Retirement is seldom as simple as commonly assumed in research and financial planning tools. Inadequate models can result in bad advice for investors and retirees. Jeremy Stempien and David Blanchett wrote a research paper that introduced a better way to think about the retirement liability and demonstrates that doing so can result in notably different optimal risk levels for retirees.

The brief will examine the following:

• Rethinking the retirement income goal
• Decomposing retirement spending into Needs and Wants
• Measuring participant outcomes
• Determining retirees' optimal portfolio risk profiles
• Dynamic spending considerations: the practical aspect of variable retirement withdrawals
• The implied cost of spending flexibility: what's it worth?