September’s Top 10 Retirement Facts and Figures

By Jeffrey Levine, IRA Technical Expert
Follow Me on Twitter: @theslottreport

This is the beginning a new monthly feature – a content creation stream of each month’s best retirement and retirement planning facts and figures. Before each fact, you’ll find my own brief commentary, and after each fact, you’ll find the original article from which the fact was pulled should you be interested in further reading.

1. Turn-around is fair play. – “Millennials do not feel like they can rely on traditional retirement safety nets. This insecurity about retirement is compounded by the belief among Millennials (50%) that they will need to take care of their parents financially as they get older.” Read more.
    

2. You might live a lot longer than you think. – “One in four people who are 65 years old today will live to age 90, and one in 10 will live to 95.” Read more.
    

3. Most people who don’t save money through a work-based retirement plan aren’t doing so because they lack the option. – “Of all the workers who aren’t currently saving through their employer, 68% work for an employer that doesn’t offer a plan and 16% are not eligible to participate in their workplace program. Only 16% could take part but choose not to, a GAO report released today found.” Read more.
    

4. Seriously? – “15% of Millennials list winning the lottery as part of their retirement strategy, and 11% expect to be gifted money for retirement.” Read more.
    

5. Just remember, there are no loans for retirement! – “One third of consumers say they have reduced or would be willing to reduce the amount they are saving for retirement in order to help pay for their children’s or grandchildren’s college educations.” Read more.
    

6. It’s called a retirement account for a reason … it’s supposed to be for retirement. – “The percentage of people using retirement money to cover an unexpected expense in the past year fell from 19% in 2011 to 13%, according to a new survey by Bankrate.com. Still, that adds up to 30 million Americans.” Read more.
    

7. If you knew that by simply making one right choice, you could increase your lifetime income by tens, maybe even hundreds of thousands of dollars, wouldn’t you want to make sure that you were well informed before you made that choice? – “Only 9% of consumers said they believe they are very knowledgeable about how Social Security benefits are determined and just 1% of Certified Financial Planner professionals say their clients are very knowledgeable about the ins and outs of the program.” Read more.
    

8. Count on actually seeing a smaller and smaller percentage of your Social Security benefits each year, as more goes back to Uncle Sam to help cover your Medicare premiums. – “Medicare Part B premiums have increased an average of 5.7% per year from 2000 to 2014 compared with an average Social Security COLA of just 2.4% per year during the same period, according to the CRR report.” Read more.
    

9. There’s a 50/50 chance you’re going to die broke, or close to it. – “Roughly half of Americans die with $10,000 or less in assets.” Read more.
    

10.  Thankfully, women have made a lot of progress catching up to men in the retirement preparedness game, but they still have a long way to go until they’re on equal footing – “There’s a 26% gap in retirement preparedness between women and men.” Read more.