4 financial & retirement problems COVID-19 made worse - will post-COVID solutions be ambitious enough?

Most experts agreed, pre-COVID-19, that it was a good idea to shore up Social Security, to make sure workplace plans are sound, to offer Secure Choice type plans to those who don’t have retirement plan access, and to make sure SECURE Act improvements are properly implemented.

Then came the coronavirus pandemic. It has laid bare societal and economic problems in America, and increased awareness of the massive racial and financial inequality underlying the daily lives of many of its citizens. And it has made those existing problems worse.

In a webinar on defined contribution plans, experts from the Federal Reserve Bank of St.Louis discussed how pre-COVID-19 issues such as financial fragility and racial and financial inequity have worsened in the retirement space post-COVID, and how the pandemic’s additional effect on the generational “birth lottery” has set back millennials thanks to the timing of their birth.

When considering just the financial and retirement saving arena alone, the need to improve Americans’ economic situation — come a post-COVID world — will be even more urgent than before. The ideas may need to be ambitious. Here are some takeaways from the discussion about the pre-COVID-19 problems that already existed and were made worse by the pandemic, and ideas for change post-COVID.

1. Americans’ lack of emergency savings.

Currently and pre-COVID: Pre-COVID, experts made recommendations around improving household financial stability, making work hours more predictable, making liquidity “buffers” such as emergency savings — all to the goal of helping families with stability and resilience, said Ray Boshara, Director of the Center for Household Financial Stability, Federal Reserve Bank of St. Louis.

Although Congress is willing to view 401(k) plans as a sort of savings account, allowing and increasing loans and withdrawals from retirement plans in the recent CARES Act legislation, more retirement industry influencers and experts are calling for an added focus on helping people accrue emergency savings.

When looking at pre-COVID-19 financial security in America, said Lowell Ricketts, Lead Analyst for the Center for Household Financial Stability, Federal Reserve Bank of St. Louis, surveys in 2019 showed “36% of adults would have to borrow, or sell something or not be able to cover a $400 expense. And 10% of retirement account holders cashed out or took loans from their plans in 2019.”

Post-COVID: But now, during the havoc wreaked by the pandemic and its lockdown, from the start of March to early April, 24.8% of non-retired non disabled adults lost a job, were furloughed, or lost hours, he said, keeping in mind that not all had received stimulus checks at that time.

Of those people earning less than $40,000, Ricketts said, 34.5% of them experienced some form of job shock, and of those lacking a college degree, 27.5% experienced some type of job shock.

Among those that lost a job or had a loss of hours, now it was 54% who would have to borrow or sell something or not be able to cover a $400 expense, he said.

“This income loss will shortchange long term goals such as retirement security,” Ricketts said. “What we’ve come to terms with is that short-term stability is necessary to achieve long-term savings goals.”

We need to be developing a more “holistic” approach to savings, reflecting the way people actually live their lives, said Ray Boshara, Director of the Center for Household Financial Stability, Federal Reserve Bank of St. Louis. “Right now products are siloed — savings for retirement, for college, some for home ownership. But people don’t live their lives in silos so our policies shouldn’t be in silos.”

If we integrate short term and long term savings, we can eliminate penalties and let people move money depending on what’s going on in their lives, he added.

2. Racial and economic inequality, inequality in retirement savings

Currently and pre-COVID: The gaps in retirement plan access and funds are devastatingly obvious by race. Two-thirds of white families have defined contribution plans, and only one third of nonwhite families.

Even when nonwhite families have DC plans, their median value differs significantly, according to Ricketts. A white family had approximately $155,000 in its DC account compared to a nonwhite family’s approximately $60,000.

The gaps in income are also huge. “Inequality is getting worse,” Boshara said. “This country relies on us to accumulate a fair amount of private wealth to have financial security and retirement security. Given trends in wages and income and safety nets, it’s becoming very hard for families to save out of their earned income to build wealth.”

Post-COVID: “We have to think creatively about what other sources of wealth can be created,” Boshara said. “In the 1920s there were enormous reforms in a whole range of areas. We are in a similar moment and big ideas are once again possible.” Some concrete examples of reimagining wealth in 21st century include the following:

• Digital wealth or data as an asset. “An Aspen Institute Round Table in Silicon Valley explored the idea of data dividends or digital wealth,” Boshara said. “We have this asset — our data– but we’re not getting paid for it and we’re giving away a lot of it for free. Could it be a new source of wealth?” Some California leaders are already thinking about it, he said, imagining how it might work if we could take our data, claim it as our own, charge companies and government to use it.
• Climate change shareholders. “In Alaska, every person gets a check from the profits from the extraction of oil. Could we apply that to other situations? What if we were to make people shareholders in climate change?” he said. If someone pollutes, everyone gets a dividend from the penalty that is paid.

3. Lack of access to workplace retirement plans

Currently and pre-COVID: Half of all Americans don’t have access to a workplace retirement plan, which is why some states are turning to Secure Choice type programs to try to provide workers with some vehicle to save for retirement. Experts have also proposed establishing a “Roth at Birth” account for every child in America, easing the earned income requirements so parents, grandparents, and children could make contributions and take advantage of compound interest.

Post-COVID: We should consider de-linking retirement security and employment, said Boshara. “If we were to de-link retirement security from the workplace, we could have a more portable system. You wouldn’t have to have a job to save for retirement.”

4. The “birth lottery” and millennials.

Pre and Post-COVID: When looking at demographics, there is a factor you could call the “birth lottery” — the macroeconomic situation in which some generations are born into, Ricketts said.

Studies have been done on “decade cohorts,” and in looking at the cohort born in the 1980s, millennials, their wealth accumulation is 34% below where one would expect them to be based on their age.

One cause is obvious: an increase in student debt, caused by the “long-term shift in rising education costs, which has put a damper on wealth accumulation for this generation,” Ricketts said.

Another is that millennials already bear some scars from the Great Recession, when many entered the job market. Now, as they are starting to recover, they’re confronted with another financial crisis just as they are reaching the age of their peak earnings, Boshara noted.

There were no ideas or solutions floated. But certainly the ideas mentioned above could apply. For now, “We are concerned about millennials as a group,” Ricketts said.