Retirement Trends

Orange County, Californias $11.5 billion pension is putting together a fund open to smaller retirement plans to give them access to private-equity investments at a lower cost.

Seventy-one percent of investors surveyed, a majority, said they were go-it-alone investors.

The average participant now invests 60 percent of his account balance in index funds, compared to 30 percent in 2004, in large part because of the growing popularity of index-based target-date funds.

Employers face a 52 percent increase in the regulatory cost of administering pension plans by 2016 as well as a whopping $150 billion increase in liabilities to retirees with longer life spans.

The most important step is to hire a financial advisor who has a lot of experience working in the retirement plan space and a recordkeeper whose focus is retirement plans versus something they do on the side.

A significant number of workers have been forced to cut back their spending and plan to delay retirement, many until age 70 or after.