Adam Torres and Cheryl Evans, Esq., discuss lifetime financial security.
Subscribe: iTunes / Spotify / Stitcher / RSS
Apply to be a guest on our podcast here
Show Notes:
In this episode, Adam Torres and Cheryl Evans, Esq., Director, Lifetime Financial Security at Milken Institute, explore saving, retirement and the future of lifetime security for all.
Watch Full Interview:
About Cheryl Evans Esq.
With 30+ years of experience as an Attorney, Advocate, Policy, Content, and External Affairs Director, focusing on strategic execution & planning across law and business, she has been integral to public policy work, regulatory affairs, ethics, strategy & content development. she has also led advocacy initiatives, program management, & crisis management. It is her passion to utilize my expertise gained throughout my career, including her time as a Senior Counsel at the SEC, Special Counsel at the US Chamber, & Director at CFA Institute, utilizing a wide-span skillset, to advise US & global business leaders.
Cheryl is skilled in international best practices in finance & business, as well as ethics, & US & international securities regulation. As a leader, she has also worked with Nobel Prize winners, global financial & business leaders, authors, & academics, utilizing her multifaceted expertise, across various roles.
Full Unedited Transcript
Hey, I’d like to welcome you to another episode of Mission Matters. My name is Adam Torres, and I’m proud to announce we’re at Milken Global Conference 2024 in Beverly Hills, California, and I have Cheryl Evans. I’m welcoming Cheryl Evans back to the show. So first off, hey, Cheryl, just want to say welcome back.
Thank you. Happy to be here with you. All right. So, so much to cover. It’s been a year since we’ve seen each other last. The first time we met you were on the show. So I’m excited. Let’s just start with this. Give me some updates. What’s been going on over the last year? Yes. I’m the director of lifetime financial security at the Milken Institute.
And I lead a program that focuses on ensuring that everyone is financially secure throughout their lives and into retirement. So it’s a little more broad than retirement itself, but the biggest thing that we accomplished at a team is releasing a comprehensive research report, which can be found online.
I’ll give a little plug to that, which is. called Shifting the Retirement Paradigm, Moving Towards Lifetime Financial Security. We also issued an executive summary because it has 218 footnotes and it’s quite long, but it’s a comprehensive piece. It’s comprehensive though. Yeah. That highlights. Most of the factors, not all that impact people’s ability to be financially secure and things that could be policy changes, things that can make a difference.
So we focus on things like inequity and savings. Women, we know save and people of color less. We start out with some statistics which are fairly daunting regarding, you know, the lack of saving overall in retirement vehicles, for example, about 25 percent of people are saving. At all for retirement.
And then we have about 40 percent have access to an employee sponsored plan, which leaves a lot of people out. So that coupled with an aging population and longevity really pushed us to really think about, you know, creating this program that’s been in existence for two years. So that report is extremely broad.
It highlights things like FinTech solutions that are helping people to engage with finance state plans that are coming in what people are gig workers don’t have. Retirement savings. So those type of things we focus on behavioral biases, people’s inability to envision their future selves at what a young age.
So they kind of are distant from that. So they don’t save as early as they should policy considerations and many more. So it ends with. A list of considerations for people who are thinking about investing for the first time, like what things could you think about using your home as an asset, making sure you understand social security early.
So there’s a lot of factors that come into play when you think about people being financially secure. So that’s the big thing that we’ve done. Yeah. We’re also engaged with a number of financial firms, which was discussed today. We had a retirement CEO panel with the Sunda Brown Ducat from TIA, John Carter from Nationwide Financial, Penny Pennington from Edward Jones and Will Fuller from Transamerica.
And we’re engaged with a number of firms and dialogue and policy considerations on creating lifetime income. So in plan streams of income embedded in a 401k, giving anyone that, that income that you might get from a pension, but many people are most now aren’t getting a pension. So we’re doing that and we’ve doing a variety of things.
We had a joint event with the EBRI, which is the employee benefit research Institute, which will be annual retirement symposium at the Kennedy center. And so we’re doing a number of different things and speaking about the topic. And I just came off of a panel, our public panel. So not busy at all. No, so we’re, we’re doing a lot in this space and it’s, I like the work very much because it’s impactful.
And as I said on our public panel, it cuts across all demographics and applies to everyone. The report that you mentioned how do, how do people access it? Like how is that? Yeah. It’s a PDF on the Milken Institute website, but you can just literally type in Cheryl Evans shifting the retirement paradigm towards lifetime financial security and it will pull it up.
It’s online now. I know. And for everybody watching, just so you know, we’ll put links to that in the show notes so that you can just click on the link and check it out. And so was there anything, obviously this is a big report, as you mentioned, knock a couple hundred foot notes. Was there anything that stuck out to you or like a surprise or just something that you were like, huh?
Like one of those moments. There, there are a number of those. The thing that, that was the most surprising as we dug into the statistics on. Longer working lives. When you think about people who maybe haven’t saved enough for retirement, the answer is universally among retirement experts to work longer.
