How to Money · Wednesday, September 30, 2026
Studies by retirement researchers indicate that individuals with pensions spend twice as much in retirement compared to those with similar asset bases in retirement accounts. Jean Chatzky attributes this difference to the psychological security of knowing a consistent paycheck is arriving monthly.
“So they looked at people who had groups of people with similar asset bases. One group of people had their money in retirement accounts that it was in a chunk of assets in a four to oh one k. The other group had their money annuitized as a pension. These were teachers and other people who had had pensions. And then they compared using real data, how much money these groups of people were spending, and the people with the pensions spent twice as much in most cases, twice as much because they knew that another paycheck was coming, right, They knew that every single month a paycheck would land.”
“And even if they blue one month's money by spending it frivolously, they were gonna get another, and another and another after that.”