The investment menu is ultimately what participants will use to grow their savings for retirement so its importance cannot be overstated. (Photo: Shutterstock)

How many decisions does the average person have to make in one day?  Getting ready for work in the morning, you turn on the television.  If you have cable, you have up to 1,000 channels to choose from.  On your way to work, you may stop at Starbucks where there are 87,000 possible drink combinations.  You arrive at your desk – do you start with voicemail or email?  Or maybe the project you left hanging yesterday afternoon?

There are many types of decisions humans are faced with in the infrastructure of our daily lives.  Estimates on the number we are faced with range anywhere from 5,000  to upwards of 30,000 decisions per day.  Over a lifetime, the average person will make over 770,00 decisions and will come to regret approximately 140,000 of them.  The larger, more imperative decisions, or the inability to make them, can have serious consequences.

Consider the current state of retirement readiness in this country.  According to the National Institute on Retirement Security, almost 40 million households have no savings at all.  The Employee Benefit Research Institute estimates that Americans have a retirement savings deficit of $4.3 trillion.