Retirement

An " in-plan annuity " refers to an annuity option that exists within a 401k plan. The notion of an annuity-based retirement income option within a 401k plan is a relatively new concept. Advocates of in-plan annuities--which include key members of the Treasury Department and Congress--believe that partial annuitization is important for the retirement security of the millions of Americans whose access to stable sources of pension income is largely limited to Social Security . There are, however...

The Center for Retirement Research at Boston College has released a study that highlights the need for a greater focus on the use of bonds in retirement. The study indicates that 86 percent of households approaching retirement hold a bank account, while only 33 percent own stocks directly and only 7 percent own bonds directly. The author suggests that the focus on safe, highly liquid accounts that provide a guaranteed return of capital is short-sighted and often risky. The notion of a return on...

Some of the world's largest pension funds are decreasing the amount of funds dedicated to stocks. Included among the list of pension funds adjusting asset allocations are well known names such as The California Public Employees' Retirement System (Calpers), The California State Teachers' Retirement System (Calstrs), the Dutch government retirees fund, and the South Korean private sector employees fund. Painful and persistent equity losses over the past decade have prompted many of these large...

Evan Cooper writes that investing is less relevant to a comfortable retirement than most people think. Appropriate levels of saving and spending are the real drivers of adequate retirement resources. Not necessarily something that the asset management and accumulation industry wants to acknowledge, but the views expressed make perfect sense. This poses a challenge for advisers, because investing has sex appeal and most schnooks are under the impression that finding the right investment or the...