Map "Quests"

I’ve been hooked on the convenience of GPS systems ever since the first time one was included in the price of a rental car on a family trip in unfamiliar territory. After all, it combines the opportunity to tinker with electronic gadgetry alongside the convenience of not having to do much in the way of pre-planning trip routes—not to mention avoiding the need to stop and ask for directions (that is frequently associated with not doing much in the way of pre-planning trip routes).

There are, of course, horror stories about drivers who have blindly followed GPS instructions without paying attention to the evidence of their eyes. My family still chuckles at the memory of a trip where we were running late to our plane, and the rental car GPS, based on what appeared to be an outdated address for the return office, kept directing us to an address that was not only miles from the real office, but a place from which I wondered if we might never return.

As a growing number of Americans near, and head into, retirement, policymakers, retirement plan sponsors, and individual workers alike increasingly wonder—will Americans have enough to live on when they retire? Unfortunately, as a recent EBRI publication[1] explains, the answers provided are as diverse, and sometimes disparate, as the projection models that produce those results.

While it is not always clear from their results, some of those models limit their analysis to households already retired, while others focus on households still working, but old enough that reasonably accurate projections regarding their future wages and prospects for accumulating retirement wealth are obtainable. Still others attempt to analyze the prospects for all working households, including those whose relative youth (and distance from retirement) makes accurate, long-term predictions somewhat problematic.

Moreover, there are varied definitions of retirement income adequacy. As the EBRI report explains, some either (1) model only the accumulation side of the equation and then rely on some type of preretirement income replacement rate measure as a threshold for success, or (2) make use of a so-called “life-cycle” model that attempts to smooth/spread some type of consumption-based utility over the decision-maker’s lifetime.

The problem with the former is that, since very few households annuitize all (or even most) of their individual accounts in retirement, a replacement-rate focus overlooks the potential risk of outliving their income (longevity risk). And while the annuity purchase price relied upon in a replacement-rate target does depend on an implicit assumption with respect to (at least some) future market returns, it does not typically account for the potential investment risk. Additionally, and as previous EBRI research has demonstrated, one of the biggest financial obstacles in terms of maintaining retirement income adequacy for households that might otherwise have sufficient financial resources at retirement age is the risk of long-term care costs for a prolonged period. In the real world, few retirees have long-term care insurance policies in place that would cover the potentially catastrophic financial impact of this exposure—and thus, simply adding the cost of long-term care insurance into a replacement-rate methodology will vastly underestimate the potential severity of this exposure.

As for the life-cycle smoothing model, the EBRI report notes that approach typically produces extraordinarily low levels of “optimal” savings for low-income individuals at retirement, and while some households may, in fact, have no choice but to subsist at those levels in retirement, from a public policy perspective EBRI chose instead to establish a threshold that would allow households to afford average expenditures (for retirees in the appropriate income category) throughout their retirement, while at the same time accounting for the potential impact of uninsured long-term care costs.

EBRI’s Retirement Security Projection Model^®[2] takes a different—arguably unique and more realistic—perspective. Rather than relying on an individual’s projected ability to achieve an arbitrarily designated percentage of his or her preretirement income as a proxy for retirement income adequacy, RSPM grew out of a multiyear project to analyze the future economic well-being of the retired population at the state level, focused on identifying the point at which individuals would run short of money and perhaps become a financial obligation of the state.

As valuable a resource as a GPS can be, it can quickly become a nuisance—or worse—if the input destination point is incorrect, or the mapping system is out of date. Similarly, those who want a financially secure retirement may find that relying on a model based on flawed assumptions or outdated “destinations” may find themselves short of their goal and with little time to do anything about it.

Nevin E. Adams, JD

[1] See ““’Short’ Falls: Who’s Most Likely to Come up Short in Retirement, and When?” online here.

[2] A brief description of EBRI’s Retirement Security Projection Model® can be found online here.

"Short" Changed

My wife is fond of recounting one of our early dates when we ran out of gas.  Now, we were in the heart of a Chicago suburb at the time, not the middle of nowhere, and while the hour was late, I continue to maintain that it was a simple case of my misreading the gas gauge in a relatively new car with which I hadn’t yet gained a full appreciation for just how far I could push such things.  My wife, of course, has always accused me of a more “nefarious” purpose.

It would be more difficult to explain such an outcome these days.  We’ve gone from vehicles that simply had a floating gauge and a range of red at the 1/8 tank line, to those that have a solid and then a blinking yellow light, to ones that beep and flash and tell you how many miles you have left before you run out.

