This infographic is available as a poster.

Retirement Savings: How to Calculate If You’re on Track

Setting a retirement savings goal can be overwhelming. In fact, one in three Americans have no idea what they need to save to retire at their target age.

Luckily, we can use a retirement calculator to help outline what you need to consider. This graphic from New York Life Investments walks you through setting your retirement savings goal, and shows how the U.S. population measures up at each step.

Step 1: Your Age

A calculator will typically start by asking for your current age and your target retirement age. This is to determine how long you have left to build up your investments. In the U.S., the average age of retirement has remained relatively stable and is currently 62.

Keep in mind that your retirement age can depend on many factors:

• Your cost of living
• Your job satisfaction
• Your debts
• Your spouse’s retirement plan
• Your health

After you have your projected retirement age figured out, you’ll also need to estimate the length of your retirement.

The life expectancy for Americans at birth is 77 years. Once you’ve lived to age 65, that number is higher. This is because you’ve survived many untimely causes of death, including the higher mortality associated with childhood. The below table shows how the expected age of death changes as you age.

To estimate your particular lifespan, you’ll also need to consider things like your genetics and your lifestyle. Having an idea of how long you might live may help you better manage longevity risk, or the risk you’ll outlive your savings.

Step 2: Your Savings

The next step in setting your retirement savings goal is to take stock of how much you’ve already saved. For context, here is how much Americans have saved for retirement by age group.

You’ll also need to decide how much you’ll be putting toward your retirement each year. Experts typically recommend saving about 15% of your pre-tax income. This can include your employer’s contributions, if any. Of course, this amount will vary based on how early you start saving and when you plan to retire.

Your expected investment earnings will play a big role, too. Here is what average annual returns have been for different types of portfolios based on historical data from 1928-2021.

Inflation has averaged about 3% each year. Remember to include inflation in your calculations so you can maintain purchasing power in retirement.

Step 3: Your Income

In the final step of setting your retirement savings goal, you’ll need to decide how much of your current household income you will use in retirement. Financial experts typically estimate you could need 70-80% of your pre-retirement income.

At this stage, it can be helpful to plan out a detailed budget. Here’s a spending overview for the average American over age 65.

Other includes personal care products and services ($505), education ($450), reading ($157), and miscellaneous expenses ($921).

Now that you have an estimate of your expenses, you can factor in all sources of income you expect to receive in retirement. This helps narrow down what you need to have set aside in your retirement savings. For instance, most people collect Social Security in addition to their own pension. The below table shows what percentage of retirees have each income source.

Respondents could select multiple answers. Sources include the income of a spouse or partner.

Based on all this information, a retirement calculator will estimate whether you are on track to sufficiently fund your retirement years.

Turning a Retirement Savings Strategy Into Action

It’s important to note that retirement calculators are a starting point. To come up with a customized strategy, you’ll likely want to consider:

• Your current and expected tax rate
• Increases in your income and savings rate
• A contingency plan for unexpected events

However, retirement calculators can make the concept of retirement savings more concrete—and help you take action toward your goals.

This infographic is available as a poster.

Demystifying Three Bond Myths During Rising Rates

Today U.S. Treasury yields, a key return measure for bonds, are over 1% higher than pre-pandemic levels.

• January 2020: 1.8%
• May 2022: 2.9*

*As of May 17, 2022

While rising interest rates are often seen to have a negative impact on bonds, the current environment may be beneficial.

In this infographic from New York Life Investments, we debunk three common myths about bonds during rising rate environments to explain why.

Bonds During Rising Interest Rates

To start, here’s a brief introduction on how bond yields are affected by interest rates.

Bond yields are the return investors will earn from a bond over a period of time. Bond investors receive interest for purchasing debt issued by the government or a corporation. For instance, a $1,000 bond with a 3% yield would earn $30 annually.

Rising interest rates directly affect bonds.

When interest rates rise, bond yields typically rise. As investors seek out new bonds that provide higher yields (income), the demand for existing lower-yielding bonds declines. Consequently, the price of these existing bonds typically falls.

Given this backdrop, let’s explore how bonds have historically performed during rising rates, the potential buying opportunities they present, and their long-term performance in a rising rate climate.

Myth #1: “Never Hold Bonds During a Rising Rate Environment”

Answer: False

Even during multiple rising rate periods, bonds have shown positive performance in the last 38 out of 42 years. Let’s take a look at the two most recent rising rate periods:

Time periods measured from the first Federal Reserve rate hike until one month after the last rate hike, which, on average, is when the effective federal funds rate tends to stabilize.
Source: Morningstar (Feb 2022)

As shown above, every type of bond showed positive performance.

High-yield bonds returned the highest over the last two rising rate periods, averaging 7.9%. Not only that, when equities decline, bonds have often cushioned losses, as seen in the Great Financial Crisis and the COVID-19 market crash.

Myth #2: “This Is the Worst Time to Invest In Bonds”

Answer: False

Rather than doom and gloom, the current environment could present a buying opportunity. Consider how municipal (muni) bonds have performed after historically low periods:

Municipal bonds represented by Bloomberg Municipal Bond Index. Data is for the time period 1/1/1994 to 4/30/2022. Meredith Whitney is known as “The Oracle of Wall Street”. In 2010, when Whitney stated that many municipal bonds would default in 2010, it shocked the market.
Source: Morningstar (Apr 2022)

In the 12 months following each trough date, muni bonds rebounded notably.

For example, after falling over 11% during the Global Financial Crisis, munis returned nearly 20% in the 12 months after. Munis also could potentially benefit from other key factors including solid credit fundamentals and the $350 billion federal stimulus to state and local budgets.

Not only that as bond prices dip, a “buy low” opportunity may be present not only in munis, but other areas of the bond market.

Myth #3: “The Long-Term View Looks Dismal”

Answer: False

When taking a long-term perspective, investors could potentially generate more income from their bond holdings in a rising rate environment than they would have otherwise.

Here’s how investors can capitalize on rising rates as bonds mature, given the following assumptions:

1. Every year, a maturing bond is replaced with a new 5-year bond.
2. The yield is 20 basis points (bps) higher on each new bond.

Hypothetical example, for illustrative purposes only. One basis point is equal to 1/100th of 1%, or 0.01%, or 0.0001, and is used to denote the percentage change in a financial instrument.
Source: RBC Global Asset Management (2020)

Over the long term, a rising rate environment more than doubled the bond portfolio’s return compared to the falling rate scenario.

With this in mind, active management and a long-term strategy can potentially benefit investors during today’s rising interest rate environment.

Research shows that active approaches to fixed income have generally outperformed passive strategies by diversifying across the maturity spectrum while proactively balancing risk and return. Active strategies can seek out new opportunities as interest rates shift, addressing a broader scope of the bond market.

The Case for Bonds

With inflation and bond yields on the rise, purchasing newly-issued bonds at higher rates can help offset this impact. While bonds may not seem like the obvious choice for investors amid rising rates, history shows us that they may be worth a closer look.