I’ve been spending a great deal of time with 80- and 90-year-olds recently. My mom (now in her mid-80s) just moved to a new retirement community, and so it’s been a wonderful opportunity to observe older retirees in a personal …

I just finished watching a new documentary on 401(k) plans. It was intended to be an exposé of sorts. The program combined criticisms of the U.S. retirement system and financial services industry with sinister music for added drama. After I …

One of the most intriguing retirement studies issued in 2012 was by economists James Poterba of MIT, Steven Venti of Dartmouth, and David Wise of Harvard.* Their study looked at wealth holdings among Americans in their late 60s. And one …

A new study reported in the press summarizes what retirement experts have known for a while: Tax-deferred retirement accounts such as 401(k)s and IRAs can sometimes be “leaky buckets,” meaning that some individuals tap their tax-advantaged accounts prior to retirement. …

It’s early in 2013. Stocks had a terrific year in 2012, the fiscal cliff has been avoided—and so now’s the perfect time to reconsider your retirement plan, right?

Well, yes and no. Yes, tax time is a good time to …

I participated in a live webcast recently on the topic of earning income in a low-yield environment. Here’s a recap of a few of the themes from that session.

One of the persistent questions from the seminar was how long …

If I were asked what an investor should do to maximize retirement wealth, I’d tick off my standard list, my rules of thumb. Start saving early—and regularly. Keep debt under control. Maximize the use of tax-deferred retirement accounts, like 401(k)s. …

I was just reading a blog that reported the typical pre-retiree had $42,000 in a 401(k) account as of 2010. Yet, I happen to know the actual figure is more like $100,000. These two numbers reveal how much confusion can …

Retirement systems are dynamic and can be expected to change over time. But one hindrance to thinking about change is the common practice of promoting excessively gloomy views of retirement outcomes in the United States. For example, a recent New …

The headline is dramatic. For the typical American household, net worth is down 39% from 2007 to 2010. That puts net worth for the typical household back where it was in the early 1990s. This data is from the Federal …