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Latest Issue

Our Nuts Are in Danger

By John Mauldin

October 11, 2019

Big Gaps
Rising Pressure
Victoriously Breaking Even
But Wait, There’s More
7 Deadly Economic Sins Week
New York and Butterflies

Life would be so much easier if we didn’t have to worry about our financial futures. Though I suppose we don’t have to worry. Animals don’t. Squirrels instinctively store away nuts and thus live through winter without much thought.

We humans have retirement winters, and we’re more sophisticated than squirrels. We generally outsource the job of managing our nuts/money to professionals. All well and good if we save enough and if the professionals do their jobs right. As we saw last week, the elected squirrels who run Social Security haven’t evolved to face changing conditions. Our Social Security nuts are in danger.

But the problem is even bigger. Today I want to continue this theme using some recent corporate news as our springboard. Economic changes have made future planning increasingly difficult for government retirement systems, private pension plans, and individual investors. How do you generate a reliable income stream for an uncertain but potentially lengthy lifespan in a world where interest rates are barely above zero and possibly below it?

The easy answer is “save more,” but that strategy has limits. We all have current expenses. Yes, we can live simpler lives, but we can’t save 100% of our income. Yet that’s what it will take in some scenarios.  

If you’re starting to envy the squirrels, you aren’t the only one.

Big Gaps

Remember “defined benefit” pensions? That is the kind of plan in which the employer guarantees the worker a set monthly benefit for life....

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