‘Living’ Proofs

In a calendar already chock full of special days and commemorative months, next week we’ll add another: Women’s Retirement Security Day.

If this one has snuck up on you — well, it’s a first. July 14 this year, the second Tuesday in July thereafter. A national day of action dedicated to raising awareness, sharing resources, and improving retirement outcomes for women.

And that’s the key — not a day of remembrance, a day for action.

For much of this country’s history, women were largely expected to derive retirement security through someone else’s employment — a husband’s pension, survivor benefits, or eventually Social Security spousal benefits. The retirement system itself was largely designed around a traditional, uninterrupted male career model: one worker, one employer, one pension, one primary breadwinner.

But many women’s lives — including my mother’s — never really fit that model.

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Mom, a schoolteacher, had a career of her own, but took a fairly significant (and unpaid) “sabbatical” so that she could stay at home with her four kids until the youngest was ready to head off to school. When she returned to work, she was covered by a state pension plan, albeit one that required from her paycheck a much more significant contribution than most defer into 401(k)s.

On top of that she saved diligently to buy back the service credits she had forgone during the years she worked in our home without a paycheck — and then set aside money in her 403(b) account (over Dad’s objections, I might add — he didn’t think they could afford it).

Indeed, generally speaking, women face many more challenges regarding retirement preparation than men. They live longer (and thus are likely to have longer retirements to fund), tend to have less saved for retirement (because of lower incomes and more workforce interruptions), and in addition to longer retirements, those longer lives mean they are also more likely to face what can be the catastrophic financial burden of long-term care expenses.

And their caregiving responsibilities often extend to aging parents, even after their own children have left the “nest.”

Women are also less likely to work for an employer that offers a retirement plan at work, and more likely to work part time — which historically has often meant being excluded from plan participation altogether. Only about 1 in 3 women use a professional financial advisor to help manage retirement savings and investments.[i]

Oh, and like my mother, they tend to outlive their spouses — often by far more than the variance in average life expectancy tables might suggest.

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Let’s face it, one of the enduring realities for many women is that the very responsibilities that strengthen families can weaken long-term financial security. Women remain more likely to interrupt careers, reduce hours, or work part time because of caregiving responsibilities — decisions that can ripple through retirement outcomes for decades.

The “magic” of compounding only works when there is something to compound.

Retirement preparedness isn’t merely about accumulating assets. It’s about preserving dignity, independence, and choice.

For everyone.

That’s what the inaugural Women’s Retirement Security Day should remind us.

Not simply that women face different retirement challenges — though they clearly do.

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But that a retirement system designed around real life needs to consider the people who actually live it.

Once again, though — this is not a day for flowers, cards, and social media posts. This is a day for action.

Let’s get to it.

• Nevin E. Adams, JD

More information is available at: https://www.usaretirement.org/get-involved/wir/womens-retirement-security-day/

[i] See 25 Facts About Women's Retirement Outlook | 25th Annual Transamerica Retirement Survey 2025.

The Pursuit(s) of ‘Happiness’

 This is the time of year when you hear a lot of talk about the “unalienable” rights of “life, liberty, and the pursuit of happiness.” And while they weren’t written with retirement plans in mind — to my ears they may describe the aspirations behind retirement better than almost anything else in American public policy. 

“Life” is, of course, central to retirement planning. It defines not only the time we have to prepare financially, physically, and emotionally for retirement — but also the length of time those preparations must sustain us.

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Granted, retirement is a relatively new and for many an as yet unexplored reality. But it’s easy to take for granted that millions of older Americans today live with a degree of financial security that previous generations often lacked. Before pensions, Social Security, and defined contribution plans, growing old frequently meant dependency — on family, charity, or continued labor. 

“Liberty” may be even more directly connected to retirement readiness. Financial insecurity restricts freedom. People who cannot afford to retire often lose the ability to decide how they spend their time, where they live, or when they stop working. A well-functioning retirement system creates options.

