Some scary statistics came out of ING’s Retirement Research Institute last year. A whopping 71% of Americans don’t have any kind of formal retirement plan in place. That’s nearly 3/4 of America that either won’t be able to retire or will have to struggle financially because they didn’t plan ahead. This is not good news seeing that Americans are living longer than ever and costs are steadily increasing. This information comes from Financial Planning’s Danielle Reed, in her article “Year-End Reality Check: 71% of Americans Don’t Have a Retirement Plan.”
Of those researched between the ages of 25 and 69, working full-time and earning $40,000 or more per year, 48% of them feel unprepared for retirement. And that isn’t to say that they don’t have any plans in place. Seventy-five percent of them are contributing to some type of workplace retirement plan, they are simply worried that it isn’t enough. This is why many experts want you to compare annuities when planning your retirement. They are a perfect bridge for the gap between your workplace plan savings and the expenses you will have.
More than 4,000 men and women were surveyed for this study and less than half of them had actually sat down and figured out how much money they will need in retirement. Not surprisingly, only 28% were working with some type of financial planner to help them ready for retirement. If more were working with an expert, they surely would have calculated how much they need to live off of in retirement. By using 401ks, IRAs, pensions, and Social Security in conjunction with annuity products, Americans should be able to finance their retirement well. We just need to make sure we save enough to use these products and live how we’d like.
Written by Rachel Summit
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