After Winning Cash Prize, Alumni Address Lawmakers on Retirement Policy
Raine Spearman ’24, MSF ’25 and Rohan Rao ’25 started thinking about retirement before they’d even earned their college degrees.
The pair, both Economics-Finance majors and members of Bentley’s Honors Program, had more in mind than their own financial futures, however. This spring, they entered — and won — the iOme (“I Owe Me”) Challenge, a national competition inviting college students to improve America’s retirement system.
Their thoughtful recommendations, developed with faculty mentor Naveen Sunder, assistant professor of Economics, earned Spearman and Rao a cash prize of $5,000 — and an invitation to Washington, D.C., to share their ideas directly with policymakers.
Understanding America’s Retirement System
Co-sponsored by the nonprofit Women’s Institute for a Secure Retirement (WISER) and TIAA Institute, the iOme Challenge aims to raise awareness in younger generations about the challenges of the U.S. retirement system. Chief among these challenges is Social Security, which is expected to become insolvent by 2033.
The pair interviewed faculty experts Rich Thompson ’91 and Joe Wickwire, MBA ’93, both adjunct lecturers in Finance, and Edith Joachimpillai ’12, a former research analyst for the Brookings Institution, a D.C.-based think tank. They also met regularly with Sunder — often for hours-long sessions — who helped them further explore and refine their ideas.
4 Ways to Rethink Retirement
In their winning proposal, Spearman and Rao outlined four policy recommendations:
Adjust the Cap on Payroll Taxes
Under the current structure, Social Security is financed via a 12.4% federal payroll tax. But taxable wages are capped at $176,100 — meaning someone who earns $2 million contributes the same amount as someone earning $180,000.
While just 6% of American workers earn more than the current cap, “their earnings account for a disproportionate share of national wage income,” Spearman and Rao note — roughly $388 billion, compared to $1.1 trillion earned by the remaining 94% of U.S. workers.
In their view, this structure “is not only inequitable but fiscally unsustainable.” They recommend gradually raising the salary cap to $1 million over a five-year period. This would secure an estimated $568 billion in additional Social Security funding by 2029, ensuring its solvency.
Incorporate Equity Investments
By law, Social Security contributions are invested only in specially issued U.S. Treasury Bonds. Yet, with historical returns of just 5.9% annually, these bonds “barely outpace inflation,” Spearman and Rao explain.
Since equities typically bring higher returns, they propose diversifying Social Security’s asset allocation, beginning with a 1% equity investment and gradually increasing to 20% over a 10-year period.
Investments would be restricted to broad-based, passively managed index funds, they emphasize, as the goal is not to “outperform markets (like typical investment managers) but rather to systematically capture long-term market growth.”
Standardize Financial Education
Nearly 60% of working-age Americans today do not have any retirement assets — a participation gap largely explained by disparities in financial literacy.
Spearman and Rao’s solution: Standardize investment information and create a national curriculum for financial education.
Key to their proposal is a financial “nutrition label” (pictured below) that makes it easier to understand and compare investment products. This label would be introduced during high school finance courses and revisited annually during federally mandated workplace trainings. It would also appear across all retirement platforms, financial tools and employer benefit portals to ensure visibility and accessibility.
Ensure Inclusivity and Accessibility
“Mistrust in financial institutions poses a significant barrier to effective retirement planning, particularly among communities that have historically faced discrimination,” Spearman and Rao point out.
On average, white Americans have seven times the retirement savings of Black Americans and five times the savings of Hispanic Americans. Lack of diversity within the financial planning industry, they say, is one reason why. Just 1.9% of Certified Financial Planners (CFP) identify as Black and 2.7% as Hispanic.
To address this gap, they propose a public-private partnership between the federal government and the nonprofit CFP Board, which enforces financial planning standards. The CFP Board already offers workplace development programs aimed at increasing diversity in the industry.
Spearman and Rao propose having the CFP Board implement a peer financial ambassador program. Engaging ambassadors from diverse racial, cultural and economic backgrounds, they say, will “foster engagement and trust in financial planning within underserved communities.”
An Opportunity for Impact
The newly minted Bentley graduates presented their ideas virtually — Spearman from Norway and Rao from the Galápagos Islands — to a national audience of policy advocates and lawmakers in June. Sunder, who was onsite for the D.C event, saw the audience’s reaction firsthand. “People were amazed by how much work they’d completed in such a short time,” he shares. One, a longtime judge of the iOme Challenge, told Sunder the Bentley team’s proposal was one of the best he’d encountered in the history of the competition.
Sunder wasn’t surprised by the reaction. “At Bentley, we challenge students to think beyond the here and the now and apply what they’ve learned outside the classroom,” he says. “Raine and Rohan complemented each other well and showed incredible drive, determination and attention to detail. As an educator, one of the most powerful and rewarding things we can do is challenge our students to realize their full potential.”
The pair are similarly proud of their achievement. “This process was inspiring, as it highlighted the potential for informed policy to drive meaningful change,” Spearman says. He adds that he and Rao “felt prepared to take on this challenge” thanks to the academic courses and extracurricular activities they enjoyed at Bentley: Spearman was president of the Bentley Investment Group (BIG), a student-run group that manages a portion of the university’s endowment, while Rao was portfolio manager for the Bentley Sustainable Investment Group.
Both agree their Bentley experiences have set them up for success in the workplace. Currently, Spearman works as a valuation advisory analyst in the Dallas office of Houlihan Lokey, a global investment bank, while Rao is an investment banking analyst for Guggenheim Securites in Boston. And both encourage their fellow Falcons to consider participating in the iOme Challenge. Says Rao, “Opportunities like these are perfect for intellectually curious students who want to push themselves during their time at Bentley.”