January 2023

Why Older Americans Regret Not Saving Early and Enough

Any Americans head into their retirement years with little rigor in their planning, and then they find themselves nursing a bundle of regrets. Those regrets are about not saving more earlier in life, not investing in long-term care or annuities, and dipping into their social security payments much too early. How widespread are those regrets, and how can people plan more smartly for their retirement? That is the focus of a new paper titled “Financial Regret at Older Ages and...

Financial regret at older ages and longevity awareness

By Abigail Hurwitz & Olivia S. Mitchell Older people often express regret about financial decisions made earlier in life that left them susceptible to old-age insecurity. Prior work has explored one outcome, saving regret, or peoples’ expressed wish that they had saved more earlier in life. The present paper extends attention to five additional areas regarding financial decisions, examining whether older Americans also regret not having insured better, claimed benefits and quit working too early, and becoming financially dependent on...

US. 32% of Savers Tapped Their Retirement Accounts Last Year to Cope With Inflation. That’s a Problem

Inflation surged in 2022, burdening consumers of all ages. If you took a retirement plan withdrawal to cope with inflation, it's imperative that you try to compensate this year. Motley Fool Issues Rare “All In” Buy Alert Higher living costs forced some people to resort to drastic measures. Lawmakers were generous with stimulus aid in 2021, and that helped many Americans cope with the pandemic and subsequent economic crisis. But a troubling thing happened as a result. Consumers suddenly found themselves flush with cash...

These 2 states account for a third of America’s public-sector pension crisis

Step forward, California and Illinois! Your state and local pension funds are so badly funded that you two states, alone, account for about one-third of the entire U.S. pension-fund crisis. California’s public-sector pensions have a staggering accounting hole of $274 billion, according to the latest report from the Equable Institute think tank. Illinois public-sector pensions are in the hole to the sum of $210 billion — and you could argue that is even more remarkable because Illinois, the U.S.’s sixth most...

U.S. State, Local Public Pensions Saw Funding Statuses Fall in 2022

The national average funded ratio for U.S. state and local public pension plans is estimated to have declined from 83.9% in 2021 to 77.3% in 2022, once all public pensions release their 2022 data, according to a recently released end-of-year report on public pensions from the Equable Institute. Equable used figures from 76.4% of the 225 retirement systems with available data that reported preliminary investment returns for their full fiscal 2022 to inform the prediction. The remaining plans with available...

Key Actuarial Changes for Public Pension Plans in 2023

Funding valuation reports for public pension plans will have to include additional information following several actuarial changes approved by the Actuarial Standard Board, part of the American Academy of Actuaries, in the finalized Actuarial Standards of Practice No. 4., Measuring Pension Obligations and Determining Pension Plan Costs or Contributions. “In some cases, these are things that some [public pension plan] reports already include. So for any given public pension plan, they may see all of these as changes or some...

US. Life expectancy can have a greater impact than even record high inflation on how long your retirement savings will last

Given today’s ongoing high inflation, many Americans worry they may not have put away enough money for retirement. They fear that sharp increases in food and energy prices and transportation and medical care costs could significantly affect their retirement savings. Yet there’s another important factor to consider: your life expectancy. A new report from the TIAA Institute and George Washington University reveals that more than half of American adults don’t know how long people generally tend to live in retirement, which...

U.S. funds turn to fixed income for relief

Pension plan execs looking forward to better environment U.S. pension fund executives expect to navigate a recession by the end of 2023, but while the market return environment is set to remain challenging, they see opportunities re-emerging in fixed income. While they are unsure of just how challenging, they are convinced of one thing: a recession almost certainly looms in the coming year. "My crystal ball is a bit cloudy," said Christopher J. Ailman, chief investment officer at the $307.2 billion California...

US. Retirement legislation to cool off after SECURE 2.0

The retirement industry received some welcome news late last year when lawmakers passed another major bipartisan retirement security package, but industry sources aren't expecting 2023 to yield many more legislative victories when it comes to retirement issues. "Everything that they could find where there was bipartisan agreement made it into this bill," said Michael P. Kreps, Washington-based principal and co-chairman of the retirement services practice at Groom Law Group, about SECURE 2.0, a retirement security bill attached to a $1.7...

The Effect of Required Minimum Distributions on Intergenerational Transfers

By: Jonathan M. Leganza How do households use retirement savings accounts in retirement? The answer to this question is important for tax policy pertaining to retirement savings. I shed light on this question by studying how households respond to Required Minimum Distribution (RMD) regulations, which mandate withdrawals from retirement accounts upon reaching a specified age. Using data from the Health and Retirement Study and a regression discontinuity design, I estimate the causal effects of aging into RMD regulations. First, I...