And aren’t “options” the essence of liberty? The ability to retire on one’s own terms, rather than because of failing health or employer decisions, is fundamentally about personal autonomy. 

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That idea has evolved over time. Not so long ago, retirement itself was once a rarity. For much of American history, people simply worked as long as they physically could. The growth of employer-sponsored retirement plans in the 20th century helped create something new: the expectation that later life could include not merely rest, but choice. Choice about work. Choice about family. Choice about purpose.

And then there is “the pursuit of happiness.” Note that it’s the PURSUIT of happiness, not a guarantee. A retirement plan cannot guarantee happiness, but it can create the financial foundation that allows people to pursue it. Indeed, one of the more overlooked aspects of retirement readiness is that money is rarely the ultimate objective. Financial assets are really a means to acquire something else: time, freedom, security, and peace of mind.

“These days, I’m often told that ‘retirement’ itself is no longer an especially compelling aspiration for younger workers…that younger workers can’t really visualize that concept — or aren’t willing to wait for it. Fair enough — the pursuit of happiness needn’t wait for “retirement” — it can, and perhaps should be, a lifelong undertaking. 

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Regardless, it remains today — as it was 250 years ago — an opportunity gifted to us by those who went before — not just those gathered in Philadelphia in 1776, but all the men and women who have sacrificed over our nation’s history to make that vision a reality. 

Because while those “rights” may be unalienable — they aren’t preserved without sacrifice, and a commitment to the future — yours, mine and ours.

• Nevin E. Adams, JD

‘Staying’ Power

  For years now, I’ve been saying that the only thing wrong with the 401(k) system is that there aren’t enough of them. And to be fair, the past several years have largely validated that view.

Indeed, Vanguard’s latest How America Saves report paints what is, on the surface anyway, a remarkably encouraging picture. Participation rates among eligible workers are near record highs. Contribution rates rose — 45% of participants increased their savings rate in 2025, contributing to an average savings rate of 12.1%, an all-time high. Professionally managed investments dominate participant portfolios. Most investors ignored market volatility entirely — and, doubtless as a result of all that — account balances reached new highs.

Yes, after decades spent worrying about employees failing to enroll, hunkering down in stable value funds, or panic-trading during downturns, the modern defined contribution system increasingly appears to be functioning as designed — or, as Vanguard labels it — a “quiet retirement revolution.”

But another recent study suggests that the industry may be misunderstanding what “success” actually looks like.

Morningstar’s paper, Access, Auto-Enrollment, and Accumulation: A Simulation of Universal Retirement Plan Coverage, modeled the impact of automatically enrolling workers without retirement plan access into a federally administered savings arrangement. The results are impressive. Tens of millions of additional workers could enter the retirement system. Hundreds of billions — perhaps more than a trillion dollars — in additional retirement savings could accumulate over time.

But buried deeper in the analysis is a more revealing point — the real breakthrough in retirement outcomes may not be access.

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It may be continuity.

The Vanguard report and the Morningstar study actually tell a surprisingly consistent story when viewed together. While Vanguard shows a system increasingly optimized around automation and default behaviors, Morningstar shows that the outcomes of even the best-designed system can be undermined if workers cannot remain continuously connected to savings long enough for compounding to matter.

And that matters. Big time. Particularly in view of the workers most vulnerable to those employment “disconnects;” lower-paid, minorities, women, the young…

Let’s face it. The retirement industry has spent much of the last two decades trying to solve the participation problem. In many respects, it has succeeded. Automatic enrollment, automatic escalation, target-date funds, managed accounts, and payroll deduction have fundamentally changed participant behavior — or perhaps more accurately, reduced the need for participant behavior altogether.

More recently, the focus has shifted toward expanding access to workplace programs — reinforcing how strongly availability, combined with automation, improves savings outcomes — even for workers with modest incomes.

