There are a lot of things that can shake one’s confidence about retirement readiness — but American workers may be their own worst enemies.
According to this week’s poll of NAPA Net readers, the most likely culprit behind retirement insecurity is not saving at all, with a close second being not having a plan for retirement. The fifth-most cited response was “not saving enough.”
Nor is their lack of savings necessarily the result of a lack of resources. The third most-cited option was that people are “unwilling to delay gratification and save for the future.”
“Not knowing how much is needed” was the fourth most-cited impediment to confidence and, as noted above, “not saving enough” was close behind (and perhaps related).
Confidence is, of course, a subjective sense of things, and lots of things can influence how we feel about future prospects. But, as this week’s survey results suggest, not doing anything about it likely won't engender much confidence in one’s future prospects.
The rest of the top 10 factors undermining retirement confidence were:
- Financial stresses with rising costs of food prices, college tuition and other daily expenses
- Health care costs
- Not having a retirement plan at work
- The inherent uncertainties in “knowing” how something like retirement finances will turn out
- Things that have nothing directly to do with retirement (e.g., overall sentiment about the economy)
Far down the list were things like leakage, the constant stream of industry surveys (and media coverage) about individuals not being prepared, concerns about Social Security, and not working with an advisor.
Thanks to everyone who participated in our weekly NAPA Net reader poll! Got a suggestion for a future poll? Email me at [email protected].
