When Colorado lawmakers reconvene for the next legislative session in January, they’ll once again face a significant budget challenge. At a recent meeting of the Joint Budget Committee, officials said the State could be facing a budget deficit of nearly $1.6 billion for the 2027-28 fiscal year, largely driven by Medicaid spending.
The Federal Reserve announced a quarter-point increase in its key interest rate as the central bank tries to rein in inflation. Here’s how that decision can trickle down to affect consumer finances through the interest rates on savings, loans, and other accounts.
Retirement plan provider Fidelity said account balances reached a new record high in the second quarter of 2026. The average 401(k) balance rose to $155,800 and the average IRA balance hit $144,523, Fidelity said. However, the report also found more people tapping into their savings for other uses—the number of account holders who took out a loan or made a hardship withdrawal also rose year-over-year.
The FDA has in recent years approved several blood tests to help doctors diagnose Alzheimer’s disease without relying on more invasive procedures. However, a recent report raises concerns about the tests being promoted on social media, with many accounts promoting the test to healthy people without any signs of the disease. Experts say the test is only intended for people with symptoms of dementia and should always be done with a doctor’s supervision.
News You Should Know is a digest of news from publications around the nation about finance, investing, and retirement.
Investment stewardship is at the heart of Colorado PERA’s mission to provide retirement security for our members while ensuring the sustainability of the fund.
PERA has a team of over 50 investment professionals who manage plan assets with a high level of professional expertise and a sense of duty to our membership. Because we provide retirement and other benefits to current retirees as well as public employees for whom retirement is still years away, we are long-term investors. We seek out investments that are expected to create value over the course of decades at an overall low cost.
Our Approach to Investment Stewardship
At Colorado PERA, investment stewardship comprises four pillars that lay out our approach to managing plan assets:
Protect members’ interests by closely monitoring costs.
Integrate relevant factors into investment strategy.
Advocate for robust markets and shareholder rights.
Evaluate exposures and recognize limitations.
Underpinning that approach is fiduciary duty: PERA staff and Trustees are legally required to act in the best interest of members, and that obligation guides every investment decision.
How Much It Costs to Manage Plan Assets
PERA relies on internal and external management of its funds to ensure a high level of performance while limiting fees. PERA manages about 62% of the investment portfolio in-house for $23.6 million; outsourcing this would cost an estimated $124.0 million.
While there are always expenses associated with managing investments, PERA staff continually look for ways to cut costs and improve efficiency while maximizing value. To that end, we use a mix of internal and external asset management to generate risk-adjusted returns at low overall cost.
In 2025, we spent a total of $248.5 million on investment expenses for the $75.1 billion portfolio, which amounts to an expense ratio of 0.33%. That total includes external management fees and internal costs, such as staff compensation.
As of the end of 2025, we managed 62% of plan assets in-house at a cost of $23.6 million annually. If those same investments were managed by a third party, it would cost an estimated $124 million annually, demonstrating the significant savings we achieve by relying on our own investment experts.
Why Experience Matters
A visual representation of the share of each benefit dollar that comes from various sources, showing that investment income provides the largest share at 59 cents of every dollar.
It’s hard to overstate the importance of PERA’s investments and the income they generate. Over the past 30 years, PERA’s investments have generated $94 billion in appreciation and income for the hundreds of thousands of Coloradans who have spent their careers in public service, funding nearly 60 cents of every dollar paid in benefits. In the past decade, PERA’s portfolio has earned an annualized return of 9.5% (net of fees), outperforming its benchmark, which earned 9.1% during the same period. That 10-year investment return puts PERA in the top 5% of public pension peers. In the context of costs, the plan has earned investment income of $25 for every $1 we’ve spent to manage plan assets over the past 10 years.
Providing such a large share of retirement income is a significant responsibility, which is why PERA prioritizes employing a skilled and knowledgeable team to the investment decisions that help us meet our long-term obligations.
Our team of more than 50 investment professionals is highly qualified and experienced, with an average of 19 years in the finance industry and professional degrees and certifications that include 26 Master’s Degrees and 28 team members who have earned the right to use the Chartered Financial Analyst (CFA) designation. PERA’s investment team puts their extensive knowledge and expertise to use every day for the benefit of our members and retirees.
Having such an experienced team allows PERA to manage more plan assets in-house to take advantage of cost savings; the 62% of assets managed internally includes 100% of the Fixed Income portfolio and 73.6% of the Global Equity portfolio. Additionally, 57.4% of the Real Estate portfolio is in a directly-held structure which improves objective alignment and lowers management costs.
The team also has a vested interest in the financial sustainability of the fund. Beyond fiduciary duty, every member of the investments team is also a PERA member. Serving as responsible stewards of plan assets isn’t just our mission, it’s our passion.
We Use Our Expertise to Lower Costs
In addition to watching costs in the PERA Defined Benefit (DB) Plan, our investments team uses its expertise to lower costs and empower members to save for retirement beyond the DB Plan. That includes the PERAPlus 401(k) and 457 Plans, which have seen significant reductions in fees over time so members retain more of their retirement savings.
