Americans Not Looking Forward to Retirement

 

When did retirement become a bad word?  Retirement once led to happy visions of carefree unlimited leisure time.  A time when a retiree would be able to do all the things they loved and missed doing for all those years because of that busy work schedule.

Now according to a recent survey done my Ameritrade 1 in 2 Americans 50% are not looking forward to retirement.   Fear of not having saved enough money to last for the duration of their life was sighted by 30% of respondents.

“Working members of the Mature Generation have saved on average 71 percent, Generation X have reached 26 percent and Generation Y have achieved 15 percent of their respective retirement savings goals.

 

Perhaps this is explained by Federal Reserve Board’s Survey of Consumer Finances finding that the average family’s median net worth dropped by 39% from 2007 to 2010.  This drop is primarily caused by the sharp decrease in home prices and heavy losses suffered in retirement plans that were invested in stocks.  

83% believe they will need to continue working full time or at least part time.  In order to retire they believe they will need 100% of their working income and have it last 20 to 22 years.

100 percent of working income is probably correct but with life expectancy increasing they better plan on their income lasting 25 to 30 years.

 

You may ask questions in the comments or contact me privately Tim Barton, ChFC

Tags: finance, Money, Retirement, retirement income

This entry was posted on June 19, 2012 at 5:07 pm and is filed under News. You can follow any responses to this entry through the RSS 2.0 feed.