Saving

There is a great op-ed piece in the Washington Post that discusses what the authors refer to as the "retirement problem." In a detailed article, the authors lay-out a case for why it may not be so wise--from a public policy perspective--to leave all retirement planning decisions in the hands of individuals and the free market. In a nutshell, the authors point out that: On the whole, we save too little. On the whole, retail investment returns lag average returns by significant margins due to...

If you ever find yourself envious of those who still have access to the classic defined benefit pension plan through an employer, it is worth remembering that they are not completely risk free. In the wake of the financial crisis, many employers are finding that their defined benefit pension plans are both underfunded and unsustainable. One natural course of action in response to this situation is filing for bankruptcy. In this situation, much of the value that has been promised to employees...

Warren Buffett's first rule of investing is "don't lose money." His second rule is "don't forget rule number one." In a rather odd whitepaper on retirement planning titled "Risk: How Much is Enough," the financial services firm UBS lays-out a road map of sorts for "moving forward" with retirement planning "in a changed world." What seems clear is that the primary catalyst for the whitepaper is the fact that many financial advisors ignore or forget Buffett's first rule of investing when it comes...

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...