”Background” Check
We’ve
never invested in a vacation home, but for a number of years now, my family has
made relatively regular trips to Gettysburg, Pennsylvania. And while we’ve
visited many places over the years, Gettysburg remains special, both because
there are places that we know, and have visited many times, and because there
are (still) things to discover. Over time we’ve also shared that experience
with friends and members of our extended family, and their participation adds
an additional, fresh perspective, even to sites we have visited many times
before.
On
March 18, EBRI and Greenwald & Associates will release the results of the
24th annual Retirement Confidence Survey (RCS). With a perspective
longer than many retirements, it’s likely to garner a lot of attention, as well
it should. The focus tends to be on retirement confidence (or the lack
thereof), specifically at the extremes—those “very” and “not at all” confident
in their prospects for a financially comfortable retirement.
Attention
will also likely be given to what can be done to improve the levels of
confidence. Previous iterations point to some consistent factors: having more
retirement savings is perhaps the most obvious connection to retirement
confidence, as is participation in a workplace retirement savings plan (which,
as you might expect, is linked to having more retirement savings). The RCS has also
found that something as fundamental as having taken the time to do a calculation
of retirement needs has a positive effect on confidence, even though those who
had done such an assessment tend to set higher savings goals.
For
this year’s RCS, as we do every year, we make it a point to ask a battery of
consistent questions, to develop trend lines that allow us to see how
attitudes change over time, throughout a wide variety of market and regulatory
cycles, not to mention the advent of transformative technologies such as the
Internet. Of course, we also include certain topical questions to get a current
sense of worker—and retiree—responses to things such as prospective tax law
changes, plan design features like automatic enrollment and contribution
acceleration, and the use of various technologies in retirement planning. We’ve
asked not only how much they have saved, but how much they think they should
have saved, and—more recently—how much they think they should be saving now to
provide that financially secure retirement.
Perhaps
most importantly, we pose those questions to both current workers and current
retirees, so as to gain a unique and informative perspective on the realities
of retirement from those already living it, alongside the expectations of those
for whom retirement remains a future event.
There’s
a particular spot on the Gettysburg battlefield where we always try to take a
family picture—the background doesn’t change, but it’s interesting to watch how
much we’ve changed over the years.
Similarly,
the RCS provides an invaluable and consistent background—along with a fresh and
interesting perspective of today’s environment, as well as insights on future
trends—that can help us all better prepare for a more financially secure retirement.
Note:
The results of the 2014 Retirement Confidence Survey (RCS) will be available at
8 a.m. ET on Tuesday, March 18, at www.ebri.org. Information and
findings from prior surveys are available at www.ebri.org/surveys/rcs.
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