It’s not often a scurrilous scribe like me gets to sit down and speak to a congressman who doesn’t represent my district, let alone one who chairs a subcommittee on regulatory matters. What struck me most during the interview (see “Exclusive Interview: Congressman Tom Marino says ‘Young Working Americans Can Get Excited About’ Child IRA,” FiduciaryNews.com, August 18, 2015) was how almost every answer was headline worthy.

Of all the memorable quotes, though, this one really resonated: “Congress needs to hear more about retirement issues. We need to be better educated on the issues and emboldened to make meaningful and fair changes. Right now, the voices of reform are largely silent. What is more ominous are the silent issues within our retirement climate which are only getting larger.”

Consider for a moment what Tom Marino is saying, especially in light of what’s been going on in Washington recently. For all the many articles and loud voices on the DOL’s proposed conflict-of-interest rule, Marino is saying Congress needs to hear more—but from whom and about what?

What he really wants to hear isn’t the talking points of industry lobbyists on pet issues. He wants to hear from individual everyday practitioners who live in the retirement planning trenches and experiences the hopes and worries of their clients’ retirement planning.

Marino is astute enough to know politicians, mainly trained in law with precious little real-world experience, simply don't know enough about retirement issues that matter. They need to know more.

Of even greater importance, Marino realizes there are much larger issues than the one everyone is talking about at the moment. These “silent issues” have the potential to do significant damage down the road to our retirement system. Unless we address them through experiential analysis, they’ll grow until they’ll be too big to solve without dramatic sacrifice.

So, are you willing to speak your mind? Are you willing to be honest about the problems that are out there?

Sure, conflicts-of-interest fees can eat into investment returns and should be eliminated, but why are we still focusing in on investments? We know there are more important issues. Here are three to ponder:

#1: Young adult savings discipline. We all know the earlier you save, the better off you’ll be in retirement. Yet we don’t have a mechanism to inculcate a savings attitude within our culture. Perhaps a Child IRA could be used for this. Maybe it’s broader financial literacy efforts in secondary schools.

Maybe it’s using popular culture--movies, songs, TV shows, social media--to bring home the salient points. The bottom line is many would not be in the situation they are in if only they had started saving at a younger age.

#2: Longer life expectancies. There’s a new trend brewing out there in retirement land. It’s called “not retiring.” A couple generations ago, folks retired at 60 and died at 62. Today, it’s not unusual to find people leading healthy and active lives well into their late 70s and even their 80s.

Baby boomers who “retire” in their sixties find themselves going back to work not because they need the money, but because they need the action. How does this change our tried-and-true retirement planning algorithms? What kind of impact does this have on public policy?

#3: Turbo-charging retirement savings incentives. If we want people to gain financial independence by the time they retire, we need more, not fewer, “Romney-sized” IRAs. What incentives were in place that created those gigantic personal savings plans and how can we encourage more individuals to build similarly sized retirement accounts for themselves.

Sure, maybe not everyone is in a position to get them, but the more who do, the fewer people who will need to rely on Social Security.

Those are just three potential discussion points. You can probably think of several more.

The broader question is this: Once we’ve identified the critical issues, we need to determine what government’s most appropriate role is in addressing them. Only then can we begin to lay out a true path to meaningful reform.

Instant Insights /

What should government's role be in retirement planning?

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