Years ago, when my kids were still kids, we discovered an ingenious website that purported to offer a real-time assessment of your “naughty or nice” status. (Thankfully, it still exists, here.)
As parents, we rarely invoked the name of Santa to encourage good behavior, but no tone of voice or physical threat ever had the impact of that website — if not on the kids’ behavior (they were kids, after all), then certainly on the level of their concern about the consequences.
One could argue that many participants still act as though some kind of benevolent elf will drop down their chimney with a bag full of cold cash from the North Pole — that somehow, their bad savings behaviors throughout the year(s) notwithstanding, they'll be able to pull the wool over the eyes of a myopic, portly gentleman in a red snowsuit.
Next month, EBRI and Mathew Greenwald & Associates will field the 23rd annual version of the Retirement Confidence Survey, where we will, among other things, seek to gain a sense of American workers preparation for, and confidence about retirement, as well as some idea as to how those already retired view the adequacy of those preparations. (More information about the Retirement Confidence Survey, as well as results from prior years, is available at here.)
In previous years we’ve seen confidence wax stronger and then wane — and we’ve seen levels of preparation that sometimes seem at odds with the confidence expressed. However, in recent years we’ve also seen a growing awareness of the need for those preparations, and cognizance of the challenge in doing so, as well as regrets that more wasn’t done earlier, at a time when the options were greater, and time an asset. Doubtless as retirement plan advisors, you’ve either seen — or perhaps influenced — some of those realizations.
The volume of presents under our Christmas tree never really had anything to do with our kids’ behavior. As parents, we nurtured their belief in Santa Claus as long as we thought we could (without subjecting them to the ridicule of their classmates), not because we expected it to modify their behavior (though we did hope so from time to time), but because kids should have a chance to believe, if only for a little while, in those kinds of possibilities.
We all live in a world of possibilities, of course. But as adults we realize — or should realize — that those possibilities are frequently constrained by the reality of our behaviors.
Yes, Virginia, there is a Santa Claus — but he looks a lot like you, assisted by “helpers” like the employer match, tax incentives, automatic enrollment and deferral increases, qualified default investment alternatives and sound, informed professional advice.
