5 Ways to Boost Retirement Confidence

With increasing regularity, the financial services industry pumps out surveys that purport to capture America’s sense of confidence regarding its readiness for retirement, at least on a financial footing. Mostly, however, they seem to focus on the symptom, rather than dealing with the underlying cause(s).

However well-intentioned, these all seem designed to highlight a persistent strong undercurrent of concern — one that, certainly when juxtaposed against the generally disappointing preparation levels reported by respondents, seems completely warranted.

Confidence about retirement is one thing, of course, and preparation something else, though the two are logically intertwined. That said, for those looking to shore up confidence levels, data from the granddaddy of such surveys — the non-partisan Employee Benefit Research Institute’s (EBRI) Retirement Confidence Survey — provides a roadmap:

Work for an employer that offers a retirement plan.

Data indicates that workers — even workers of modest means — are 15 times more likely to save for retirement if they have access to a retirement plan at work than those who don’t have that option. It is perhaps not surprising then that in recent years, the RCS has tracked a huge gap in confidence about retirement between those who have a retirement plan and those who don’t; in the 2015 RCS, 44% of workers without a retirement plan are not at all confident about having enough money for a comfortable retirement, compared with only 14% of those who have a plan.

Furthermore, among those with a plan, the percentage of those who are very confident increased from 14% in 2013 to 28% in 2015. In contrast, the percentage of those who are very confident remained statistically unchanged among those without a plan (10% in 2013, 9% in 2014 and 12% in 2015).
Workers reporting that they or their spouses have money in a defined contribution plan or IRA or have a defined benefit plan from a current or previous employer were more than twice as likely as those without any of these plans to be very confident (24% with a plan vs. 9% without a plan in the 2014 RCS).

Figure out how much you’ll need.

The RCS has found that workers reporting that they or their spouses have a DC, DB or IRA plan are twice as likely as those who do not have such a plan (60% vs. 23%) to have tried to do a calculation to estimate what they will need to finance their retirement.

And despite higher savings goals, workers who have done a retirement savings needs calculation are more likely to feel very confident about affording a comfortable retirement (33% vs. 12% who have not done a calculation). Moreover, worker households with a retirement plan are more likely than those without such plans to report having saved for retirement (90% vs. 20%).

That said, as recently as the 2015 RCS, fewer than half (48%) of workers report they and/or their spouses have tried to calculate — even a single time — how much money they will need to have saved by the time they retire so that they can live comfortably in retirement, a level that has held relatively consistent over the past decade.

In other words, while many have (or had) a retirement plan, they don’t seem to have a plan for retirement.

Talk with an advisor.

Anecdotally, when you ask someone about their interest in engaging the services of an advisor, they are likely to tell you that they will wait until they need one — by which most seem to mean that, once they have accumulated enough savings to make it “worthwhile,” they’ll consider getting some help. What’s often overlooked is the role that a financial advisor — particularly one whose expense is covered by an employer plan — can play in helping make that account growth a reality.

In the 2015 RCS, more than three-quarters (78%) of respondents who had talked with a professional financial advisor about retirement planning were either somewhat or very confident that they will have enough money to live comfortably throughout their retirement years, far more than the 49% who did not use an advisor. The 2013 RCS found that nearly two-thirds (65%) of those who used either online calculators or asked the advice of financial advisors were either somewhat confident or very confident that they will have enough money to live comfortably through their retirement years.

On the other hand, nearly half (44.6%) of those who simply guessed were also somewhat confident or very confident.

It seems that, as noted above, the calculation/determination itself has a positive impact, though the kind predicated on real assessment clearly does more for confidence (and probably for the actual basis of that confidence as well).

Retire.

One might expect that the financial realities of being in retirement might well shatter the fragile levels of confidence expressed ahead of crossing that threshold — and yet the RCS has consistently chronicled that retirement confidence is higher among those already in retirement than among those still working. In the 2015 RCS, 37% of retirees were very confident about having enough money to live comfortably throughout their retirement years (up from 28% in 2014 and 18% in 2013), and a third were somewhat confident.

This is despite a consistent finding that individuals are frequently forced to leave the workforce earlier than planned, and that they are less likely to work in retirement than pre-retirees anticipated (in the 2015 RCS, 67% of current workers plan to work for pay in retirement, compared with just 23% of retirees who report they have actually worked for pay in retirement. In the 2015 RCS, 37% of retirees were very confident about their prospects, up from 27% in 2014 and 18% as recently as 2013.

However, as one might expect, workers who are not confident about their financial security in retirement plan to retire later, on average, than those who express confidence.

Save for retirement.

Retirement confidence, like confidence generally, is a state of mind, and one not always grounded in an accurate assessment of reality. As noted above, the mere act of guessing about retirement needs seems to be enough to provide a boost in confidence, certainly in the short run.

Regardless, it’s hard to deny that the best, most secure, means of assuring retirement confidence is establishing a solid foundation for that belief by:

• taking advantage of the opportunity to save and having the discipline to do so;
• establishing a goal and revisiting that goal on a regular basis; and
• enlisting the help of professionals in establishing those goals and in making sound, diversified investments.

Because ultimately, of course, what really matters is not how confident you feel, but whether you have a reason to feel confident.

- Nevin E. Adams, JD

'Good' Vibrations

Last week the Employee Benefit Research Institute (EBRI) and Mathew Greenwald & Associates, Inc., unveiled the 22nd annual Retirement Confidence Survey (RCS).

Among the things we have learned after doing this survey for more than two decades: People’s confidence about retirement frequently seems out of line with the financial resources they indicate they have on hand to fund it. Of course, most (56%) of this year’s respondents admit neither they nor their spouse have made even a single attempt to determine how much they need to achieve that comfortable retirement—so it shouldn’t be too surprising that, asked how much they think they need to have saved in order to provide for a comfortable retirement, many hold forth a number that seems lower than some might expect.

While we spent a fair amount of time this week discussing the results with reporters, one question that came up repeatedly was “Why do you do this survey? What do you hope people take from it?”

The survey itself is meaningful both for the kinds of issues it deals with: Questions that, as in this year’s RCS, deal not just with confidence as a “feeling” but also the criteria that underlie and influence that sentiment. It looks at the perspective both of those already in retirement, as well as those still working and heading toward that milestone. It also (with a perspective based on two decades of conducting this particular survey) offers insights on how those feelings and factors have changed over time.

Those good reasons notwithstanding, this past week EBRI reminded reporters that the RCS has found that people who have taken the time to do a retirement needs assessment are generally more confident than those who haven’t done so, and not necessarily because they find that they are in better shape than they’d thought. In fact, most report that they set higher savings goals AFTER they had done the assessment—and were THEN more confident in their situation.

That is why EBRI joined many others in 1995 to establish the American Savings Education Council (ASEC), and then the ChoosetoSave(r) program and the BallparkE$timate(r). Millions of Americans have used the BallparkE$timate(r) at www.choosetosave.org to help them climb the hill to savings and greater financial security, and according to the RCS, a more realistic view of the future.

There’s something to be said for knowing the size and extent of what was previously unknown, particularly when it comes to setting a financial goal as complex as planning for retirementcan seem.

If the annual publication of the RCS does no more than remind individuals of the importance of taking the time to do so, then it’s not only good information—it’s information that does some good.

- Nevin E. Adams, JD


Results of the 2012 Retirement Confidence Survey (RCS) are now available online HERE