The Employee Benefits Research Institute has joined the smartphone application frenzy with an app of its own. The Ballpark E$timate iPhone App is designed to help Americans save for their retirement.
Available online at www.choosetosave.org/ballpark/, the Ballpark E$timate has helped millions of Americans quickly identify how much they need to save to fund a comfortable retirement. Provided by the Choose to Save financial education program, the online took takes complicated issues, like projecting Social Security benefits and earnings assumptions on savings, and turns them into language and mathematics that are easy to understand.
Release of the iPhone app stems from findings by the EBRI 2012 Retirement Confidence Survey that the use of technology, such as smart phones and computer tablets, is far more prevalent among younger workers than older workers and that the use of mobile devices to help manage finances is still relatively new.
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The mobile savings app is designed to expand the benefits of EBRI's free planning software to a younger audience.
"With a new generation of tools like the free Ballpark E$timate app, a whole new generation of savers should be able to get an earlier start on savings," said Nevin Adams, director of the American Savings Education Council. "This is a way to make it easier to save money, not just spend it."
Adams notes that while retirement isn't top of mind for many younger individuals, the array of free financial planning tools provided by Choose to Save are designed to help people of all ages prepare for life's financial needs. The new app makes the frequently complex topic of saving toward longer-term goals easier to understand—and easier to share—by illustrating the impact of key savings concepts like inflation, investment returns, and the time value of money, as well as the contribution of programs such as 401(k)s and Social Security.
EBRI is a private, nonprofit research institute based in Washington, DC, that focuses on health, savings, retirement, and economic security issues.
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