A new survey released by the Employee Benefit Research Institute revealed that the percentage of American workers with very little in the pot for retirement savings grew for the third straight year. According to the Retirement Confidence Survey, which was released on Tuesday, the percentage of workers who have less than $10,000 in retirement savings grew four percent between 2009 and 2010.
Statistics from the Employee Benefit Research Institute
It seems that workers have had more trouble than ever saving for their nest egg, whether it be in the 401(k), IRA, or savings account. Some statistics from the Employee Benefit Research Institute are very telling of the state of today’s American workers and their ability to save for retirement:
- 43 percent of workers said they have less than $10,000 in savings in 2010. This number grew from 39 percent in 2009.
- 27 percent of workers said they had less than $1,000. This number jumped from 20 percent in 2009.
- 69 percent of workers said they saved for their nest eggs in 2010. This number dropped from 75 percent in 2009.
- Only 16 percent of respondents said they have confidence in their ability to save enough for a comfortable retirement. This is the second-lowest point in the 20-year history of the survey.
The money for retirement counted in this survey didn’t include the value of primary homes or defined-benefit pension plans.
Americans Are Still Shell-Shocked
It seems that many Americans are still shell-shocked after losing much of their 401(k) during the financial crisis. Even though many workers regained their investments in 2009, some are still concerned about their ability to save in the long term.
One major contributor of this attitude toward retirement is job loss. However, mortgage problems and even the suspension of many corporate 401(k) matches in 2009 have played vital roles. Most workers are more concerned with their immediate issues than planning for their long-term goals. However, these goals are still important.
If you’ve reached a point that you no longer know how to save for retirement, it’s good to keep in mind that there are always ways for you to rebuild your nest egg, even if you lost most of it during the financial crisis. It’s never too late to pull your finances together, so use today to pick yourself up and start saving for your future once again.
Could this have something to do with the hedge-funders, AIG, and Big Banks stealing all the money they could from the American people or perhaps it is because after the funds were stripped, the housing market crashed, and the gamble went sour…no one could afford to save…they had to live on it, after work was outsourced or folded.
Don’t worry. Whether you have $10,000 or $10,000,000 it will all be worth the same soon after the dollar crashes, zero.
This is not surprising. Part of the problem is that hard-working Americans aren’t making enough to put away much in savings. But a bigger part of the problem is that a growing percentage of Americans prefer not to work but to live off welfare. 12% of Americans are dependent on food stamps. These percentages will only grow as the percentage of illegal immigrants and their children increases within the country’s population.
Ads on TV suggest you can set yourself up for a comfortable retirement by beginning some sort of program when you’re in you 50s or even 60s. That is simply incredible bunk. You may not have to start in your 20s or even 30s, but what you had better have is about thirty years of uninterrupted saving and proper planning. And “saving” at the store doesn’t count. You can’t save ANY amount of money by spending less. Saving means putting it when you don’t use it at all.
Part of this plan is continued and sustained living within your means. And part of that is buying anything on credit ONLY if you have the money to pay off the card at month’s end.
Plenty of people are going to say this approach is too hard and all wrong. Wrong on both accounts and I’m living proof of that. And those among us who have made no plans for decades and suddenly find themselves old and broke have nobody to blame but themselves. There are no free lunches and it’s way past time people learned that.
Not surprised- its the whole problem with a welfare trap. If you save money, you will have to be taxed more, get fewer benefits, pay for your children’s education, lose out on childcare credits and programs, etc. So we are told to save but punished for doing it. If you make little, and have no assets, you get Section 8 housing, food stamps, financial aid… for anyone with kids, can we see how financial aid is the biggest load of bull when it comes against retirement savings? Save nothing, make little, pay nothing. Save $230,000 for your kids college, and your will have to pay every dime to send them to Yale or even a Tier 2 or 3 private school.
What we need to do is stop the welfare trap. Cut all the programs, make it highly undesirable, socially, psychologically and even physically, to stay on those programs, but make it easier to be a middle class person with a large amount of retirement savings- that means, LOWER TAXES on the middle class, and that’s up to and through $250,000 a year. Cut the programs, or make the programs work for everyone, again up to $250,000. If you must give out food stamps, everyone under 250K gets them. If you must give out college aid, everyone under 250K gets them. If you must give out a housing voucher, everyone gets it. Only then will we end the trap.