February 2018

19Feb

Save More Tomorrow: Practical Behavioral Finance Solutions to Improve 401(k) Plans

By Shlomo Benartzi One of the world’s top experts in behavioral finance offers innovative strategies for improving 401(k) plans. Half of Americans do not have access to a retirement saving plan at their workplace. Of those who do about a third fail to join. And those who do join tend to save too little and often make unwise investment decisions. In short, the 401(k) world is in crisis, and workers need help. Save More Tomorrow provides that help by focusing on the...

February 19, 2018
Books, Pension design, Savings,
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19Feb

How Persistent Low Expected Returns Alter Optimal Life Cycle Saving, Investment, and Retirement Behavior

By Vanya Horneff, Raimond Maurer, Olivia S. Mitchell This paper explores how an environment of persistent low returns influences saving, investing, and retirement behaviors, as compared to what in the past had been thought of as more “normal” financial conditions. Our calibrated lifecycle dynamic model with realistic tax, minimum distribution, and Social Security benefit rules produces results that agree with observed saving, work, and claiming age behavior of U.S. households. In particular, our model generates a large peak at the...

February 19, 2018
Articles, Investing, Savings, , ,
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12Feb

Overcoming the Saving Slump: How to Increase the Effectiveness of Financial Education and Saving Programs

By Annamaria Lusardi The great majority of working Americans are unprepared to face the difficult task of planning for retirement. In fact, the personal savings rate has been holding steady at zero for several years, down from 8 percent in the mid-1980s. Overcoming the Saving Slump explores the many challenges facing workers in the transition from a traditional defined benefit pension system to one that requires more individual responsibility, analyzing the considerable impediments to saving and evaluating financial literacy programs...

February 12, 2018
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12Feb

Headed for the Poorhouse: How to Ensure Seniors Don’t Run Out of Cash Before They Run Out of Time

By Bonnie-Jeanne MacDonald (Ryerson University - The National Institute of Aging (NIA)) Income security in later life (age 85) is more important now than ever. More attention needs to be paid to how Canadians can best draw down their savings after retirement and secure adequate income for advanced ages. Retiring Canadians need innovative solutions – ones that add definitive value but place no new pressures on the Canadian public purse. I propose a government-led solution: Canada’s Living Income For the...

February 12, 2018
Aging, Articles, Savings, ,
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12Feb

Headed for the Poorhouse: How to Ensure Seniors Don't Run Out of Cash Before They Run Out of Time

By Bonnie-Jeanne MacDonald (Ryerson University - The National Institute of Aging (NIA)) Income security in later life (age 85) is more important now than ever. More attention needs to be paid to how Canadians can best draw down their savings after retirement and secure adequate income for advanced ages. Retiring Canadians need innovative solutions – ones that add definitive value but place no new pressures on the Canadian public purse. I propose a government-led solution: Canada’s Living Income For the...

February 12, 2018
Aging, Articles, Savings, ,
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05Feb

Long-Run Saving Dynamics: Evidence from Unexpected Inheritances

By Jeppe Druedahl (University of Copenhagen - Department of Economics) & Alessandro Martinello (Lund University - Department of Economics; Danish National Institute of Social Research (SFI)) We exploit inheritance episodes to provide novel causal evidence on long-run saving dynamics. For identification, we combine a panel of administrative wealth reports with the unexpected timing of sudden parental deaths. After inheritance, net worth converges towards the path established before parental death, and convergence is faster for liquid assets. Using a generalized structural...

February 5, 2018
Aging, Articles, Savings, Slider-Left,
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January 2018

22Jan

The Retirement Survival Guide: How to Make Smart Financial Decisions in Good Times and Bad

By Julie Jason Given today’s dire headlines, planning a secure retirement has become a more critical task than ever. This revised edition of Julie Jason’s award-winning guide—updated to reflect current laws and statistics—will help Americans seeking safety and stability in a time of economic change. In addition to showing those on the verge of retirement how to create their own “personal pension,” investment educator Jason deftly guides prospective retirees through the otherwise bewildering process of evaluating their needs, anticipating future...

January 22, 2018
Books, Investing, Pension design, Savings, , ,
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22Jan

The Blended Retirement System

By Patrick Weinert For over a century, the military services have provided pensions to active duty members that served 20 years. On January 1, 2018, the military broke with a long tradition and instituted a Blended Retirement System (BRS). This system is designed to enable service members to take some retirement savings with them if they depart before serving 20 years on active duty. Today, many service members have the option to stay with the traditional pension or enroll in...

January 22, 2018
Books, Pension design, Savings, ,
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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
Articles, Investing, Labor Market, Savings, , , ,
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15Jan

The Standard of Living: Incomes, Wages and Lending in Regions

By Alexandra Burdyak (Russian Presidential Academy of National Economy and Public Administration (RANEPA) - Institute for Social Analysis and Prediction) & Elena E. Grishina (Russian Presidential Academy of National Economy and Public Administration (RANEPA) - Institute of Social Analysis and Forecasting) In January–October 2017, households’ real disposable cash income fell by 1.3% as compared to the relevant period of 2016. It is noteworthy that real accrued wages rose by 3.0%, while the real size of assigned pensions, by 3.9%. During...

January 15, 2018
Articles, Labor Market, Savings, ,
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