Background: In late 2021, the Retirement Research Center (RRC) surveyed over 2,000 retired workers to gauge attitudes about savings, spending, and financial wellness in retirement. This is part 6 of the RRC’s Research Minute series about this study and focuses on retiree preferences for retirement income solutions.Findings: The analysis measures retiree preferences using maximum differential (MaxDiff) analysis to assess utility, tradeoffs, and importance of various features in retirement income solutions. The factors include:Steady incomeSafety of my money (I cannot lose it all)Lifetime income (assurance that my partner and I will receive income as long as we live)Control and access to my moneyReversibility (I am not locked into a financial product)A high investment returnAs illustrated in the chart below, three clear tiers of retiree preferences were identified:In the top tier, retirees noted relative importance surrounding steady income, safety, and lifetime income.The second tier, which is nearly was important to retirees, consisted of control and access to savings and balances.In the third tier, retirees gave significantly less weight to reversibility and high return. These results do not indicate that reversibility and high return are entirely unimportant to retirees, just that they are relatively less important.Bottom line: While many retirees have unique challenges, we found a remarkable consistency of preferences related to income solutions. This implies that current solutions and innovations in the industry will likely address the preferences and concerns of the majority of retirees.