FYI: The world of retirement savings recently reached a significant milestone that has important implications for workers and retirees: For the first time, assets in defined-contribution savings plans represent more than 50% of all retirement plan assets globally, according to Willis Towers Watson.
While some defined-benefit pension plans still exist, many more workers today have to rely on defined-contribution plans (think: 401(k) and IRA accounts) to fund their retirements. With today’s defined-contribution plans, workers have to assume the responsibility for making all the complex savings and investment decisions that will significantly affect the amount of money they will have available once they stop working and retire.
While recent innovations in defined-contribution retirement plans, such as the use of auto-enrollment, are making it easier to save, the focus now must shift toward a more-comprehensive approach to help individuals make those savings last.
Increasingly, workers expect their retirement plans to not only help them save, but also help them to generate and manage income through retirement. A recent report by the Georgetown University Center for Retirement Initiatives, “Generating and Protecting Retirement Income in Defined Contribution Plans”, looks at how different approaches can meet individual goals for doing just that.
Regards,
Ted
https://www.marketwatch.com/story/the-retirement-plan-of-the-future-turning-that-pot-of-money-into-monthly-income-2019-06-28/print
Comments
The paper is focused on defined contribution plans (401(k), 403(b), etc.), not IRAs. Nevertheless, the same sort of approaches could be applied to IRAs.
Judging from the reader comments on the MarketWatch site, people seem to view investing during one's decumulation period is no different from investing in one's accumulation period, except perhaps that one focuses a bit more on income-generating securities.
But as the paper states: By recognizing the clear difference between accumulation and decumulation risks, it is easy to understand why income solutions can vary so greatly in terms of composition and the risks they seek to address.
The paper, though it does some simulations, strikes me as largely an overview (albeit a very clear one) of the considerations people have in retirement and how the different approaches address or fail to address them. It's a nice writeup (skip the MarketWatch piece). The three page exec summary in turn makes for a good, somewhat quick read.
http://cri.georgetown.edu/wp-content/uploads/2019/06/policy-report-19-02.pdf
I’m not up to speed on all this. Glanced at the MW story only. But what in heck do they consider “gambling”? Since there’s a significant body of opinion in the investment community and here on the board that one should actually “ramp up” their equity exposure as they progress during retirement, this reference to “gambling” strikes me as vague at best and misdirected at worst.
I don’t subscribe to the school that recommends increasing equity exposure during the retirement years. But the bigger “gamble” in the early years of retirement seems to me to be in locking-in a low growth potential, be it by going heavily into cash / bonds or putting all your eggs into an annuity (less ”growthy” than maintaining a well diversified portfolio with as much exposure to equities as you can tolerate).
A key thought about the nonpopularity of annuities:
The individual sees the annuity as a bet, and if they receive the full cost of the annuity payouts before they die, the annuity was a worthwhile investment, but if they die beforehand, it was a bad investment. Less consideration is given to the utility of peace of mind, or the benefits of mortality pooling.
Here's the same excerpt including preceding and following sentences: The MW article says that in the real world ("Without more and better ... choices") retirees are gambling. So here, gambling is not about annuities, which do exist, but rather the lack of education ("information") and the lack of alternatives.
Here's how I look at gambling with respect to retirement (not really much different from hank's view):
I use a traditional pension (defined benefit plan) that is just large enough to fully fund a person's retirement as the baseline for a "safe" retirement. An objective equivalent would be a lump sum payment that is converted into the same income stream as that pension. Another objective equivalent would be a defined contribution plan, which is also just a pile of cash, likewise converted into the same income stream as that pension.
One stream is called a "pension", the others, an "annuity'. Strip away the emotion, the deep beliefs, the convictions, and they're the same thing.
Now, nearly all retirees would not take that income stream (unless you called it a pension). Rather, they would take the money and invest it. They would put that safe retirement at risk for the chance to wind up with more. Perhaps more to enjoy during retirement, perhaps more to leave as a legacy. It doesn't matter. The point is that they are putting something at risk (a safe retirement) for the possibility of "winning" something.
That's gambling. No value judgment. They may feel, for example, that it is more important to leave a legacy than to have the certainty that they won't wind up destitute.
It is more likely that they don't have enough to start with, so the safe baseline alternative doesn't exist. In that case, no matter what they do, it's is a gamble. Of necessity.
>> Rather, they would take the money and invest it.
or, for many, do all the other things than invest
https://www.nytimes.com/2019/07/01/business/rolling-stones-social-security-retirement.html
As Lawrence Welk might quote, that's just one toke over the line.