Retirement Roundup: Two-thirds of Colorado voters anxious about retirement

A digest of timely information and insight about finance, investing, and retirement.

Two-thirds of Colorado voters anxious about retirement | Denver Post
About two-thirds of Colorado registered voters age 25 to 64 describe feeling anxious about having enough money to live on in retirement, and more than half estimate they are behind schedule in their retirement savings, according to a survey from AARP. Those personal concerns are translating into support by a high margin, 70 percent, for a private-public partnership to offer workers a retirement savings plan when their employers don’t provide one. Creating a state-backed retirement plan option is under consideration again in the legislature this year after past attempts failed.

The retirement crisis is bad for everyone—especially these people | MarketWatch
The country is facing a retirement crisis, but some Americans are worse off than others. Workers in the top 20 percent of earnings distributions have half of all retirement wealth in both 1992 and 2010, compared with the bottom group, which saw its share fall from 3 percent to 1 percent between those years, a recent analysis at The New School’s Schwartz Center for Economic Policy Analysis (SCEPA) found. The share of workers in the bottom fifth of the earnings distribution with no retirement savings jumped from 45 percent to 51 percent in those 18 years.

What you need to know about pension lump sums | Forbes
Recently, a news item appeared at CNN: “It just became easier for employers to dump retirees’ pensions.” The headline suggests that employers are simply defaulting on their obligation to pay pension benefits. The reality is that the Trump administration restored permission to employers to offer to its retirees, in a time-limited window, the option to convert their future lifelong annuity pension payments into a single lump sum payment, a process that some employers had begun to implement but which the Obama administration had prohibited in 2015.

How behavioral technology will improve retirement planning | InvestmentNews
Technology has always been the great disrupter. When robo-advisers came around, traditional advisers began preparing for battle. Now financial advisers are largely embracing technology, using it to free them up to be better advisers. But technology isn’t done evolving. The technology today is most likely more of a starting line than a finish line. So the question now is: How will the next generation of financial planning tech look?

Retirementplanning: Learning from other people’s mistakes | The Street
Sorrowful tales of ruinous errors with retirement investments are all too common. Just ask financial adviser Frank Pare. He knows how easy it is to make financial mistakes with retirement money, whether out of ignorance or emotional strain. Mishandling the intricacies of finance can lead to horrible outcomes, he said. Plus, “Trying to make rational decisions under stress” can bring disaster, he told The Street’s Retirement, Taxes & Income Strategies Symposium, held recently in New York.

Helpfrom states desperately needed | Pensions &Investments
Pensions & Investments Opinion: We have always believed that what is best for beneficiaries of retirement plans, whether defined benefit or defined contribution, is best for the financial services industry. We have also believed that as many workers as possible should have access to a retirement plan. This is important for the financial health of retired workers, but it also contributes to the country’s financial well-being by increasing the nation’s saving rate. For that reason, we have supported state efforts to set up state-sponsored private-sector retirement programs. The nation cannot continue to allow more than 35 percent of full-time private-sector workers to go without a way to save for retirement in a tax-advantaged, low-cost plan other than an individual retirement account.

Retirement Roundup: Retirement focus greater for married versus singles

A digest of timely information and insight about finance, investing, and retirement.

Retirement focus greater for married versus singles | PlanSponsor
Those married or partnered are more likely to have a positive outlook on their finances, consider themselves planners and savers and have a focus on saving for retirement, while those who are single are prioritizing affording everyday bills and paying down student debt, the Society of Actuaries (SOA) has found. These differences are even more dramatic for older generations, including their financial outlook and planning horizons. There are wide gaps between married or partnered individuals and those who are single in how they address their financial priorities and their relationship with debt. These findings are potentially troublesome, given that these older generations are generally approaching or in retirement, the SOA says.

A retirement crisis in the US? Maybe not. | CNBC
Most stories about Americans and retirement contain words like “crisis,” “poverty,” and “horror.” Not this one. While many people are still not saving enough for their golden years, many of them are getting better at doing so — and hopeful signs abound. Today, American households headed by individuals between the ages of 35 and 64 are running $3.83 trillion short of the amount they need to safely carry them through their post-working life, according to new data by the Employee Benefit Research Institute. However, the last time EBRI ran the numbers, in 2014, those families were $4.44 trillion behind. “That’s significantly lower than it was,” said Jack VanDerhei, research director at the Institute.

It just became easier for employers to dump retirees’ pensions | CNN
Traditional pensions are disappearing in America, and the federal government just made it easier for employers to get rid of them. With no fanfare in early March, the Treasury Department issued a notice that allows employers to buy out current retirees from their pensions with a one-time lump sum payment. The decision reversesObama-era guidance, issued in 2015, that had effectively banned the practice after officials determined that lump-sum payments often shortchanged seniors. Now, advocates for the elderly worry that millions of people receiving monthly pension checks could be at risk.

The top financial concern in retirement centers on health care | USA Today
Though retirement is an exciting milestone to look forward to, the idea of it can be nerve-wracking. After all, there are a host of financial unknowns associated with retirement, and living on a fixed income leaves many seniors struggling to make ends meet. It’s therefore encouraging to learn that 84 percent of seniors today think their retirement has been as good as expected, if not better, according to T.Rowe Price. But retirees still harbor financial concerns. Many seniors have money-related worries on the brain, but according to T. Rowe Price, they all center on one key thing: health care.

