Living longer—and livelier
“Our major conclusion is that time spent in poor physical functioning is being increasingly compressed into the period just before death,” write David Cutler of Harvard, Mary Beth Landrum...
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The Federal Reserve in a Time for Doves
"If normal times call for a conservative central banker who helps to anchor inflation expectations, now is the rare time when we need a more unorthodox central banker who...
Claim Check
How should you respond if your clients are convinced that they should claim Social Security benefits at age 62? Research presented at the 15th annual meeting of the Retirement...
Ghost Metropolis
Detroit, not unlike parts of Baltimore and Philadelphia and many smaller Rustbelt cities, isn’t so much a failed city as an abandoned one.
The Best & Worst TDF Performers
From an absolute performance standpoint, T. Rowe, TIAA-CREF, Principal, Great West and John Hancock led the 2012 charge. T. Rowe Price, TIAA-CREF and Principal were also among the top...
Law Professor Goes Postal
Yale law professor Ian Ayres sent a provocative letter to thousands of plan sponsors. But his research is more temperate than his mail.
SPIAs Are Slow to Pay Off: Kitces and Pfau
New research from Michael Kitces and Wade Pfau suggests that many people—especially if they don’t live longer than average—would be better off starting out with half their money in...
The Pros Don’t Gamble; They Leverage
“Individuals with low IQ scores hold higher-beta portfolios than individuals with high IQ scores,” says a footnote in a new research paper by two academics associated with AQR Capital...
Retirement Lengths, Withdrawal Rates and Failure Probabilities
In two useful charts, our guest columnist shows how various factors--along with market performance assumptions--interact to inform our decisions about how much we can afford to spend in retirement.
Lower-than-expected lapse rates led to VA charges: Moody’s
“Companies have some flexibility in deciding when to account for a change and when to take a charge,” said Neil Strauss of Moody's. “It’s a ball...
Legal Deception: The M&E Fee
To make variable annuities more transparent and rehabilitate their reputation, start by not hiding commission recovery behind the so-called “mortality and expense risk” fee.
Consensus? Not in Washington
The IRI Government, Legal and Regulatory conference last month had to be a downer for anyone who still naively hoped that the retirement industry and of the government might...
RetiremEntrepreneur: Mark Cortazzo
In seven brief video clips, financial advisor Mark Cortazzo of MACRO Consulting Group talks about his new venture, Annuity Review, which helps investors and advisors evaluate in-force variable annuity...
Greater Yield through Closed-End Funds?
There’s no free-gyro lunch in Greek sovereign bonds, and there’s no free-lunch in closed-end funds either, warns this guest columnist.
Mitigating Behavioral Risk
For the average person, it’s estimated that a financial loss has twice the emotional punch of a win. Such “loss aversion” has been found to be much more pronounced...
A Sudden U-Turn in Bond Flows
Since I (full disclosure) own shares in Vanguard Total Bond Market Index Fund, I feel compelled to fret. So I spoke with Chris Philips, a senior market strategist in...
Wharton professor challenges value of annuities
A Wharton School professor, Kent Smetters (left) and a Congressional Budget Office researcher suggest that the low level of annuitization by Americans demonstrates their common sense.
Investing in Gold: Does It Stack Up?
All that glitters isn't necessarily a good investment. 'People call it an insurance policy. I call it a very expensive insurance policy,' says Wharton professor Jeremy Siegel, author...
Evaluating Retirement Advisor Designations
A well-informed comparison of the Retirement Management Analyst (RMA), Retirement Income Certified Professional (RICP) and the Certified Retirement Counselor (CRC) designations. A link will take you to Advisor Perspectives,...
Harbinger unit offers fixed deferred annuity with GLWB
“Agents have told us that they want to lead with the income story and don’t want to complicate it with indexing methods," said Brian Grigg, vice president of annuity...
