The Compulsory Contribution

On the list of things you'd like to sign up for, having more money taken out of your paycheck each month probably ranks just above electrolysis.

That may be one of the reasons people aren't investing enough in their 401(k)s -- and that, in turn, means they could come up short on cash in retirement.

So you have to award points to a solution that exploits human inertia from the opposite angle. Under this strategy, rather than wait for people to sign up for a retirement plan on their own, an employer automatically enrolls its employees in a plan, then gives them the choice to opt out. ...