AARP Report: Planning Size of Retirement Nest Egg Important First Step to Lifetime Financial Security

Planning the size of a retirement nest egg can be a critical first step to building lifetime economic security at a time when many American households are ill-prepared and informed about their long-term financial outlook, according to "Retirement Preparedness:  The Have and Have-Nots," a recent report released by AARP.

The report found that while only 43 percent of working households have begun to figure out how much money they will need to save for retirement, 44 percent of these households changed their savings and spending behavior based upon this planning.

The report gauged the level of retirement preparedness among those households participating in an employer-sponsored 401(k) or 403(b) plan compared to those who do not have access to a retirement savings plan at work.  Though both segments are susceptible to financial insecurity, households that participate in a defined contribution plan are more likely to have saved for retirement (86% vs. 51%) and to have made changes in their savings habits after calculating how much savings they will need for retirement (53% vs. 32%).

Resources and tools families can use to determine the size of their nest eggs include the AARP retirement calculator (www.aarp.org/money/financial_planning) and the ASEC Ballpark Estimate (www.choosetosave.org/ballpark).

For more information on AARP and for more information about ASEC visit www.aarp.org or http://www.choosetosave.org/asec/.  To view a copy of the report visit http://www.aarp.org/research/financial/retirementsaving/retirement_prep.html.

Comments

[Kevin]

Dear Lansing State Journal,

I have been a reader of your newspaper for many years. Now that I live outside of Michigan, I can only read your online edition. I have been very patient with your site, but certain things have become so annoying that I cannot stay quiet anymore.

First, I take issue with your survey page that appears every so often. I think that it is fine if you want to collect information about your readers; please just make submitting it optional. Demanding my birthday, gender and zip code before I can read local news is simply rude. If I don’t feel like telling you my personal statistics every time I use a new computer, why should I have to? It doesn’t do you any good to think that I am an 87-year-old woman from Alaska, or a 13-year-old boy from Mississippi.

Second, please remove the invasive advertising linked to specific words on your site. It is one thing to have advertising where I can choose to click for more information. It is entirely something different when a pop-up appears if I simply move my curser over a specific word in an article I was reading. Have you even looked at what your paper links to? Half of the time the links make no logical sense to the words they are attached to, and other times they are just offensive. Why would I ever want to link to a site about former NBA star Michael Jordan’s divorce while reading an article about the MSU bowl game?

Please, for my sanity, fix these issues with your site. I have no delusions of faking a boycott like the state employees last year, and I do intend to keep reading your paper. I just want to be happy while reading your paper, instead of angry about your site. I intend to demonstrate how annoying these issues are by repeating this letter as often as I can in places where it makes little sense, much like your advertising.

Additionally, I request a response addressing my concerns from an editor. You have my email address (which I provided in order to post on this site.) Please note that in order for me to receive your email, the subject line must include that editor’s birthday, gender, and zip code.

Thank you for addressing my concerns.

Respectfully,

Kevin