RetiremEntrepreneur: Mike Alfred

"Save like you will retire, but live like you won't," is part of Alfred's personal retirement philosophy. He is co-founder and CEO of BrightScope, the first firm to rate retirement plan quality and publish the ratings on the Internet.

How to Make Annuitization More Appealing

In the embedded video, Brigitte Madrian of Harvard (pictured) describes the results of two surveys of older Americans about lifetime income that she and a team of other Ivy League researchers conducted. An article accompanies the video.

Public Pensions, Version 2.0

In New Brunswick, Canada, city officials and union leaders are experimenting with a new, more frugal kind of public pension that’s based on the principle of “Shared Risk.”
Featured

Summer Is Almost Over. So Is QE

“The unwinding of QE is a place we have never been before," says Phil Chiricotti, president of CFDD. The effects, and the end, of quantitative easing were also on the minds of Vanguard's Ken Volpert and the analysts at Cerulli Associates.

The Global QE Exit Crisis

The rate suppression that QE has imposed on developed countries since 2009 triggered a search for yield that flooded emerging economies with short-term “hot” money, warns the former chairman of Morgan Stanley Asia.
News

IRI publishes brief guide to deferred income annuities

The IRI explains why people would purchase a DIA and how they can use DIAs (by creating sequential or overlapping layers of DIA income in retirement) to maintain inflation-protected income throughout retirement.

Vanguard suggests SWiP option for DoL income illustration

“If the DOL requires lifetime income illustrations to be provided on participant statements, sponsors and service providers should have the flexibility to project retirement income using a systematic withdrawal approach,” Vanguard’s official comment letter said.

The Bucket

Brief or late-breaking items from Beacon Research, Athene Annuity, ADP, ING U.S., and Ruark Consulting.