Workers postponing retirement, many expect till after age 70
They won’t be able to retire until they at least hit 70, 40 percent of workers in this survey said.
More than half of workers who are 60 years old and older are postponing retirement, and 40 percent of workers figure they’ll have to keep working at least until age 70.
That’s according to a new CareerBuilder study, which finds that 53 percent of workers aged 60+ aren’t anticipating retirement yet; 57 percent of men are delaying retirement, compared with 48 percent of women. And for many, that delay is anticipated to be years long, with 40 percent overall saying they won’t be able to retire until they at least hit 70.
Why? In a word, uncertainty, with many having no idea how much money they’ll actually need to save in order to retire. While 24 percent say they don’t know how much they’ll have to save to make it through, that problem is worse for women, with 31 percent saying they don’t know how much will be enough. Just 17 percent of men, in comparison, admit that they aren’t sure about how much they’ll need.
A fifth of workers are unrealistic enough to say they can get by on less than $500,000—although perhaps that’s not just wishful thinking but reality talking, with many people not saving at all because they simply can’t make the dollars stretch that far. Another 31 percent say they’ll need to sock away between $500,000 and less than a million, while 14 percent say the sweet spot is between $1 million and $2 million.
Five percent have their sights set higher, anticipating a need of between $2 million and $3 million, and 7 percent say it just won’t do to go out with less than $3 million—and probably more.
“Postponing retirement will make an impact across all of our country’s workforce, along with retirement policy and financial and health care planning,” Rosemary Haefner, chief human resources officer at CareerBuilder, says in a statement. Haefner adds, “With workers staying in their jobs longer, employers are adjusting hiring needs, but also reaping the benefits of the extra skills and mentoring abilities of mature employees.”
Many will never reach any of those goals, since when asked if they’re currently contributing to retirement accounts, 23 percent of workers who are 55+ said they don’t participate in a 401(k), IRA or other retirement plan. And younger workers are even worse off, with 40 percent of those between the ages of 18–34 saying they’re not saving in such a plan.
Geographically, the South is losing out the most, with just 67 percent of workers contributing to retirement accounts; in the Midwest, it’s a tad better at 69 percent, while the West edges up a wee bit more at 71 percent. But the Northeast leads the way, at 73 percent of workers saving in a retirement account.
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