According to a new study, Longevity and the New Journey of Retirement, 69% of Americans desire to live to the age of 100. With the current state of technological improvement in the healthcare system, Americans now live longer than ever, which is a good thing but it does create multiple challenges for retirees.
Most people who want to live longer, according to the study, hope to spend more time with their family and friends. A minority of respondents said that they’re just afraid of dying. The ideal length of retirement for most of them is 29 years.
The definition of retirement has changed significantly for the past several decades. Most nowadays’ retirees and pre-retirees are viewing the retirement time as a period of rest and relaxation. But the new generation are looking at their future retirement as a new chapter of their life. And there’s no clear borderline around what people think about when retirement actually starts. For most of the respondents it’s the end of their full-time job, for some it’s the period when you start receiving social security/pension, and for a few people it’s just reaching a specific age.
According to the study, there are 4 stages to describe the overall post-retirement experience: 1) anticipation (up to 10 years before retirement), 2) liberation/disorientation (up to 2 years after retirement), 3) reinvention (3 to 14 years after retirement), 4) reflection/resolution (over 15 years after retirement)
The research also says that there are 4 distinct groups characterized by people’s attitudes towards retirement, and it shows how your ambitions impact your retirement life:
1) Purposeful Pathfinders – comparatively happy and well prepared for retirement. They started saving up for retirement at the age of 34 on average
2) Relaxed Traditionalists – pursue a balanced lifestyle of rest and relaxation, smooth transition and well preparedness. Most of them chose to retire when they wanted to, and they’re also flexible to relocation
3) Challenged yet Hopefuls – focused on self-improvement but have a lack of financial preparation. They started saving at the age of 45, and over 50% of them started early withdrawals from their accounts
4) Regretful Strugglers – least prepared for retirement financial group, mostly unhappy, majority said that they have regrets in life, or simply bad luck.
While everyone’s experience is different, there’s a certain tendency that people who started preparing for their retirement several decades in advance feel happier now than the people from the other groups. Although a well-known three-legged stool consists of pensions, Social Security and personal savings, Age Wave suggests paying more attention to personal savings.
As most of the respondents said that they wish they had started saving for retirement a decade before they did, you can see that the earlier you start thinking about your future the better your future will be when you retire.
The help of a retirement advisor is also a very important point, and if you find the right one, whom you can trust, you won’t have to carry the retirement burden on your shoulders alone. Experienced advisors use quantitative and qualitative solutions to calculate all risks and underlying stones within retirement plans.
We at RiXtrema provide such solutions, our Portfolio Crash Test is used specifically for the risk assessment of retirement portfolios with an in-depth analysis of potential risks based on existing or potential economic scenarios. You can always view a quick demo of this tool by scheduling a call with one of our representatives here
