Retirement

As the economy starts to stabilize, retirement plan experts say plan sponsors need to emphasize certain elements of their retirement education and advice programs to get workers back on track and saving for retirement.

Only 10% of Americans with $5 million to $25 million in investable assets described themselves as “very wealthy” in a recent survey by Spectrem Group, and 28% considered their wealth “moderate.”

A MassMutual Retirement released a study that found women put their retirement assets in target-date options twice as often as risk-based options in the fourth quarter of 2010, while men were just as likely to use a target-date fund as they were a risk-based one.

M&T Bank recently released the results of a study that found that close to 80% of those who took part in a phone survey have little-to-no debt or are "comfortable" with their debt level.

Sales of annuities through banks ended the year with a promising lift, specifically for variable business.

Employees as a whole made significant improvements to their finances in 2010, despite a tepid economic recovery and sluggish rebound of job and real estate markets, according to a new study.

About 40 years ago, they were told to cut their hair and find a real job. Today, this same massive segment of the American population, better known as baby boomers, is getting another ultimatum: stop spending so much money and work even longer at that real job.

Many people who retired in 2000 thought they were in great shape: over the last 20 years, stocks returned 17.8% on average.

Nearly 875,000 employees increased their contributions to 401k plans in 2010, a 21% increase over 2009’s level of 721,000 employees, according to BofA/Merrill Lynch’s Retirement & Benefit Plan Services report.

This afternoon, the Senate HELP Committee (Health, Education, Labor and Pensions) will meet to discuss the retirement security crisis — specifically, how to help Americans save more for retirement and make better saving decisions.