Welcome to the latest edition of This Week in Pensions! As we do most weeks, we have gathered the best stories about pensions and retirement security from the previous week. This is the news you need to know in the fight for a secure retirement.
Here are this week’s top stories:
- America has a retirement crisis by Deborah Murrell: a retired teacher from Kentucky writes in The Hill about the retirement crisis facing the United States. She warns that attacking pensions, as politicians are doing in Kentucky, threatens to make the retirement crisis worse. “When a state cuts pensions, it signals that our hard work isn’t valued anymore. This is not the message you want to send… to attract the best people.”
- Kentucky Teachers Are Protesting and Walking Off the Job to Save Their Pensions—And Winning by Michael Arria: In These Times highlights the efforts of teachers and other public employees in Kentucky to defeat Senate Bill 1. As the end of the regular legislative session quickly approaches, pension supporters are keeping up the fight to protect their pensions!
- 66% Of Working Millennials Have Nothing Saved For Retirement by Zack Friedman: a contributor to Forbes discusses the findings of the recent NIRS report on Millennials and retirement security. Many working Millennials are not eligible to participate in their employer’s retirement plan either because they do not work enough hours or because they have not worked long enough for their employer. Increasing eligibility would dramatically increase participation by Millennial employees.
- Good teachers are not retirement planning experts by Leanne Porzycki: a high school English teacher in Colorado argues that we should not expect teachers to be financial planning experts and burden them with the risks of 401(k)-style plans. Colorado PERA is an effective retirement system that not only provides a secure retirement for public employees, but also stimulates Colorado’s economy.
Finally this week, the Labor Center at the University of California-Berkeley released an analysis of the Kentucky Teacher Retirement System (TRS). It found that for 76 percent of Kentucky teachers, they are significantly better off with a pension through TRS than they would be with an idealized 401(k)-style plan.
Be sure to check back next week for the latest news in the fight for a secure retirement!
