David Blanchett

So I think that's where

You know, kind of thinking about why defined benefit plans work so well is they provide that lifetime income.

I think that 401 s are here to stay, but there are aspects of them that I think retirees would benefit from.

We see this today, to your point, in the US and Australia, other developed countries that have really robust defined contribution systems, people get to retire with these big balances and then just don't spend them.

So I think that it's important to kind of think about retirement satisfaction for a few reasons, right?

I think that we have people that like talk about a retirement crisis and things like that.

And, you know, I don't believe we have a retirement crisis or new one because retirees are a very, very content bunch, right?

I know that people run these kind of really complex mathematical models and these simulations and say, oh, we're like, people aren't going to replace their income, blah, blah, blah, blah.

If you ask people in retirement, are they satisfied?

Over 90%.

are, you know, moderately are very satisfied with retirement, okay?

And it gets even higher as people get older.

It gets to like 95 to 99% at the oldest ages.

So at a really high level, retirees are a very content bunch, okay?

So why that's important is it says to me, let's not like burn down the system and like do something else, but like, let's think about like, what are the factors related to retirement satisfaction, okay?

And I've been doing research on this right now.

And there are things that are very financial in nature, like retirement savings and lifetime income.

Okay, the more wealth you have, the happier you are, right?

And not just wealth, it's also lifetime income.

But also there's things like health.