Costs are calculated as a weighted average of investment management fees and administration fees across all funds offered in the PERA 401(k) Plan. 2011 costs are represented as a percentage of average investments at fair value between January 1, 2011, and September 30, 2011, prior to the inception of the white label fund structure. Costs for 2025 are represented as a percentage of average investments at fair value between January 1, 2025, and December 31, 2025.
The PERA Board has prioritized the reduction of fees in the PERAPlus plans, and through increased internal management of assets and negotiations with external managers, we’ve achieved an 85% reduction in fees for the PERAPlus 401(k) Plan over the past 15 years.
As of 2026, participants in the PERAPlus 401(k) Plan pay an administrative fee of 0.01% of assets, making PERA’s fees among the lowest in the industry.
Every member of the investments team is dedicated to PERA’s mission and the retirement security of the members we serve. Our sole investment objective has always been to maximize long-term, risk-adjusted returns to the portfolio in order to pay retirement benefits now and for generations to come.
Take Terri Helm. After 20-plus years as a guidance counselor in Cortez, nestled in the state’s rural Southwest Mountain region, Helm retired in 2003 and never slowed down. She reads with kids one day a week at a local charter school, has appeared in two community theater productions this year alone, guides field trips at two area museums, and works with the Dolly Parton Imagination Library.
PERA retiree Terri Helm
“I couldn’t do all that I am doing if I had to work,” Helm said. It’s a small window into a pattern the Economic and Fiscal Impacts report captures at scale. Because PERA benefits arrive as a predictable monthly check rather than a market-dependent withdrawal, retirees keep spending steadily in their hometowns even when the broader economy wobbles. This is the “automatic stabilizing effect” the report credits with propping up rural business districts.
That stability matters most in places like Cortez and Delta County, the latter on the Western Slope, where Roger Fulks taught school for more than 30 years before retiring in 2000. Roger has spent much of his retirement as a volunteer advocate, showing up at county meetings with a clear message: PERA payments function as both personal income and a boost to local commerce.
PERA retiree Roger Fulks
“We’re all grandmas and grandpas, and we’re buying cars, we’re buying toys, we’re buying groceries,” Fulks said. “Nobody sees us as an economic engine, but we are one.” The report bears that out. Statewide, every dollar of PERA benefits generates roughly $1.53 in total economic output as it moves through grocery stores, pharmacies, and main street shops. And in smaller counties with fewer large employers, that retiree spending carries outsized weight relative to the local payroll.
Then there’s Beverly Green, a retired educator in Greeley who has turned retirement into something close to a full-time civic calendar. She serves lunch at the Greeley Senior Center every Monday, has ushered at the Union Colony Civic Center for two decades, and holds leadership roles with two separate retired-educator associations, including a stint on the Colorado Education Association’s statewide board.
PERA retiree Beverly Green
“Once you start (your public sector career), you realize how rewarding it can be,” Green said, “through the differences you make—big or small—and the people you meet along the way.”
Green’s story points to a quieter piece of the report’s findings: real estate, healthcare, finance, and retail account for nearly two-thirds of the economic value generated by retiree spending, the same everyday categories—housing, medical care, groceries—that compose Beverly’s monthly budget and, by extension, Greeley’s Weld County economy.
None of these retirees set out to be an economic statistic. Helm wanted kids to have somewhere to turn. Fulks wanted his students to graduate. Green wanted to give back to a community that gave her a home.
But their steady habits of spending locally, volunteering consistently, and paying taxes are precisely what the Economic and Fiscal Impacts report measures when it tallies $406.6 million in state and local tax revenue and $1.84 billion in labor income tied to PERA distributions each year.
It’s a reminder that behind every regional map and per-capita figure in the report is a retired public servant still showing up for their neighbors—at the senior center, the county fair, or the back of a middle school classroom. Their pensions provide secure retirement while supporting a sustained investment in the communities they’ve chosen to call home.
A new survey finds employees continue to prefer defined benefit pension plans over defined contribution plans like 401(k)s for retirement savings. According to WalletHub, 7 out of 10 survey respondents said a pension is better. The survey also found strong support for increasing contributions to improve Social Security’s finances.
Younger Americans are increasingly taking big risks with their money, with over half of Gen Z investors saying they’ve shifted money intended for investing to sports bets. Experts warn that while sports betting can offer excitement and quick wins, it doesn’t provide the steady long-term asset growth that is needed for building retirement savings.
Health insurance open enrollment season is right around the corner (PERACare Open Enrollment begins in October) and scammers are jumping at the chance to take advantage of retirees. Here are some common tactics scammers use to try to get your personal information and how to keep your data safe.
The best advice comes from people with relevant experience. Older Americans who have made the transition into retirement share what they would do differently with their money if they could go back in time to their prime working and saving years.
News You Should Know is a digest of news from publications around the nation about finance, investing, and retirement.
