As a retirement economist — not to be confused with a retired economist, which are rare — I often find myself talking to Wall Street types who happen to be in charge of a lot of other people’s money. The conversations vary, but the takeaway almost never does. As a senior executive at a large asset-management firm recently said to me, with surprising candor: “We don’t know how to solve the retirement problem.”
By “problem,” he was referring to the declining share of Americans who view their retirement plans as on track. And by “we,” he was referring to the financial industry — which, to be fair, has made some progress in offering various kinds of accounts and ways of saving. But it is still getting the big things wrong.
