Workers aren't saving anywhere near enough for retirement—and while that's hardly news, the fact that younger workers are looking for plans that mandate retirement security is.
According to a survey from Natixis Global Asset Management, millennials (18–34-year-olds) in the workforce are pushing for new standards for employer-sponsored retirement savings plans.
Although 86 percent of workers overall, regardless of age, recognize their own responsibility to fund retirement, they say they need more help from employer: better education, stronger incentives and assistance with other financial pressures.
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And among those advocating hardest for such measures are millennials, even if those measures compel millennials to comply.
While 55 percent of boomers say that individuals should be required to contribute toward retirement savings, 69 percent of millennials believe that.
Even more dramatic is the fact that 82 percent of millennials, compared with 77 percent of GenXers, say that employers should be required to offer retirement plans. And 76 percent of millennials, compared with 66 percent of boomers, say that businesses should be required to provide matching funds.
Millennials are also more disposed toward values-based investing, with 84 percent saying they want investing options that reflect their own values.
And although millennials overall started saving for retirement earlier than previous generations—starting at age 23 on average, compared with age 27 for GenXers and age 31 for boomers, they're by no means confident about having enough money to retire.
Part of that lack of confidence, the report said, likely stems from their lack of faith in Social Security—and who can blame them?
All the talk of cutting benefits and "saving" a program that could easily be supported by raising the ceiling on the Social Security tax required of higher-income earners has made every working generation nervous.
The majority of boomers are confident enough, at 82 percent, to count on Social Security benefits in retirement, but millennials are more pessimistic, with just 55 percent believing such benefits will be available to them when they retire.
Lacking confidence in a program that's been around since being signed into law in 1935 but is at the mercy of politicians who can't agree on its usefulness, millennials are turning their expectations to their employers instead.
Lots of workers don't even participate in employer-sponsored retirement plans, with 48 percent of those who don't citing the lack of sufficient matching funds as the reason they've opted out.
And among those who do participate, the strongest incentives are company matching contributions (cited by 63 percent), tax incentives (56 percent) and the convenience of having money automatically deducted from their paychecks (52 percent).
In addition, 69 percent of workers said they'd stash more in their plans if employers offered a larger match, and 72 percent said employers should be required to provide matching contributions.
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