By Alan Gross
You see the statistics – the gap in confidence, comfort, or readiness so many people experience when saving for retirement. You see the numbers in survey factoids, webinar slides, and infographics.
“They want it. You have it.” is our new series of posts that speak directly to some of these challenges and shares actionable steps you can take as a professional partner to positively affect outcomes.
If you missed “They want it. You have it. Part 1: 6 in 10 people say that preparing for retirement makes them feel stressed,1” read it here.
Part 2: “27% of workers are very confident they will have enough for a comfortable retirement.”1
After all, if you don’t know how much you’ll need in the future, how can you know if you’re saving enough now?
There are two huge problems embedded in this short statement. One is that many people are not confident they’ll have enough money in retirement because they don’t actually know how much they’ll need to maintain a comfortable lifestyle. As a result, they don’t know how much they need to save now in order to achieve that result. The other is that there are a number of people who are, unfortunately, too many years downstream, with too little saved, to live the retirement they wished.
It’s essential to provide pathways to savings, but a payroll deferral and employer match are arbitrary contributions if not associated with a financial goal to reach. After all, if you don’t know how much you’ll need in the future, how can you know if you’re saving enough now?
iJoin is purpose-built to help people understand their retirement income funding goal and gives them instant feedback on how making changes will impact their paycheck now, as well as their projected future income. For example, iJoin instantly displays every user’s projected goal completion based on their savings, deferral rate, match optimization, age, gender, years to retirement, intended state of residence in retirement, and more. By inviting users to model the impact of increasing their deferral rate or changing their retirement age or adding outside assets, they get real-time feedback and updates on their goal progress. Very possibly this is the first time they’ll feel in control of reaching the financial security they’re banking on.
Make this actionable:
- Incorporate these iJoin themes into your outreach.
- Demo these features to industry partners and clients.
- Take advantage of the iJoin Partner Marketing videos and collateral.
Reach out to learn more about how to put the power of iJoin to work for you.
Alan Gross is president of GSM Marketing, a marketing partner to iJoin and other leading organizations aligned to the shared goal of producing better retirement plan outcomes.
1 Source: EBRI – 2020 Retirement Confidence Survey Summary Report