As inconvenient as running out of gas late at night can be, it surely pales in comparison to the prospects of running short of money in retirement.  EBRI has, for more than a decade now, used highly sophisticated modeling techniques to gauge the retirement readiness of baby boomers and Gen Xers.  One of the primary outputs of EBRI’s Retirement Security Projection Model (RSPM)[i] is the production of Retirement Readiness Ratings (RRRs), which represent the percentage of simulated life-paths that do not run short of money in retirement.  The 2014 version of RSPM found that over half of baby boomer and Gen Xer households would not run short of money in retirement.  However, when the results were analyzed by preretirement wage quartile, we found that while 86.4 percent of the highest income quartile were projected to not run short, just 16.8 percent of the lowest income quartile would not.

While it is useful, certainly from a public policy perspective, to know not only how many but also what types of individuals are projected to run short of money in retirement, it begs the question: when will they run short?

A recent EBRI Notes article[ii] provides new results showing how many years into retirement baby boomer and Gen Xer households are simulated to run short of money, by preretirement income quartile and for a variety of assumptions, as well as taking into account the impact of the potentially catastrophic expenses of nursing home and home health care expenses.  Not surprisingly, it finds that those in the lowest income brackets are most likely to run short.

Moreover, while some in all income brackets—including the highest—may run short at some point during their retirement, the EBRI analysis also found that, when nursing home and home health care expenses are factored in, the number of households in the lowest income quartile that are projected to run short of money within 20 years of retirement is considerably larger than those in the other three income quartiles combined.

The EBRI analysis provides valuable insights for policymakers, providers and employers alike because, whether you’re concerned about running out of gas short of your destination – or short of money in retirement – it’s important that your gauges be accurate, and appropriate to the vehicle in which you’re riding there.

• Nevin E. Adams, JD

[i] A Brief Description of EBRI’s Retirement Security Projection Model® is available here.

[ii] The June EBRI Notes article, ““Short” Falls: Who’s Most Likely to Come up Short in Retirement, and When?” is available online here.

Silver Linings

We all know people who manage to find the bright side of things, no matter how dire the situation—the folks who can spot a silver lining in every cloud. Then, of course, there are those who have an uncanny ability of discerning the cloud in every silver lining. In my experience, those in the former category know, and acknowledge, their inclination to accentuate the positive.  

However, I’ve generally found that those in the latter category don’t view themselves as negative or pessimistic. Rather, they are inclined to see their perspective on the world as “realistic.” 

A recent EBRI analysis[1] found that current levels of Social Security benefits, coupled with at least 30 years of 401(k) savings eligibility, could provide most workers—between 83 and 86 percent of them, in fact—with an annual income of at least 60 percent of their preretirement pay on an inflation-adjusted basis. Even at an 80 percent replacement rate, 67 percent of the lowest-income quartile would still meet that threshold. Those projections improve even more when you assume automatic enrollment and an annual contribution acceleration of 1 percent in 401(k) plans.

A more recent analysis[2] using EBRI’s Retirement Security Projection Model^® (RSPM) found that, due to the increase in financial market and housing values during 2013, the probability that Baby Boomers and Generation Xers would NOT run short of money in retirement improved—slightly (between 0.5 and 1.6 percentage points, based on the EBRI Retirement Readiness Ratings (RRRs). For early Boomers (those on the brink of retirement), the analysis found that more than half (56.7 percent) were projected not to run short of the funds they need to cover projected retirement expenses. On the other hand, nearly half are projected to run short (though not “out” of money, since Social Security benefits would continue to be paid).

In 2012, EBRI estimated that the national aggregate retirement income deficit number, taking into account current Social Security retirement benefits and the assumption that net housing equity is utilized “as needed,” was $4.3 trillion for all Baby Boomers and Gen Xers.[3]

Now, certainly compared with some of the figures[4] one hears bandied about these days, those might be considered relatively encouraging numbers. Some might even consider them optimistic, a “silver lining” in a looming retirement “crisis”⁵ cloud.

What the EBRI data show is that, based on current trends and savings patterns, many individuals will fare better financially in retirement than the headlines suggest—and a large number will not. Despite the clarion calls for action, and some shifts in the underlying dynamics, this is not a new issue for America:. If a crisis looms, it is surely one of the most widely anticipated, long-standing, and debated issues of the past half-century.

EBRI data and modeling have previously quantified the kinds of plan design and policy changes that can help—and hinder—those results. The true “silver lining” is that there is yet time for many of those currently at risk of running short of funds to remedy that situation[6]. 

