Working to close the retirement gap
Last week's issue of U.S.News & World Report featured a story on baby boomers' opting to forgo retirement in favor of starting a small business. Several of these entrepreneurs made the move as part of an overall lifestyle switch, deciding to pursue their dreams instead of continuing to merely exist as wage slaves. But many boomers may have to make the move out of necessity. A new survey of workers by the Employee Benefit Research Institute found that many of their retirement expectations "are like a piece of Swiss cheese—full of holes. For example, many have accumulated only modest retirement savings, underestimate the share of their preretirement income they are likely to need in retirement, and made no estimate of how much they will need to live comfortably once they retire." Among the findings:
- More than two thirds (68 percent) of current workers say they and their spouses have accumulated less than $50,000 in retirement savings.
- Nearly 6 in 10 (58 percent) of current workers say they and their spouses do not expect to receive any health insurance from their employers when they retire. EBRI research shows that individuals age 55 who live to age 90 would need to accumulate $210,000 by age 65 to pay for insurance to supplement Medicare and out-of-pocket medical expenses in retirement—far more than all but about 10 percent of workers currently have saved for all retirement expenses.
- Nearly 6 in 10 (58 percent) of current workers think they will have fewer than 25 years of retirement, and an additional 19 percent are unable to estimate how long their retirement will last. These findings suggest many workers may not be planning and saving enough to finance the full amount of time they expect to spend in retirement, thereby increasing the odds that they will outlive their retirement savings.
- Fourteen percent of current workers said they thought they would need less than 50 percent of their preretirement income to live comfortably in retirement. But 62 percent of current retirees say their income is 70 percent or more of their preretirement income.
Starting their own businesses may be how many would-be retirees close the shortfall.