Retirement: Not the Ideal Time to Discover Your Income Need

By Alan Gross

Since the beginning of 2011, about 10,000 baby boomers joined the ranks of the retired every single day¹. For some, this is a truly great moment as they embrace the next chapter in their lives. For others, it is a sudden and not altogether welcome awakening to a new financial reality that reflects limited savings and very limited options to address an uncertain future.

It’s no revelation that hitting age 65 and contemplating retirement is not an ideal time to discover how much income you may need to live on in retirement, but recent surveys remind us this is unfortunately not an uncommon concern as “more than half (56%) of Americans don’t know how much they’ll need to retire comfortably.”²

When you factor in that “on average, people think there is a 45% chance they will outlive their savings, and 41% have taken no steps to address it,”² it’s no wonder too many people get too far down the path before facing this essential test. Of course, we know, the further downstream you are on your financial and earnings path, the more limited your opportunities  are to respond to the challenge. Most people simply cannot overcome the math of too few remaining years to put away money and too few years for those savings to grow and reduce their retirement income deficit. The best tools and technologies cannot solve this. 

More to the point, we know what the answer is: Start education and engagement early with clear, simple goal-based models that anyone can understand and use. If the retirement system is going to be successful in living up to its promise of helping produce better outcomes, we can do no less.

Learn how your organization can leverage iJoin’s industry-leading goal-based, personalized participant experience to drive better outcomes for all retirement plan constituents. Visit us today and request a demo.