Retirement without guaranteed income streams may mean near-total asset wipeout
Retirement may not unfold the way most people (or planners) expect, and new research from the suggests that without a reliable income floor, the consequences can be severe. The Employee Benefit Research Institute study tracked how household net non-housing assets shifted across a roughly three-decade window using longitudinal data from the 1992–2022 Health and Retirement Study. What it found challenges the conventional image of retirement as a steady, predictable spend-down of accumulated wealth. Asset drawdown varied dramatically depending on how much a retiree...
