The Week Ahead: Your retirement relies on you

Who has investors' best interests in mind when it comes to their retirement savings? It's a simple question with a complicated answer that burrows deep inside the financial-industrial complex.

Retirement investing today is nothing like it was two generations ago. Back then, saving for retirement meant paying off your mortgage before you stopped working, socking away what you could in a savings account and counting on Social Security. Maybe your grandparents had a pension that guaranteed a monthly check. Maybe they didn't.

Social Security, starting in 1940, and Medicare, since 1966, have provided a financial floor to retirees. And most Americans are reliant in retirement on only those programs.

Beginning in 1974 with the individual retirement account, or IRA, and then the 401(k) plan four years later, Americans were given new tools to put their own money away for retirement. Oftentimes, that means investing in stocks and bonds. Of course, that comes with more risk, a lot more risk, than Social Security or a traditional pension plan.

In the week ahead, the U.S. Department of Labor is expected to announce new rules governing the advice given to IRA and 401(k) investors. Regulators want the financial industry to be held to a fiduciary standard for such retirement investments. What that would mean is that stock and bond brokers and 401(k) advisers would have to think of the investor first, not a commission or fee the adviser could collect if they recommend a certain investment.

Retirement savings totaling some $11 trillion are in these accounts. The financial industry contends holding advisers to a fiduciary standard will jack up costs and reduce investment choices. Regardless of what the final rules are for retirement investment advisers, investors need to think of themselves first and only.

Financial journalist Tom Hudson, host of "The Sunshine Economy" on WLRN-FM in Miami, can be followed on Twitter@HudsonsView.

This story was originally published April 1, 2016 at 10:30 PM with the headline "The Week Ahead: Your retirement relies on you ."