Anactive, full retirement depends on proactive, long-term planning | Kiplinger
People are living longer, but how many are living well in retirement? When it comes to a retirement that’s both enjoyable and financially secure, so much depends on how well people planned financially, and whether their income strategy was designed for the long road and the bumps that may occur as they travel along it. Too often, it’s not. That’s why, when preparing for retirement, it’s important to be proactive and get as far ahead of the curve as possible so variables like a fickle market and life events don’t disrupt and undermine your financial security. Rather than wait for something negative to happen and reacting to it, there are ways to build a plan that can help weather storms and sustain you for a long and enjoyable retirement.

National Healthcare Decisions Day

End-of-life issues may be hard to talk about, but that doesn’t make them unimportant. In fact, by embracing the discomfort and discussing some of the challenging decisions we will all face, whether as we age or as our loved ones do, the realities of managing this season of life can be made easier.

According to The Conversation Project, while 92 percent of Americans say that talking with their loved ones about end-of-life care is important, only 27 percent have actually done so. A full 95 percent say they would be willing to talk about their own wishes, and more than half even say they would be relieved to discuss the issue. National Healthcare Decisions Day (NHDD), held in 2019 on April 16, is an initiative of The Conversation Project in collaboration with the Institutefor Healthcare Improvement to inspire, educate, and empower the public and providers about the importance of advance care planning.

It’s never too early to start a conversation about the medical care you would want in the future. Advance care planning involves learning about the types of decisions that might need to be made and the tools available to let others know a patient’s wishes.

  • A living will documents what kind of medical treatments a patient would want or not want.
  • A health care power of attorney documents an agent, or the person a patient has selected to be the voice for health care decisions when the patient is unable to speak.
  • Aging With Dignity offers its “Five Wishes” template for recording medical treatment preferences. It meets legal requirements in 42 states, including Colorado. People in other states often attach it to their state forms.

Though documenting health care wishes is a critical part of end-of-life planning, this should be a process that focuses on conversations among friends, families, medical providers, and health facilities.

If it feels awkward to begin those conversations, The Conversation Project has a number of resources, including a conversation starter kit that provides guidance for talking with loved ones about end-of-life wishes before a medical crisis hits as well as How to Talk to Your Doctor to make medical decisions easier once they need to be made.

The Conversation Project emphasizes having a conversation about values, “what matters to you, not what’s the matter with you.” Some early questions to consider might include:

  • If you were to become severely ill, what is most important to you?
  • Are there treatments that you would or would not want?
  • Who will you designate to understand your wishes and communicate them to your doctor, hospital, and family members?

Addressing the realities of health care at the end of life can mean that fewer people encounter health care they would not choose, and more loved ones can be relieved of the guilt and uncertainty that often comes with a medical crisis.

In addition to the information listed above, other resources are available to help make advance care plans and begin the conversations about medical wishes:

We Hear You: PERA and Private Equity

New video series answers your questions about PERA’s investment program.

What is private equity? Why does the PERA portfolio contain private equity investments? How have these investments performed and how much are the fees?

In recent months, the wisdom of public pensions’ continued investment in private equity has been questioned. Although some observers have criticized these vehicles, private equity remains one of the highest expected returning asset classes in Colorado PERA’s investment portfolio. The costs of participating in private equity are higher than for publicly traded assets, but the expectations for performance in this asset class are also higher. Over time, the private equity asset class has outperformed the public markets and delivered higher returns to the PERA fund.

Private equity is complex and PERA has received many questions about how it is managed and its role in context of the broader portfolio. While the PERA website offers extensive information about these practices – everything from asset allocation to performance metrics – there is now a new series of brief videos that provide clear answers to these questions and more.

The most recent video in this series is PERA and Private Equity, which explains why private equity remains such a valuable and productive part of PERA’s investment portfolio. Other videos in the series include PERA’s Investment Program, a general overview, and PERA’s Investment Benchmarks, which provides a concise look at how PERA’s investment team works with the PERA Board of Trustees to establish performance targets for the portfolio. Watch the videos below, on the copera.org website, or on PERA’s YouTube channel.

Have a question? Please keep them coming using this link; future videos will be based on your questions and will include information about the work we do for you.

We Hear You Video: PERA and Private Equity

Additional Resources:

PERA investment management fees fact sheet

Whyenhanced investment transparency creates a new set of risks

PERA’s Private Equity Portfolio

We Hear You: PERA’s Investment Benchmarks

New video series answers your questions about PERA’s investment program.

How are investment performance goals set? How does PERA determine benchmarks for non-publicly traded assets like private equity and real estate? How have PERA’s investments performed over the long-term?

Questions like these are addressed in the newest edition of the PERA “We Hear You” videos. These videos feature interviews with PERA’s Chief Investment Officer as well as members of the investment staff answering questions from PERA members.

The video program is designed to complement the extensive information about these practices – everything from asset allocation to performance metrics – available on PERA’s website and included in the Comprehensive Annual Financial Report.

The PERA’s Investment Benchmarks video covers how the PERA investment team works with the PERA Board of Trustees to establish performance targets and reviews the long-term goals of the investment program. Watch it below, on the copera.org website, or on PERA’s YouTube channel.

Have a question? Please keep them coming using this link; future videos will be based on your questions and will include information about the work we do for you.

We Hear You Video: PERA’s Investment Benchmarks

Additional resources:

What Is a Policy Benchmark?

WeHear You: PERA’s Investment Program Overview