But there’s a book called overtime by Beth Truesdale and another person whose name’s left my head. I apologize. Oh, Lisa Berkman and data from the federal government, a variety of sources that Supported what I sort of suspected, but the statistics were worse. So in other words, most people are not going to be able to work to 65 or 67 as they would like, but most people are going to be at least pushed out of one job in their late fifties or maybe early sixties, and only 10 percent are ever going to go on to earn the same amount of money.
And of the people in their late fifties, only about 35%, I think as the stat are consistently employed, and then we have some who are sporadically employed. So the idea that people can work longer to save more, it’s not. Really the data is not matching. It’s not matching. And there are some people who cannot physically do the job.
If you’re a paramedic, I use that example because I have a family friend who’s one. So we want people to be able to transition to training. Well, so those longer working life statistics were disturbing fairly, and you know, we’re encouraging employers are sort of fix if you will, is encouraging employers to include age.
And we used to hear about D and I, people aren’t really talking about age as a factor, right. And encouraging the development of multi general. So, I was a little surprised to learn how much financial services firms are actually doing to help educate people. They have suites of services, platforms, and you know, those types of things.
So, That’s evolved. That’s evolved. I feel like over the years, like, especially with this transfer of wealth. Yeah, it’s, it’s a lot out there. So people, the information is out there. People don’t always know about it, but there’s a lot of bank of America has a wonderful suite of services. So does Edward Jones and other firms.
I mean, just almost exciting. Yeah. And then there are FinTech straight FinTech firms like Betterment and others on our panel that we just had. We featured two companies. Then we featured the head of FINRA. Alex Rodriguez was on it as well as Patrice Aguilar Ducci, retirement experts, but one of the company expert, one of the companies is called steady and they help gig workers get jobs, but they also educate them on finance sure helps people with student loan debt, who may be even older, who took on their children’s student loans or paying their own.
So there’s a lot of innovative products out there. And the last one I’ll mention is. It’s a suite of services by some firms who help people visualize the non retirement aspects of savings. So in other words, to know how much you need to save for retirement, you need to know what your life’s going to look like.
Oh, like just goals. T. Rowe Price has a visualization platform where you visualize what your life’s going to walk through. I like that. Right? Because Scott Galloway has spoken about and written about the fact that his father lives well but doesn’t have a lot of money because his costs are low. Yeah.
Right. So those are some of the surprising things. But and also the last thing I, I’m adding one more. I’ll do it. Come on. Give it to me. I only get to see you once a year. Come on. It’s state plans. State facilitated plans. They’re about 19 or maybe 20 now. So the states are stepping in where people who don’t have access to a retirement savings plan.
And so those states are requiring every employer to, to kind of opt in or be in their plan. And so that’s key because that’s helping gig workers and people with two jobs, the nature of work is changing, right? And so that’s, people aren’t going to have that one job where they get a pension. So that was a key point as well.
Talk to me a little bit more about the panel, like, like some of the takeaways for those that, you know, couldn’t, couldn’t attend, like, what were some of the takeaways? Yeah. I mean, it was called moving the needle towards lifetime financial security with the name sort of embedded in it, but it was a great dialogue.
I mean, That Teresa will do she, for example, is solely a retirement expert. So she, she came up with discussion, discussed, I should say, highlighted some legislation that she’s putting forth and, and not only sponsored, but touting, because she’s not in Congress, but that would create a new system. That’s like social security.
The word. Give people more of a social safety net. So that there was some policy considerations. It was really the notion of how do we reach people where they are? So that notion of where people do you need to go out to the community to get people to engage with finance? How do people, how do we get them to, I refer to it this way, to turn towards finance when they don’t have a lot of money.
And you say, you really can’t think of savings. It’s kind of like out here. You don’t want to look at it. Like I can’t barely make my car payment. How can I possibly save? So it’s really. There was a lot of discussion on engagement, what we can do to get people to think about finance, engage with it. We talked about shame as an issue for people who don’t have a lot of money and the Sunday Brown docket mentioned that, that there’s can be shame around money if you don’t have a lot of it.
And so that was an interesting point, but FINRA is doing some great work on in the education space. Alex Rodriguez is reaching out to a lot of people. People in an underserved communities, but he also talked about his own life experience and his career. And he does a unique thing where he’s talks with people who’ve had a huge amount of money athletes and lost it all.
And that can apply to people who didn’t make a lot of money. They can still lose it all. You don’t have to have made a hundred million dollars. And so he’s helping those people to learn about finance. He equated it to like a language that you don’t know about, like chess, like we’re playing chess and you’re playing checkers and you don’t know the terms.
So you can’t even play. Yeah, if you don’t know what compound interest works, if you don’t know how it works, if you don’t know the numbers, if you don’t even know what it means, like, then that’s a thing. Yeah, right. And so that was a kind of an interesting point as well. Yeah. You know, the, the student loan burden KB Killebird was, was talking about that as well, that they go into connect with employers and help them to reach out to people who have too much to student loan debt to that shame piece.
Most people are going to go to their employer and say, I need, Or money because I, I can’t pay my student loans, right? So there are a number of innovative things out there. I don’t know that everyone’s aware of them, but we get to the broader issue of, do we need to change our system in some way? I’m not entirely sure.
