Seeing is saving (for retirement)
Respondents to a Capital Group survey were asked to envision the lives they want to lead in their 60s, 70s and beyond. What happened next is intriguing.
Credit creative visualization: When people are asked to imagine how they’ll be living in retirement, they get motivated to save more.
To determine motivations that drive retirement savings—and to see if people can be motivated to save more — a survey from Capital Group conducted an experiment.
Half of the survey respondents were asked to envision the lives they want to lead in their 60s, 70s and 80+ years before figuring out what percent of each paycheck to save in a retirement plan, while the other half were only asked how much they wanted to save for retirement.
Survey participants who were asked to picture their retirement years recommended saving 31 percent more per paycheck in a retirement savings plan on average than the second group of respondents.
For women and millennials in the first group, the result was a 40–50 percent positive swing in the average recommended 401(k) savings rate.
“The financial services industry sometimes accentuates worries and guilt to get people to pay more attention to planning and saving for retirement,” Heather Lord, senior vice president and head of strategy and innovation at Capital Group, said in a statement.
She added, “Fear doesn’t generally work. We believe—and our survey shows—that imagining one’s later years is a powerful exercise that helps drive increased average savings per paycheck for retirement. This insight could contribute to innovative retirement plan design and behavioral techniques to help Americans build bigger nest eggs for retirement.”
Also according to the survey from Capital Group, just one out of 10 Americans “strongly believe” that traditional models of employment and retirement will dominate in the coming years, and respondents also expect that advancements in health care, tech and their own financial situation will let them experience better and more diverse lifestyles as they age—compared with earlier generations.
In fact, 58 percent believe their own retirement will be more positive than that of their parents and earlier generations.
Still, 80 percent expect that flexible and part-time jobs will play a bigger role in supporting retirement savings, and 79 percent feel that Americans will need more opportunities to work, earn and save later in life.
But whether Americans are envisioning a retirement of leisure and freedom or one of continued work, they’re expecting to have to save enough to pay their way, with 73 percent expecting their 401(k) and IRA accounts to be among their top three sources of financial security in retirement years.
Still, 63 percent of boomers list Social Security as one of their top three expected sources of retirement income, compared to only 32 percent of millennials and 43 percent of GenXers.
And the younger generation is focused on work, with 18 percent of millennials saying that full-time or part-time work would be important for their financial security in retirement; that’s twice the level of boomers (9 percent) and higher than GenXers (14 percent).
But older people are more focused on being financially secure in their 60s, with 60 percent of boomers expecting that; 54 percent expect to be doing okay financially in their 80s.
Younger people, not so much; just 48 percent of millennials and GenXers believe they will be financially secure in their 60s.
This drops to 41 percent for millennials and 43 percent for GenXers for their 80s and older.
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