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iOme Challenge To Address U.S. Retirement Crisis

iOme challenge: retirement.

The iOme Challenge is a national competition, open to anyone in the USA, that aims to address the retirement crisis. This week, Challenge organizers announced the 2010 Challenge grand prize went to a Texas Tech University team. Four Texas Tech University students, Benjamin Cummings, Christopher Browning, Thomas O’Malley, and Shaun Pfeiffer collaborated on the project. The team’s faculty advisor was Dr. Michael Finke.

The grand prize was $10,000 in cash plus an expense-paid trip to Washington D.C. to present the winning entry to members of Congress. The faculty advisor also receives a $2,000 cash prize.

A University of Nevada – Reno (UNR) team was first runner up and LaGrange College received an honorable mention. These two teams each received $2,000, plus $500 for their faculty advisors.

This year’s sponsors were Sage North America, iShares, the American Society of Pension Professionals & Actuaries (ASPPA), and LifeTuner, an AARP initiative.

Established in 2009 by PAi (Plan Administrators, Inc.), the iOme (I-owe-me) Challenge was organized and administered by St. Norbert College, De Pere, WI.

The competition encourages Millennials to help solve America’s retirement problem. Student teams are required to look into the future, then write essays and produce a short video. These serve to illustrate what their lives could be like when they reach retirement 40 years in the future. There are 80 million members of the millennial generation.

The essays must be around 10,000 words, in which they outline three significant differences they expect to see in the U.S. economy in 40 years. They may assume that the U.S. personal saving rate is sustained at 6%, not the lower savings rates we have seen over the past 10 years.

The teams must also create a short video that depicts their future retired American life if they do not begin to save enough.

iome challenge: retirement.
iOme challenge: retirement.

Contest finalists were judged by a Blue Ribbon Panel in Miami, Florida. The distinguished judging panel included:

  • John List, Recipient of the Kenneth Galbraith Prize by the American Agricultural Economics Association, Professor of Economics at the University of Chicago
  • James Choi, Recipient of the Project Development Award by NBER Center for Aging and Health Research, Associate Professor of Finance at Yale University
  • Laura Schwartz, Former White House Director of Events and author of Eat, Drink & Succeed
  • Charles Wise, three-time recipient of the William and Frederick Mosher Award, Founding Director of the John Glenn School of Public Affairs at Ohio State University.

Alan Gray is the Publisher and Editor-in-Chief of NewsBlaze Daily News and other online newspapers. He prefers to edit, rather than write, but sometimes an issue rears it’s head and makes him start hammering away on the keyboard.

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Alan has been on the internet since it first started. He loves to use his expertise in content and digital marketing to help businesses grow, through managed content services. After living in the United States for 15 years, he is now in South Australia. To learn more about how Alan can help you with content marketing and managed content services, contact him by email.

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Alan is also a techie. His father was a British soldier in the 4th Indian Division in WWII, with Sikhs and Gurkhas. He was a sergeant in signals and after that, he was a printer who typeset magazines and books on his linotype machine. Those skills were passed on to Alan and his brothers, who all worked for Telecom Australia, on more advanced signals (communications). After studying electronics, communications, and computing at college, and building and repairing all kinds of electronics, Alan switched to programming and team building and management.

He has a fascination with shooting video footage and video editing, so watch out if he points his Canon 7d in your direction.

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