Retirement Survey Shows Many Americans Don’t Know How Much it Will Take

Each year the Employee Benefit Research Institute conducts a survey about American’s financial preparation for retirement.  The results from this years survey were just released and show a couple troubling trends.  You can read the entire report summarizing the results HERE.  But if you prefer the executive summary like me here are a few cliff notes:

*Only 16% of workers surveyed stated that they were very confident about having enough money for a comfortable retirement.

*Only 19% of retirees said they were very confident about having a financially secure retirement.

*More than half (54%) of workers surveyed reported that the total value of their household savings and investments was less than $25,000.

*Less than half (46%) of workers reported that they have tried to calculate how much money they would need to accumulate in order to insure a comfortable retirement.

If you are like a majority of workers and haven’t taken the time to calculate your capital accumulation needs then you can contact a financial planner (I’d be happy to help) or check out this blog post which has many retirement calculators.