Many of us think about retiring some day and would like to plan, save, and invest for it. But it is complicated. When we first start to work, retirement is a long way off and a lot can change before then. While we're working, everyday life takes a lot of time, so it is also hard to focus on retirement and related investing.
 
Most of us are responsible for our own retirement savings and investing; this can be complicated as well. We might hear people mention various topics like defined benefit, defined contribution, 401k, 403b, traditional IRA, Roth IRA, Roth 401k, SIMPLE IRA, SEP IRA, Keogh plan, ..., and wonder.
 
And even if all of this makes sense, how do we decide about investments when we are responsible for our own plans? For example, Argonne alone has thousands of investment options available for retirement plan participants. So what do we do?
 
Hopefully some ideas from economics and finance can help. This talk will introduce a few core concepts as well as data to help provide a framework for the decision-making process. Topics touched on include: savings, types of investments, risk, returns, tradeoffs, our investing biases, and more.