Combining Conventional Investing with a Lifetime Income Guarantee: A Blueprint for Retirement Security

Abstract

Both retirees and their employers can benefit from combining conventional DC-type savings plans, designed to be spent down in the early part (say, the first 20 years) of retirement, with a DB-like or deferred life annuity component guaranteeing income for the rest of the retiree’s life in order to hedge the risk of living too long. Earlier articles proposed to do this using a riskless investment strategy, and the authors build on the previous work by asserting that the DC-type investment will (and should) include equities. Through simulation, the authors show that either a high-risk (equity-heavy) or low-risk (fixed income-heavy) DC component plus a deferred annuity component dominates a conventional DC spend-down, from the standpoint of generating sustainable retirement income, in most states of the world.