At These Rates, Why Bother to Save?

Negative real interest rates have become a disincentive to personal savings, especially among lower-income Americans who will rely heavily on Social Security and Medicaid anyway, this team of economists from Stanford suggests.
Protected growth

“Buffered” ETFs for sensitive stomachs

By Editorial Staff
Like registered index-linked annuities (aka structured annuities), Innovator's Defined Outcome ETFs use options to generate a customized range of returns based on the movement of an equity index.
Anecdotal Evidence

Yes, I Finally Bought an Annuity

By Kerry Pechter
Deciding to buy the contract wasn't easy. Maybe it wasn't even rational. But we feel relieved. We don't sweat these short-term market slides.

Quote of the Week

'We are living in a strange new world, one in which financial markets are being stretched in ways that scarcely could have been comprehended a decade ago' - Jeff Sommer in the New York Times, February 28, 2020.

COVER STORIES YOU MAY HAVE MISSED

February 27, 2020

Project LIMA Aims to Solve the Annuity Puzzle

By Kerry Pechter
Milliman, the actuarial consulting firm, envisions putting a multi-premium deferred income annuity inside a 401(k) managed account as a way to turn tax-deferred savings into lifetime income. It seeks an asset manager partner.
February 20, 2020

Ask the Wizard: Can I Retire?

By Kerry Pechter
We tested online retirement readiness calculators at Vanguard, Fidelity, Schwab, New York Life, Pacific Life and the Alliance for Lifetime Income to look for best practices that might inform the creation of a standard...
February 13, 2020

Research Roundup

By Kerry Pechter
These five research papers explain why many institutional investors still work with 'high-touch' brokers, why the economy may slow as populations shrink, why parents might save more than they need to, why middle-aged rural...