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. …

The long-term budget outlook for the federal government is bleak. What is surprising is that this is considered news.

The forces driving the U.S.’s long-term budget problem have been known for decades. We’ve also known for years that sometime in …

Here’s the good news: Half of Americans are “on track” financially for retirement.

The bad news? The other half aren’t. …

Ask a Vanguard investor about what it takes to be successful at saving for retirement, and he or she would probably tell you to start saving early, save as much as you can, invest in a low-cost diversified portfolio, and …

What’s the typical income of a U.S. retiree? $40,000? $50,000? Higher, lower?

It’s $31,157 as of 2008.

That’s the median income of households age 65 and older as reported by Pat Purcell of the Congressional Research Service. The median means …

I recently attended a conference in Washington on the question of retirement income—how baby boomers will generate income from their 401(k) accounts once they retire.…

A new poll from Gallup says that Americans expect to depend more on Social Security when they retire—and less on 401(k)s, IRAs, and part-time work. I don’t believe it for a minute.…

For many years, the government has published statistics on Americans’ age and employment. A version of that data is shown in the chart below. My sense is that these figures are the basis for much of the conventional wisdom on …

Now that Roth IRA conversions are available to people who previously hadn’t been eligible, there’s been quite a spike in coverage. However, the spotlight should probably be focused more on those who can have a Roth, but as yet do …

While I have been publishing research for many years, I consider myself new to the blogosphere. So I was a little surprised when my recent post on a new 401(k) rating service, Brightscope, elicited some response, including a critique…

401(k) accounts are typically among the largest assets held by middle- and upper-middle-income households in the United States. So naturally they draw a lot of attention—in the marketplace, in the media, and in Washington. The government, for example, is proposing …