But the Morningstar analysis highlights that workers with long periods of uninterrupted participation saw dramatically larger projected gains than workers with shorter or fragmented savings histories. Automatic enrollment helped. Higher default contribution rates helped somewhat. But it was remaining attached to the system through job changes, financial emergencies, and career transitions — that mattered more than almost anything else. “Workers with 10+ years of sustained participation could see 67% to 125% higher retirement wealth under auto‑enrollment scenarios,” according to the report.

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Leakage remains stubbornly high. The number, if not the amount, of hardship withdrawals continues to rise. Cash-outs during job transitions remain common — most particularly in situations where a participant loan is outstanding. Vanguard’s data itself hints at this tension: record balances existing alongside increasing hardship withdrawals. The system has become exceptionally good at getting money into retirement accounts — but still struggles to keep it there when life intervenes.

In other words, the retirement system may be healthier than it has ever been structurally — while on an individual basis many retirement savers remain financially fragile.

That tension becomes even more apparent when looking at which workers benefit most from expanded access proposals. Morningstar found the largest projected gains among lower-income households, younger workers, single women, Hispanic workers, and Black workers — populations historically less likely to have access to employer-sponsored plans.

For years, the policy focus has centered on access: state auto-IRAs, SECURE Act mandates, automatic enrollment requirements, and proposals to expand coverage. Those initiatives matter. They clearly move the needle — and will continue to do so.

But the future success of the defined contribution system may depend less on whether workers can open an account — and more on whether they can stay invested long enough for the system to work as intended.

• Nevin E. Adams, JD

‘Watch’ Words

The retirement industry spends enormous time modeling outcomes, but most of what really prepares us for retirement isn’t found in a Monte Carlo simulation. It’s learned from watching people around us live their lives. Often our fathers.

My parents led mostly through example — and powerful as that can be, as a kid those messages are often too subtle to be noticed, much less appreciated.

At 6’ 5” he was an imposing figure, all the more from the pulpit from which he did speak. He was a good speaker, but not a natural one. As a minister, he worked hard at it, studied his subject matter, and practiced his presentation relentlessly, each and every week. I always thought it amazing that such a quiet, introverted man would choose that career — but, and though it can’t have been easy, it was something he felt called to do at an early age.

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He had opinions, but didn’t impose them on others. It was difficult (and sometimes frustrating) to wrest opinions from him. Indeed, despite his ministry, at home my dad was a man of few words — spoken words, anyway.

Significantly, he walked his “talk” — his faith, his love and respect for all people, even those with whom he disagreed — and those were attributes in short supply, even then. But this quiet “giant” found his true gift in writing — and in the process extended his influence and ministry well beyond a single congregation.

For all that fine example, I didn’t learn anything about finance from my dad — he avoided big purchases with the fervor of Ebenezer Scrooge, though he’d spend that much (and more) on small things (mostly books, much to my mother’s chagrin). His retirement decision was driven almost exclusively by age — honestly, I think he was going to stop working at 65 even if the finances didn’t support that timing (fortunately, they did).

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His life example(s) notwithstanding, I’m a different person than my dad, though his example is never very far from my thoughts. As a parent, I’ve tried to share with my kids the lessons I’ve learned (and continue to learn), tried to spare them the pain that came with many of those (some I still can’t bear to admit aloud), but I’ve also tried to give them the room they need — and deserve — to learn their own on the life path(s) they chose — though that’s a life lesson of its own, and one with which I still sometimes struggle.

Sometimes we follow in our parents’ footsteps — and sometimes we go a different way. But here’s hoping that the footprints we leave along the way — intentional or otherwise — make other’s lives…better.

Happy Father’s Day!

• Nevin E. Adams, JD

Good-Bye — and Thanks — BenefitsLink

There are a handful of institutions in the benefits world that have become so woven into the daily rhythm of the industry that it’s hard to imagine the business without them. For many of us, BenefitsLink was one of those institutions.

