What’s the difference between a defined benefit and defined contribution pension plan?

Pension language trips a lot of people up, and this piece clears the fog around the two main kinds of workplace plans. A defined benefit plan promises a set income in retirement, usually tied to your years of service and earnings, with the employer carrying the investment risk. A defined contribution plan instead sets what goes in, leaving the eventual payout to depend on contributions and how the investments perform, which puts more of the risk and the decisions on you. Both can be good, but they ask different things of a member when it comes to planning, flexibility, and certainty. It is a useful primer for anyone weighing a job with one type of plan, deciding what to do with a pension at retirement, or simply trying to understand what their workplace plan really promises and what it leaves up to the markets.