December 2020

23Dec

US. Saving at Work for Retirement: A Perk Coming to More States in 2021

Denise Geske panicked two years ago when her accountant told her about a new Illinois law that would require her to enroll her employees in a retirement savings program. “As a small-business owner, I felt it was overwhelming,” she said. “I was terrified that I was going to be mandated to do one more thing.” Ms. Geske, co-owner of Fox & Hounds Salon and Day Spa in Bloomington, Ill., is close with her staff of 32 massage therapists, aestheticians...

December 23, 2020
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22Dec

US. Calpers Seeking an Investment Chief With Staying Power

The nation’s largest public pension fund has a retention problem, an especially pressing issue given the deep hole it and other retirement plans are in. The California Public Employees’ Retirement System has burned through six chief investment officers over the past two decades. Its most recent investment chief, Ben Meng, lasted just 19 months. His tenure ended this summer in the midst of questions about whether his personal investments created a conflict of interest. Elsewhere, investment chiefs stay for...

December 22, 2020
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21Dec

US. Annuities vs. Pensions: What Retirement Plan Advisors Should Know About ‘De-Risking’

Pension obligations are a major liability on many corporate balance sheets. Retirees are living longer than ever, sometimes claiming pension payments for decades. Advisors to pension plans may be called upon for suggestions of how to de-risk employer-sponsored benefit plans. Weighing available options is crucial. Read also US. Retirement taxes are not more tolerable One idea that’s gaining traction: annuities. In recent years, Lockheed Martin, FedEx, Raytheon, Alcoa and others have transferred billions of dollars worth of pension liabilities to...

December 21, 2020
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21Dec

US. Retirement taxes are not more tolerable

By Helen Hills I was happy to see Charles Lane’s commentary on Bob Dylan’s tax-privileged windfall upon the sale of his vast musical intellectual property [“Bob Dylan’s financial dream,” op-ed, Dec. 15]. Mr. Lane did not mention, in his otherwise-thorough critique of the disparate tax treatment of income and capital gains, the “wool-over-the-eyes” deception that was mounted in the form of 401(k), individual retirement accounts and other market-based employee retirement accounts. Corporate interests benefited when the responsibility and risk...

December 21, 2020
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18Dec

US. Workers Tap Retirement Savings as a Last Resort

About a month into the pandemic, Tyler Mathiesen lost his position at a tech company, his first full-time job out of college. For several months, everything was fine: Payments on his $75,000 in student loans were paused, and the extra $600 weekly federal unemployment benefit helped pay the rest. He even managed to save some money. But as the summer ended, the added benefit expired and his regular state unemployment benefits were close to running out. He needed a...

December 18, 2020
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16Dec

US. Labor Department Finishes Fiduciary Rule for Retirement Plans

The Labor Department completed on Tuesday the Trump administration’s fiduciary rule governing advice affecting the trillions of dollars in retirement accounts. Read also US. Workers Tap Retirement Savings as a Last Resort But because the regulation won’t go into effect until after President-elect Joe Biden takes office, it is likely to be revised by the new administration. Read also Divest or direct? Pension funds weigh their options in the climate crisis “I don’t expect it to survive in its current form,”...

December 16, 2020
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16Dec

US. Stock Market Gains Help Pension Funding Levels: Pension and Group Annuity Update

Corporate bond interest rates fell a little in November, but the stock market did well, and that helped make the finances of big U.S. corporate pension plans look better, according to Milliman Inc. Zorast Wadia and Charles Clark, analysts at the Seattle-based actuarial consulting firm, found that the 100 large corporate pension plans they track reported a $272 billion combined deficit in November on $1.98 trillion in pension benefits obligations, compared with a $284 billion deficit on $1.915 trillion...

December 16, 2020
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15Dec

A Retirement Dashboard for the U.S.?

Noting that the U.S. retirement system is not easy to navigate, a recent white paper calls for the creation of a retirement dashboard to help savers better manage and keep track of their savings. “While it would not address systemic problems such as coverage, a dashboard could reduce the strain that a complex retirement system imposes on households,” authors David John of the AARP Public Policy Institute, Grace Enda of the Urban-Brookings Tax Policy Center, and...

December 15, 2020
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11Dec

The Age Profile of Life-Satisfaction after Age 65 in the U.S

By Péter Hudomiet, Susann Rohwedder Although income and wealth are frequently used as indicators of well-being, they are increasingly augmented with subjective measures such as life satisfaction to capture broader dimensions of individuals’ well-being. Based on data from large surveys of individuals, life satisfaction in cross-section increases with age beyond retirement into advanced old age. It may seem puzzling that average life satisfaction would be higher at older ages because older individuals are more likely to experience chronic or...

December 11, 2020
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11Dec

Time for U.S. to address savings crisis for workers

U.S. president-elect Joe Biden has sketched out ambitious plans to reinvigorate the pandemic-battered economy. But without addressing a festering savings crisis, efforts to revitalize the middle class are doomed to fail. The U.S. savings and retirement system is broken, and desperately needs an overhaul to give Americans an opportunity to build lifetime financial resilience. The economic ravages of a pandemic mean that a national conversation in the U.S. on change is imperative, starting with ways to move towards more universal...

December 11, 2020
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