And now, after more than three decades, effective June 30 it’s coming to an end.[i]

Back in 1995 — when most of us were still figuring out what the internet was, much less what it might become — Dave Baker and Lois Baker launched something that would fundamentally change how the retirement and benefits community shared information.

It’s difficult to fully explain to those who came later just how revolutionary that was — and the inspiration it provided for a whole generation of benefit news sources, including my own “baby,” PLANSPONSOR’s NewsDash.[ii]

Before BenefitsLink, finding timely information on retirement plans, executive compensation, health benefits, ERISA litigation, or regulatory guidance was often a scavenger hunt involving trade publications, faxed bulletins, mailed newsletters, and more than a little luck. BenefitsLink democratized access to information long before “content aggregation” became a business model — or a buzzword.

But what made it indispensable wasn’t merely the links.

It was the consistency.

Every day, there it was — organized, curated, and quietly comprehensive. Court decisions, IRS guidance, DOL releases, industry commentary, conference announcements, jobs, message boards, vendor resources — all assembled with an understanding that benefits professionals needed both breadth and relevance.  And lacked the time or expertise to pursue it on their own.

More than that, it became part of the daily routine of an industry.

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And perhaps most remarkably, it did so without the performative noise that defines so much of today’s digital landscape.

No clickbait. No outrage algorithms. No endless self-promotion.

Curated for content, not clicks.

Just useful information, thoughtfully presented, day after day after day.

To this day, I still count it as a small professional victory to publish news of a regulatory development before BenefitsLink — though, truth be told, that rarely happened.

For an industry built on compliance, fiduciary process, and technical detail, BenefitsLink became something rare: trusted infrastructure.

It also became a connector. Lawyers, consultants, advisors, TPAs, actuaries, recordkeepers, regulators, journalists, and plan sponsors all found themselves occupying the same informational ecosystem. Entire professional relationships — and, in some cases, careers — were shaped by the visibility and community that Dave and Lois created.

I count myself among them.

The retirement industry talks often about “service,” though usually in the context of products or client relationships. What Dave and Lois provided was service to an entire profession.

And — incredibly — they did it for 30 years.

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So, while the closing of BenefitsLink marks the end of a website — and, more significantly, a newsletter — it also marks the closing of a meaningful chapter in the evolution of the benefits community itself.

To Dave and Lois: thank you.

Thank you for building something before most people understood why it mattered.

Thank you for maintaining it with integrity, professionalism, and consistency.

And thank you for helping generations of benefits professionals do their jobs better informed — and a little more connected — than they otherwise would have been.

America’s retirement future — and mine — are better because of what you built.

— Nevin E. Adams, JD

 

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[i] The job posts and community bulletin boards will continue.

[ii] Which, not coincidentally, launched as an internal email publication at Wachovia Bank in late 1995, though it didn’t become a “thing” at PLANSPONSOR until 1999 — and it was an integral part of my life every day until 2011.

Retirement Income, Defaults and Fiduciary Duty

 I will confess that I am (still) of a mixed mind on imbedding retirement income solutions in 401(k) plans — and a new whitepaper on the implications of the new Investment Selection rule has done little to assuage those concerns.

The Morningstar paper — aptly titled “Guaranteed Income in DC Plans: Evaluating Target-Date Funds with Built-In Annuities” — covers a lot of ground. That said, more than half the paper is background[i] — chronicling both the trend lines to date, as well as offering a readable description of the two primary types of retirement income options that have found their way into the target-date fund framework (and yes, they’re quite different!). Those trendlines have captured the attention (and doubtless recirculation) of the paper, particularly among proponents.

But the “meat” of the paper considers the implicatio
ns of applying the Labor Department’s “new” Investment Selection Rule (though its official label at present remains “Fiduciary Duties in Selecting Designated Investment Alternatives”), and its list of six factors fiduciaries are charged with applying in their consideration(s) of all participant-directed choices[ii] on their retirement plan menu — at least if they expect to benefit from the presumption of prudence the Labor Department proposes to invoke in what it at least calls a “safe” harbor.