- Nevin E. Adams, JD

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[1] See “The Role of Social Security, Defined Benefits, and Private Retirement Accounts in the Face of the Retirement Crisis”  online here. http://www.ebri.org/pdf/notespdf/EBRI_Notes_01_Jan-14_SpslCvg-RetPlns1.pdf#page=8

 

[2] See “What Causes EBRI Retirement Readiness Ratings™ to Vary: Results from the 2014 Retirement Security Projection Model,^®” online here. http://www.ebri.org/publications/ib/index.cfm?fa=ibDisp&content_id=5351

[3] See “Retirement Income Adequacy for Boomers and Gen Xers: Evidence from the 2012 EBRI Retirement Security Projection Model,” online here. http://www.ebri.org/pdf/notespdf/EBRI_Notes_05_May-12.RSPM-ER.Cvg1.pdf      

 

[4] See “Whether Forecasts” online here. https://ebriorg.wordpress.com/2014/01/03/whether-forecasts/

5 For some perspective on the existence of a retirement “crisis,” see Dallas Salisbury’s keynote address at the Pensions&Investments West Coast Defined Contribution Conference online here. http://www.youtube.com/watch?v=LbmcQa8sbss&feature=youtu.be 

6 Particularly those who Chooseto$ave®org for your future!  Check out the resources at www.choosetosave.org, including the Ballpark E$timate.                                                      

 

"Better" Business

It has become something of a truism in our industry that defined benefit plans are “better” than defined contribution plans. We’re told that returns are higher(1) and fees lower in the former, that employees are better served by having the investment decisions made by professionals, and that many individuals don’t save enough on their own to provide the level of retirement income that they could expect from a defined benefit pension plan. Even the recent (arguably positive) changes in defined contribution design—automatic enrollment, qualified default investment alternatives, and the expanding availability of retirement income options(2)—are often said to represent the “DB-ification” of DC plans.

However, a recent analysis by EBRI reveals that DB is not always “better,” at least not defined as providing financial resources in retirement. In fact, if historical rates of return are assumed, as well as annuity purchase prices reflecting average bond rates over the last 27 years, the median comparisons show a strong outcome advantage for voluntary-enrollment (VE) 401(k) plans over both stylized, final-average DB plan and cash balance plan designs.(3)

Admittedly, those findings are based on a number of assumptions, not the least of which include the specific benefit formulae of the DB plans, and the performance of the markets. Indeed, the analysis in the June EBRI Issue Brief takes pains not only to outline and explain those assumptions,(4) but, using EBRI’s unique Retirement Security Projection Model® (RSPM) to produce a wide range of simulations, provides a direct comparison of the likely benefits in a number of possible scenarios, some of which produce different comparative outcomes. While the results do reflect the projected cumulative effects of job changes and things like loans, as well as the real-life 401(k) plan design parameters in several hundred different plans, they do not yet incorporate the potentially positive impact that automatic enrollment might have, particularly for lower-income individuals.


Significantly, the EBRI report does take into account another real-world factor that is frequently overlooked in the DB-to-DC comparisons: the actual job tenure experience of those in the private sector. In fact, as a recent EBRI Notes article(5) points out, the data on employee tenure (the amount of time an individual has been with his or her current employer) show that so-called “career jobs” NEVER existed for most workers. Indeed, over the past nearly 30 years, the median tenure of all wage and salary workers age 20 or older has held steady, at approximately five years. Even with today’s accelerated vesting schedules, that kind of turnover represents a kind of tenure “leakage” that can have a significant impact on pension benefits—even when they work for an employer that offers that benefit, they simply don’t work for one employer long enough to qualify for a meaningful benefit.

So, which type of retirement plan is “better”? As the EBRI analysis illustrates, there is no single right answer—but the data suggests that ignoring how often people actually change employers can be as misleading as ignoring how much they actually save.

Nevin E. Adams, JD

(1) In the days following publication of the EBRI Issue Brief, (“Reality Checks: A Comparative Analysis of Future Benefits from Private-Sector, Voluntary-Enrollment 401(k) Plans vs. Stylized, Final-Average-Pay Defined Benefit and Cash Balance Plans,” online here),  a number of individuals commented specifically on the chronicled difference in return in DB and DC plans; outside of some exceptions in the public sector, DB investment performance generally has no effect on the benefits paid.

(2) A recent EBRI analysis indicates that, even in DB plans, the rate of annuitization varies directly with the degree to which plan rules restrict the ability to choose a partial or lump-sum distribution. See “Annuity and Lump-Sum Decisions in Defined Benefit Plans: The Role of Plan Rules,” online here.

