Retirement Confidence Spikes

Each year Americans are asked questions about their retirement plans in the Retirement Confidence Survey from the Employee Benefits Research Institute. They also are asked about their retirement plans and actions. The good news is that confidence in having a financial secure retirement is up, with 63% confident of having a comfortable retirement. That’s increased a lot since the low of 49% in 2011. But actions don’t always match words. Most of the respondents don’t have a good idea of how much money they’ll need to establish that comfortable retirement and aren’t saving as much as they think they need to.

A nest egg of half a million dollars or more is what 46 percent of workers think they’ll need to retire comfortably. Twenty-six percent think they will need less than $250,000. Those who have actually tried to calculate how much they need set higher goals. This year, 31 percent of workers who have made that effort figured they needed at least $1 million for retirement. Among those who haven’t thought it through, 18 percent estimated they’d need at least that much.

In a charming testament to human nature, while not enough people are saving for retirement, they’re definitely thinking about what they’ll do when they retire. Sixty-seven percent of workers said they had thought about how to occupy their time. Just 36 percent said they had talked with a financial adviser about retirement planning.