January 2018

31Jan

US. Empower Retirement Releases Real-Time Plan Design Platform

Empower Retirement has released its PlanVisualizer technology offering, a Monte Carlo-based simulator that allows 401k advisors to modify key variables in plan design to illustrate their effects in real time. Available through the broader retirement advisor market, PlanVisualizer provides plan sponsors “with a multi-dimensional, holistic view of their retirement plan in its current state, along with the ability to model how changes to key design elements can potentially affect participant preparedness.” It’s particularly timely, according to Peter Kapinos, head of advisor,...

January 31, 2018
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31Jan

On a better savings course: US retirement score rises

Americans' retirement savings are in the best shape they've been in more than a decade. So says a survey by Fidelity Investments, which looked at more than 3,000 working households that have started saving for retirement. After tallying up how much they're saving in their 401(k) accounts, their expected Social Security benefits and other assets, Fidelity said that the typical saver is on track to have 80 percent of the income they'll need to cover retirement costs. That's the highest score...

January 31, 2018
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29Jan

Understanding Earnings, Labor Supply, and Retirement Decisions

By Xiaodong Fan (University of New South Wales (UNSW)), Ananth Seshadri (University of Wisconsin - Madison - Department of Economics) & Christopher Taber (National Bureau of Economic Research (NBER); University of Wisconsin - Madison) We develop and estimate a model in which individuals make decisions on consumption, human capital investment, labor supply, and retirement. Unlike all previous work, our model allows both an endogenous wage process (which is typically assumed exogenous in the human capital and earnings dynamics literature). In...

January 29, 2018
Aging, Articles, Labor Market, , ,
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29Jan

Work-Life Balance and Labor Force Attachment at Older Ages

By Marco Angrisani (Center for Economic and Social Research (CESR)), Maria Casanova (University of California, Los Angeles (UCLA) - Department of Economics) & Erik Meijer (University of Southern California; RAND Corporation) We use data from the Health and Retirement Study to examine the role of work-life balance (WLB) as a nonmonetary determinant of retirement transitions, conditional on job attributes such as hours of work, compensation and benefits. We show that low levels of WLB are significantly associated with subsequent reductions...

January 29, 2018
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22Jan

The Devil You Know: A Survey Examining How Retail Investors Seek Out and Use Financial Information and Investment Advice

By Christine Sgarlata Chung (Albany Law School) Everyday, people across the United States make decisions that will affect their financial futures — e.g., borrowing money to buy a house, go to college, or start a business; investing in the stock market to save for retirement; using check cashing services or payday lenders rather than accounts at banks or credit unions for day-to-day banking needs, and the like. Traditional tenets of financial economics and investment theory assume that people make fully...

January 22, 2018
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15Jan

A Look into the United States’ Underfunded Pension System

By Jason Lin (Truman State University - Department of Business Administration) & Jane Sung (Truman State University) The public pension crisis has come under increasing scrutiny over the past decade as shifting demographic trends, harsh economic conditions and the very nature of pension funds have changed, and not for the better. Pension funds create valuable saving and investment tools for an individual's retirement. They make what seems like the impossible daunting task of saving sufficient funds for retirement completely feasible....

January 15, 2018
Articles, Pension design, Regulation, System Sustainability, , ,
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08Jan

Pension risk as US watchdog warns savers of bitcoin ‘scammers’ and ‘bogus investments’

The US-based Utah Division of Securities has released information warning savers that cryptocurrency schemes may target individuals' retirement savings. The Division of Securities works to protect the investing public and promote confidence in the capital markets. And the warning comes after Merrill Lynch, the investment arm of The Bank of America, decided to block access to all funds connected to bitcoin after concerns were raised by bank chiefs over the "suitability and eligibility standards of this product”. Keith Woodwell, director of...

January 8, 2018
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05Jan

US. Pension Fund Members Don’t Know Their Plans Are Underfunded: Study

U.S. public pension fund members are generally unaware that their pension is underfunded and of the risk this poses, according to a survey released Thursday by Spectrem Group. The study also reveals a wide gap between how members want their pension funds managed and the actual approach many managers take. The survey, conducted online in the second half of November, compared CalPERS and NYC Retirement Systems (NYC Funds) against a “national” group, comprising individuals from the New York State Common Retirement...

January 5, 2018
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05Jan

US. How to out-fox Congress when it comes to retirement savings

There’s plenty of stressful news these days, and by and large I’m used to hearing or reading about unpleasant developments. But I was particularly alarmed by a report this fall that Congress was considering drastic cutbacks in the contribution limits to 401(k) and similar retirement plans. Currently, the maximum annual contribution to such plans is $18,500 ($24,500 for workers age 50 and older). These contributions are tax-deferred, meaning the money isn’t taxed until it is withdrawn, presumably after retirement when workers...

January 5, 2018
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04Jan

US. Tax Reform Results in Only Minor Changes for Retirement Plans

The Tax Cuts and Jobs Act made significant changes to the tax code and will have a significant impact on businesses and individual taxpayers. However, although initial proposals included potentially significant changes to employer-sponsored retirement plans, the impact of the final bill on employer sponsored retirement plans will be relatively minor. The Tax Cuts and Jobs Act (the Act), which was signed into law on December 22, 2017, represents the most sweeping overhaul of the tax code in decades and...

January 4, 2018
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