Factors Focus

And while those six factors — fees, complexity, performance, benchmarking, liquidity, and valuation — are to be broadly applied under the proposal, much (most? All?) of the coverage and discussion to date has been about the application of the Labor Department’s proposal to private markets, cryptocurrency, and the like. That said, this paper thoughtfully reminds us that retirement income option(s) require careful consideration as well.

Not to blend the first two, but fees on these retirement income offerings are definitely “complicated.” They’re higher than the other components of the target-date fund — the question is, what is the commensurate value? Their addition to the target-date fund definitely also adds mechanical complexity, certainly at the participant level (presumably the default facilitates adoption, but at some point, the participant has to “deal” with the reality).

As for performance — well, as the paper acknowledges, “Evaluating these products’ performance requires accepting upfront that forecasting is hard.” Ditto benchmarking, for much the same consideration. “Participants receiving guaranteed income through a GLWB or income annuity are benefiting from something traditional performance comparisons do not capture,” according to the authors. “This is where the Department of Labor’s emphasis on meaningful benchmarks becomes especially challenging for these products.” 

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And then there’s liquidity and valuation — which are one thing at a plan level, and potentially something quite different at the participant level. Oh, and the authors add a seventh factor; financial strength and the insurer’s credit rating — which while the SECURE Act may well provide helpful guidance there, those factors certainly bear additional, thoughtful consideration — and I would argue particularly so in a default fund scenario.

Complicate ‘Ed’

The paper itself is undeniably positive[iii] in its assessment of the need for, and the opportunities with, these solutions. It not only reviews the growing number of target-date structures incorporating guaranteed income components, it also outlines the potential behavioral and longevity-risk benefits of annuities.

But in my reading, the analysis is far more “nuanced.” Indeed, much of the paper reads like a litany of unresolved complications:

• Different annuity structures behave very differently.
• Fees and guarantees can be difficult to evaluate.
• Liquidity tradeoffs remain significant.
• Portability remains a significant concern — people change jobs, plan sponsors change recordkeepers, recordkeepers get acquired, insurers merge, and rollovers are complicated enough already.
• Participant understanding is limited — to say the least. Much less the understanding of the plan fiduciaries (and advisors) considering these options.

Little wonder that current adoption remains fairly muted despite years of industry attention and encouragement.

Proponents would, and have of course, argued that defaulting participants into these structures merely applies the same behavioral-finance principles that helped positively drive participation and savings rates higher.

If these structures were a straightforward solution, adoption likely would have moved beyond niche implementation by now. Instead, the industry continues searching for a retirement-income framework that participants will understand, fiduciaries will accept, and recordkeeping systems can realistically support — or at least one that can be slipped into a target-date offering that has already passed those tests.

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And while it remains just a proposal at this point, the Morningstar analysis suggests that applying the Labor Department's proposed framework to retirement-income solutions may rightly prove to be more challenging than applying it to traditional investment options.

The challenge is that retirement-income products are not merely investments with different return characteristics; they are insurance structures layered into investment vehicles. That distinction may ultimately require a different fiduciary lens altogether.

And whether the required analysis produces better fiduciary decisions — or simply more complexity — remains to be seen.

• Nevin E. Adams, JD

 

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[i] In fairness, a full quarter of the 13-page paper is devoted to disclosures/disclaimers.

[ii] Lifetime income options were one of the categories of investment alternatives named in President Trump’s August 2025 Executive Order (even if most wouldn’t be inclined to include them in that category).

[iii] In one executive summary bullet, it’s noted that assets in target-date strategies that include an annuity component for lifetime income grew to $44 billion at the end of March 2026, up from $25 billion a year earlier. However, in a separate bullet it’s acknowledged that “so far, growth has been driven by two series: BlackRock LifePath Paycheck (USD 26 billion in assets at the end of March) and custom target-date AB Lifetime Income (USD 14 billion).” So, $40 billion of the $44 billion in just those two.