We’re really going to blow it all up and change it into something else. Like Teresa talks a bit about that, but she has valid points, but I’m pleased that we’re working with a number of financial firms on this notion, which Larry Fink came out and talked about changing the system. TIA has new products, nationwide financial.
Others do working with Empower and other firms it’s an annuity like product within a 401k. So that would often give you the pot of money that if you think about your 401k, but a stream of income guaranteed for life. And if we could make that universal, that would be really a game changer for a lot of people.
Yeah. I’m excited about that. Yeah. And a lot of these changes, when I think about just the evolution of what it’s looked like beyond retirement or retirement and what all of that, it’s being redefined, not just the workforce, but just the products, like everything in all of these different factors that are playing, like whether it’s the companies creating the products, whether it’s the education, like all of that, like all of this is intertwined to get great outcomes, which is essentially what’s the outcome we want is to live well, right?
Like that’s the big outcome further into our lives. Yes. And, and, you know, I mentioned at the outset that the Milken Institute, so I’ll give a little plug for that as building the Milken Center for Advancing the American Dream, which is a museum like building that Mike Milken envisioned 10 to 15 years ago.
It’s in Washington where our offices, so it will be an interactive, really high tech museum focusing on health, finance, and philanthropy. And underpinning that is the American Dream is being financially secure, right? Without that, you can’t really build that American Dream. So we were focusing on how can people, we make sure that everyone lives the American Dream, not just in the end.
Yeah. End of their work life. Of course. But throughout their lives. So, there are a lot of factors that come into play, but that, that sort of notion of the American dream is, is kind of a thread that runs through the Milken Institute as well. So I’m excited to be doing this work that really applies to everyone.
Amazing. Yeah. So final question, Cheryl. Just a little bit of a fun one. Yeah. What’s been one of your favorite moments at the conference this year so far? And I know we still have a whole nother day left and a whole half a day here, but just so far, what’s been one of your favorite moments? Since I’m working and focusing on finance, I’ll say a couple of things.
One was getting the seat, the retirement CEOs together, because what they did was they talked about working together in ways that are not competitive to change the landscape, recognizing that there is a crisis of sorts with an aging population. Yeah, this is peak 65, 12, 000 baby boomers are turning 65 a day this year.
Amazing. And so they were coming together saying, we need to work together. We have these kinds of products. Edward Jones has these. So that was exciting. And I, I would have to say, you know, seeing Elon Musk, I hadn’t seen or heard from him, so I wanted to hear what he had to say. Mike Milken asked him questions regarding his own quotes.
He was a little funny and self deprecating, but but it was interesting to hear his vision, what he’s focusing on, you know, because he’s a visionary. That was kind of cool as well. But there was so many Yeah. Amazing speakers. We have more here than we’ve ever had over like 1,030 speakers. Wow. Yeah. This, which I is, I thought it was 900.
It’s 1,030. I was just told by one of our beds, geez, wasn’t it last year? Like 400 and something? 500? I don’t even. 700 or eight. Oh my gosh. I can’t even, so we’re up to a thousand and so it’s, it’s, it’s bigger, better than, I know we’re taking up the hotel next door too. Now. Saw it’s, saw that. Yeah. But we are, we are doing that and, but it’s, and I also, I will say that.
You know, the range of topics we’ve taken on, we’ve added gun violence into our repertoire to address that. And Rich Dottizio has said to the staff and to others there was a session last year as well. People asked him, what is the question you get the most when you travel the world? And he said, why are you letting your kids be shot in school and doing nothing other countries have been saying?
And that’s tough. to hear. And so we’re thinking about that and putting that on stage and, you know, have it, bring people together to, to focus on that. But it’s everything from happiness to gun violence, to, to a wellness, to, you know, a lot of my favorite parts about the conferences that you can like when you’re looking at the programming and it always stays not, I think even in front of the trends, in my opinion, like this is where I see it.
No, I think that’s the, that is the goal. Like, like right now we’re missing magic Johnson, who’s speaking on a, on a future of sports panel. I wanted to see it, but you know, so it, there’s so many things that you turn, like, I’d like to see this or that. And there’s, there’s almost certainly more than I can see, but things are online and, and we keep it that way.
But, and there’s also. Yeah. opportunity for so many people to gather and connect with people they wouldn’t meet otherwise, which is the value I think a lot of people get from being here. It’s very exciting. Yes. I agree. And sure. I just want to say thank you again for coming, for doing a repeat visit here.
This is our year two. Can’t wait till next year. I’m going to invite you back for sure. See what’s been going on. If just to sign off here, if somebody wants to, let’s say it one more time, if they want to get the report, if they want to follow the Institute’s work at all in general, how do they do that?
Go to milkeninstitute. org And then you can type in for the report shifting the retirement paradigm moving towards lifetime financial security, which is quite a mouthful but if you just type in shifting the retirement paradigm and cheryl evans You’ll you’ll pull up the report and there’s an executive summary as well So you don’t have to read the whole thing if you don’t want to but but thank you so much for having me I appreciate it.
Amazing. Thank you. And for everybody watching thank you for tuning in again We’ll put the link to the report and all that good stuff in the in the show notes and Definitely definitely go grab a copy Thank you.
