Financial advice tends to focus on financial assets, but other levers may be more important for most households. This paper proceeds in three stages. The first section reports a simple Excel spreadsheet exercise that provides a stylized example of the tradeoff between returns and time spent in...

A widespread perception is that state-local government workers receive high pension benefits which, combined with Social Security, provide more than adequate retirement income. This study uses the Health and Retirement Study (HRS) and actuarial reports to test this hypothesis. The major finding...

In 2010, the U.S. Department of Labor proposed changes that would eliminate third-party incentive payments, such as 12b-1 fees, that may encourage broker-dealers to sell high-fee mutual funds to Individual Retirement Account (IRA) customers. The investment industry argues that eliminating these...

The brief’s key findings are: *The Federal Reserve’s 2013 Survey of Consumer Finances provides an opportunity to examine trends in retirement savings over the past few years. *The good news is increased use of target date funds; the bad news is no improvement in participation rates,...

The comparability of state-local versus private sector pay has become a major issue in the wake of the financial crisis. Funded levels of public pension plans declined sharply, and governments' ability to make the required contributions has been severely constrained by the collapse of...

The 2012 Trustees Report shows a significant increase in the program's 75 year deficit from 2.22 percent to 2.67 percent of taxable payroll and an advance in the date of trust fund exhaustion from 2036 to 2033. These changes reflect the slow recovery from the recession and rising disability...

The release of the Federal Reserve’s 2010 Survey of Consumer Finances (SCF) is a great opportunity to assess how conflicting forces – the maturation of the system and the Pension Protection Act of 2006 on the one hand and the devastating effects of the 2008 financial collapse and Great...

A recent Issue in Brief projected that, under the most likely scenario, the aggregate funded ratio for state and local pension plans will increase from 73 percent in 2012 to 81 percent in 2016. The “optimistic” and “pessimistic” scenarios assume higher or lower, but also constant, rates...

The brief’s key findings are: Commentators question whether pension coverage is a serious problem, indicating that 80 percent have access to a plan. But this number refers to access – not participation – and to full-time workers in both the public and private sectors. A review of four...

The brief’s key findings are: *The National Retirement Risk Index framework is used to address how much working-age households need to save for retirement. *A typical household should get a third of its retirement income from a savings plan, with the low income needing one quarter and the high...