Report: Americans are Stressed About Retirement
The results are in and Americans aren’t feeling too confident about their retirement. The Employee Benefit Research Institute’s annual Retirement Confidence Survey just crossed the wires with some surprising results.
“We found that only 18% of people are very confident that they will have the ability to live comfortably in retirement,” Craig Copeland, senior research associate at the Employee Benefit Research Institute, tells FOX Business.
The report also shows that workers feeling very or somewhat confident has declined compared to last year (60% vs. 64%).
“Those people that have more debt are more likely to feel uncomfortable. So if they are not preparing today for their finances they are having a much more difficult time of being able to prepare for the future,” says Copeland.
And when it comes to medical expenses, 45% of workers are not too or not at all confident they will have enough money to cover them in retirement, while only 6 in 10 feel they will have enough money to provide long-term care, according to the report.
“We found out that 3 out of 10 workers were stressed about retirement planning,” adds Copeland.
Despite the overall uncertainty in this year’s report, Americans’ retirement confidence has managed to hit pre-recession levels.
“We are relatively similar now in the last three or four years and our confidence has been a bounce back since the post-recession period,” says Copeland.
There are things employees can do to get their retirement on track and boost confidence further.
“Only 4 out of 10 people have taken the time to calculate how much they should save for retirement and that is a really easy thing to do,” Luke Vandermillen, vice president of Principal Financial Groups, tells FOX Business.
“Seek the help of a professional, a financial adviser, to really create a plan that you can stick to that will make all of the difference,” adds Vandermillen.
Watch the full breakdown of the survey above with more tips you can do now to prepare for retirement!