosting retirement readiness. But we were taught that every action has an equal and opposite reaction, and that maxim...
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Single premium pension buy-out sales hit almost $6 billion in the third quarter of 2016, according to a recent report by the LIMRA Secure Retirement Institute.This is the highest level of single premium pension buy-out sales for any third quarter since 1990 in LIMRA’s research. It also is the most...
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On Nov. 21, 2016, the American Retirement Association Government Affairs Committee filed a comment letter with the Pension Benefit Guaranty Corporation (PBGC). The letter is in response to a proposal to amend and expand the PBGC program to hold retirement benefits for missing participants and...
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Three weeks ago, Chicago Cubs fans could hardly have been blamed for starting to think about “next year” — and two weeks ago, who would have imagined that we’d be talking about President-Elect Trump.Sometimes life takes unexpected turns, upending even the most “certain” outcomes. These so-called “...
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The Retirement Enhancement and Savings Act (RESA, S. 3471), which would amend the Internal Revenue Code to encourage retirement savings, was placed on the Senate’s legislative calendar by Sen. Orrin Hatch (R-Utah) Nov. 16.Hatch, Chairman of the Senate Finance Committee, also placed the Miners...
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Younger generations always face financial stresses of various kinds. There are still some who faced the Great Depression as young people, for example, and others who dealt with inflation in the 1970s, energy crises and various recessions. So the current young generation is not unique in facing...
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The funded status of the 100 largest corporate pension plans improved in October, says a recent report. The actuarial consultant firm Milliman says that their funded status got stronger to the tune of $28 billion.Their funded status in October was 1 percentage point better in October than it was in...
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Workers think they understand benefits — but what if they don’t?A new survey finds that 80% of working Americans (at least those responding to the survey) say they understand their benefits very well, and nearly as many — 74% — feel very confident in the benefits selections they made during their...
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The increasing cost of health care seems to be coming out of retirement’s pockets, according to a new survey.According to the 2016 Health and Voluntary Workplace Benefits Survey (WBS) conducted by the non-partisan Employee Benefit Research Institute (EBRI) and Greenwald & Associates, half of...
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A new report quantifies the persistent, if shrinking, gender gap in financial wellness.According to the 2016 Gender Gap in Financial Wellness study by Financial Finesse, that gap has closed to 8.9 percentage points, a 37% improvement since 2012. However, the report cautions that part of the closure...
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A key element in retirement planning is the rate of return assumption — and a new report takes a look at not only what return assumptions are common, but the odds of achieving it.Research Affiliates looked at the default returns built on hundreds of underlying participants, and found that the...
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Defined contribution plans have supplanted defined benefit plans as the most prevalent retirement plan offered through places of employment. But that certainly doesn’t mean that they are static. A recent paper argues that those that design, offer and administer them should not rest on their laurels...
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The 2016 general election is upon us, a knock-down, drag-out fight between two intensely polarizing figures — Hillary Rodham Clinton and Donald J. Trump — vying for votes among an increasingly polarized electorate.In this intensely partisan political atmosphere, it is easy for the topic of saving...
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Halloween is the time of year when one’s thoughts turn to trick-or-treat, ghosts and goblins, and things that go bump in the night. But what are the things plan sponsors are scared about?Getting sued.Plan sponsors will often mention their fear of getting sued, and little wonder. The headlines are...
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There will be a 0.3% cost-of-living adjustment (COLA) for Social Security for 2017, the Social Security Administration (SSA) announced on Oct. 18.The COLA is based on the increase in the Consumer Price Index (CPI-W) from the third quarter of 2014 through the third quarter of 2016. The slight...
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In the third of a series of articles that features the insights of American Enterprise Institute (AEI) Resident Scholar Andrew Biggs in light of AEI’s recent paper, “Increasing the Effectiveness and Sustainability of the Nation’s Entitlement Programs,” Biggs shares his views on what can be done to...
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