(3) While the DC plans modeled in this analysis draw from the actual design experience of several hundred VE 401(k) plans, in the interest of clarity it was decided to limit the comparisons for DB plans to only two stylized representative plan designs: a high-three-year, final-average DB plan and a cash balance plan. Median generosity parameters are used for baseline purposes but comparisons are also re-run with more generous provisions (the 75th percentile) as part of the sensitivity analysis.

(4) The report notes that a multitude of factors affect the ultimate outcome: interest rates and investment returns; the level and length of participation; an individual’s age, job tenure, and remaining length of time in the work force; and the purchase price of an annuity, among other things.

(5) The EBRI report highlights several implications of these tenure trends: the effect on DB accruals (even for workers still covered by those programs), the impact of the lump-sum distributions that often accompany job change, and the implications for social programs and workplace stability. “See Employee Tenure Trends, 1983–2012,” online here.

Rates of "Return"

Having just concluded a long driving trip, I was reminded again just how helpful the technology under the hood of today’s automobiles can be: the warning lights when you’ve still got enough gas left to find a gas station, the low tire pressure light that tells you of a slow leak before you have a flat tire, the binging that lets you know you’ve left your headlights on (again), and my personal favorite, the klaxon-like bell that alerts you that your parking brake is still engaged (since that red “brake” light on the dashboard clearly wasn’t sufficient notice).

Before such warning signs were standard features, I’ve had the decidedly unpleasant experience of running out of gas in the middle of nowhere, finding myself driving on (two) flat tires, and—many years ago—I’m pretty sure I was responsible for ruining the brakes on my Dad’s car simply because I didn’t realize that the smell of burning rubber was coming from the car I was driving.

For some time now, the Federal Reserve has held short-term interest rates near zero in an effort to support an economic recovery—and has, in fact, announced its intention to maintain that policy until such time as the recovery seems to have taken hold. However, as many retirees and workers have discovered, those historically low interest rates are crimping their retirement savings—and a new study by the Employee Benefit Research Institute (EBR)¹ quantifies the impact of a sustained low-interest rate environment on America’s retirement readiness.

Using EBRI’s unique Retirement Security Projection Model® (RSPM), we found that more than a quarter of Baby Boomers and Gen Xers who would have had adequate retirement income under an assumption that historical average market returns would prevail are instead simulated to end up running short of money in retirement if today’s historically low interest rates are assumed to be a permanent condition (assuming retirement income/wealth is assumed to cover 100 percent of simulated retirement expense²).

Not that everyone is affected to the same degree. In fact, the analysis reveals that the potential impact varies by income levels: The low-yield-rate environment appears to have a limited impact on retirement income adequacy for those in the lowest preretirement income quartile, since they have relatively small levels of defined contribution and IRA assets and since they rely more heavily on Social Security income in retirement. However, the research found there is a very significant impact for the top three income quartiles.³

The research found that the impact is lessened if the current low rates are temporary, but that its impact can be magnified by years of future eligibility for participation in a defined contribution plan. For example, moving from the historical-return assumption to a zero-real-interest-rate assumption results in an 11 percentage-point decrease in simulated retirement readiness for Gen Xers who have one to nine years of future eligibility, but that gap widens to a 15 percentage-point decrease in retirement readiness for those with 10 or more years of future eligibility.

In recent days, word that the Federal Reserve sees an end to its current policies has brought some volatility to the stock market. While several sectors of the economy have benefitted from the U.S. Federal Reserve holding short-term interest rates near zero to support a recovery, there are warning signs in the EBRI analysis about longer-term consequences that policy makers should also consider—and implications for retirement readiness should historical averages return.

Nevin E. Adams, JD

¹ The full report is published in the June 2013 EBRI Notes, “What a Sustained Low-yield Rate Environment Means for Retirement Income Adequacy: Results From the 2013 EBRI Retirement Security Projection Model,®” online here.

² When 80 percent of simulated retirement expenses must be covered, only 5‒8 percent are simulated to run short of money.

³ This is in sharp contrast to a recent report by the Center for Retirement Research at Boston College that claimed that the lower interest rates had only a minor impact for ALL income categories. However, as we have noted previously, CRR’s National Retirement Risk Index, on which the conclusions are based, continues to assume that all retirees annuitize all of their defined contribution and IRA balances; continues to ignore the impact of long-term care and nursing home costs or assumes that they are insured against by everyone; and also seems to rely on an outdated perspective of 401(k)-plan designs and savings trends, essentially ignoring the impact of automatic enrollment, auto-escalation of contributions, and the diversification impact of qualified default investment alternatives. Additionally, given the way their model assumes assets accumulate during the preretirement period, the change in interest rates has NO impact on accumulations at retirement age. See “Rely Able?”