Are Baby Boomers Realistic about our Retirement Goals? [VIDEOS]
July 9th, 2008
[VIDEOS] Baby Boomers appear to be facing retirement with confidence, while many of us actually don't have any idea as to how much money it will take to comfortably retire.
We appear to be facing our Baby Boomer retirement with confidence, but we may not have a particularly firm grip on reality. According to research less than 25% of Baby Boomers in our 50's have savings of $100,000 or more, yet over 75% of us are confident that we are better prepared for retirement than our parents while 50% of us actually don't know yet how much money we will need to actually comfortably retire.
No matter which view of retirement planning you take, both optimists and pessimists agree that Baby Boomers need to take a reality check and take some basic proactive steps to secure our comfortable retirement.
Many financial experts say we will need nearly 80 percent of your pre-retirement income to maintain our standard of living in retirement. This might even be a conservative assessment when we consider inflation, increasing life spans, better and more expensive medical care and cost of medicine, and our changing expectations for a comfortable and active retirement. If we are planning to be youthful and active Baby Boomers, the time to start planning for retirement is now.
18th Annual Retirement Confidence Survey
Averting a Bust for Baby Boomers
Baby Boomers might want to take advantage of a number of Baby Boomer retirement financial planning tools that are available through many Insurance, investment and financial planning companies. Financial planning calculators allow you to perform "hypothetical," recalculating and generating new results as we input differently and make new assumptions.
These financial calculators can be of great value in this process but they can't take every assumption into account. They can't consider all the information relevant to our needs, and they obviously can't make decisions for us. For that you'll want to learn more about the issues. Using these tools and educating ourselves on the workings of life insurance and other financial products that can help us feel more comfortable when discussing our needs with such retirement planning professionals.
To receive information about financial planning specifically for Baby Boomers, please fill out this form. This information is provided to you without any obligation and your contact information will not be shared with anyone not directly related to your interest.
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