Fear of Outliving Your Retirement Money
July 29, 2010 by Mr. GoTo
Filed under Retirement Planning
I read a report of a recent baby boomers and retirement income study sponsored by the Allianz Life Insurance Company. The study findings fall into the “sad but true” category.
Check out this summary from the news release:
Although 61 percent of Boomers fear outliving their money in retirement more than death, nearly one third (31 percent) say they are not too clear about what their expenses will be in retirement and 36 percent have no idea if their income will last.
Fear of the unknown is commonplace. Preparation and knowledge can conquer fear, even if the knowledge is bad news.
Why aren’t these baby boomers estimating their retirement expenses? If they did, they might learn ways to reduce those expenses.
Why aren’t baby boomers trying to learn if their retirement income will last?
There are plenty of tools available to help. I’ve written about many of them.
Read this nugget about the study results:
Boomers were asked which they were more likely to guess correctly, exactly how much money they’ll have (or need) at the point of retirement or how many gumballs are in the jar at the local county fair. Sadly, just over half (53 percent) felt confident in their ability to gauge their retirement income needs – only six percent higher than those more certain of their gumball guessing skills.
If you don’t know any more about your retirement finances than you do about gumballs in a jar, you may deserve the fate that awaits you when the money runs out.
To read more about the study: Older Americans Fear Outliving Money, Retirement Savings, Assets
If you are in the “fear of running out of money” camp, here are some guides to retirement planning tools.
FREE UPDATES: If you enjoy what you read here, please consider subscribing to receive free updates automatically by RSS feed or by email. (I promise that your email address will not be shared or used for any other purpose.)
My Related Posts:
