Life-cycle finance is arguably the most important specialty in finance. At some level, all institutions exist to serve the individual. But investing directly by individuals, who reap the rewards of their successes and suffer the consequences of their mistakes, is becoming a dramatically larger feature of the investment landscape. In such circumstances, designing institutions and techniques that allow ordinary people to save enough money to someday retire—or to achieve other financial goals—is self-evidently a worthwhile effort, but until now, researchers have devoted too little attention to it
