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I recently had lunch at a restaurant. My expectations were few. I wanted food that tasted better than something that I could come up with myself. I wanted the service to be quick and I didn't want to pay a fortune.

I don't believe my expectations were out of the norm but apparently the restaurant had an entirely different perception of what would be required. Their view, as expressed by their menu, was that I as their customer would require something in the neighborhood of 75 different entrees to select from. Several different ethnicities would need to be involved and every conceivable price point would have to be available. A great deal of thought, and expense, had gone in to this menu and that doesn't include the freezers/staff that would be required to live up to its lofty aspirations. This was more than a menu – this was a food encyclopedia. Would I actually eat every meal at this same restaurant? That appeared to be the expectation.

To make matters worse the wait staff informed me of several specials not found on the menu just in case I was unable to find what I wanted in the 20 pages in front of me. I had entered wanting food – now my main goal was to escape to a diner.

In our role as advisors to qualified plans we are similarly besieged with data on hundreds, even thousands, of funds that investment houses would like to place within the menus of our client's plans. The past few years in particular the spigot has been set to stun on one particular category where all investment houses want to shine: target date funds.

Target date funds come in all shapes and sizes and, courtesy of the blessing provided by the Pension Protection Act of 2006, are now all but mandated for inclusion within 401(k) plans. Each investment house stresses the importance of their particular mix of assets and how this mix will change over the course of an employee's career. Many of these funds plan for another 30 years of changes post-retirement. The backlog of data and analysis supporting each investment house's particular set of target date funds is mind-numbing. It is from this menu that plan sponsors are supposed to make their decision.

We have previously discussed the merits of target date funds and the nuances of their underpinnings. What hasn't been discussed is the overall logic of the target date approach. In particular there are two main concepts that drive the methodology: 1) employees will stay with their current employer, using their current fund lineup, for decades, 2) employees will slowly draw out their retirement funds for an extended period once they retire.

Let's talk a look at these two concepts using readily available data. First up is employee tenure. Courtesy of the Bureau of Labor Statistics http://www.bls.gov/news.release/pdf/tenure.pdf the median number of years that workers have been with their current employer is 4.1 (2008 data nearly unchanged from a 2006 report).

Our next concept (the slow draw-down of the retirement assets) has two confrontations with reality where it fares poorly. The first comes from a GAO report on "leakage" of existing assets within retirement plans http://www.aging.senate.gov/letters/gao401kleakage.pdf Over $83 billion in existing 401(k) assets was withdrawn in 2006 -- $74 billion of which was simply cashed out when employees switched jobs.

Moreover, one of the investment houses stressing the need for their target date funds – JP Morgan – recently concluded a study https://www.jpmorganfunds.com/cm/Satellite?pagename=jpmfVanityWrapper&UserFriendlyURL=smdetail&smid=1260485722514 where they found that the average participant withdraws more than 20% per year at or soon after retirement. Further, as of 2008 only 19% of retirees remained invested in their former employer's plan.

To recap: the average employee will have many, many jobs at many different employers during their lifetime. Many of these same employees will cash out some or all of their accumulated 401(k) assets when they change jobs and, perhaps most importantly, their retirement nest egg is depleted/withdrawn within a few years of retirement.

With all of that in mind we find the intensive discussions regarding the proper glide-path and asset allocation to be quite a bit like the 20-page restaurant menu. The investment houses are approaching this discussion with the idea that these participants will be eating at the same restaurant and ordering off of the same menu for the rest of their lives. They won't.

The target date discussion, with all of the moving parts and analysis, is probably more productive, and less overwhelming, when it's framed in reality. Less is indeed more.

Marshall J. Cobb, CRSP, is president and founder of Cobb Retirement Solutions, LLC., an independent, fee-only firm offering qualified plan analysis and oversight exclusively to corporations and organizations. Cobb's first-hand knowledge as a veteran representative of retirement plan vendors beginning in 1990 gives him a unique perspective as he advises his clients. Cobb runs his office -- based in Houston, Texas -- with employees and clients across the country.