Retirement Trends

Much of the growth in balances came from the stock markets, which hit records last year, with 22 percent due to employee contributions and matches from employers.

The S&P 500 slipped 0.1 percent to 1,818.35 at 10:18 a.m. in New York, after falling as much as 0.6 percent earlier. The Dow Jones Industrial Average lost 19.87 points, or 0.1 percent, to 15,944.07.

Lawyers for plaintiffs Clarice Whitmore and Helga Maria Schulzki claimed the asset manager raided the insurers cash reserves after taking control of them, threatening the security of the annuities they sold.

Rep. Adam Smith said he holds a minority view even within his own party in supporting modest reductions of cost-of-living adjustments for payments to military retirees.

Its time for advisors to dust off a topic they havent needed to discuss with clients for quite some time: the impact of rising interest rates on investment strategy.

Decisions about benefit plan design, like so many other decisions, should be made with an eye toward the realization that, for every action there can be an equal, opposite, and sometimes greater, reaction.