Welcome to this month’s last edition of This Week in Pensions! This is the news you need to know in the fight for a secure retirement.
Before you dive into our top stories from this week, check out some stories of public employees helping their communities.
Here are the top stories from this week:
High Retirement Anxiety For Millennials and Generation X by Dan Doonan. In an op-ed for Forbes, the Executive Director of the National Institute on Retirement Security (NIRS) shared the results of a recent survey on how Americans view the retirement security crisis. In the study, NIRS discovered that 51% of Americans believe that the COVID-19 pandemic has exacerbated their worries about achieving a financially secure retirement. NIRS also revealed that there is bipartisan consensus that the country faces a retirement security crisis, as 70% of Democrats, 70% of independents, and 62% of Republicans agree with that statement. However, members of the millennial generation and Generation X reported the highest amount of concern about retirement among the Americans surveyed. Seventy-two percent of millennials and 59% of Generation Xers stated that they were anxious about retiring with security, which was higher than for baby boomers or the silent generation. Doonan identifies one reason why millennials and Generation Xers feel they are more concerned about retirement, as “these are the first two generations that are far less likely to have access to pensions, which provide stable income that lasts through retirement.” Thankfully, most public employees of all ages still have access to a defined-benefit retirement plan, which enables them to retire with security and dignity.
Many Americans fear retirement more than death — here’s why by Gabrielle Olya. Olya writes for the Las Vegas Review-Journal about a new analysis from Zety which illustrates how precarious the current state of retirement security is in the United States. According to the findings, 44% of men and 36% of women in America said they were more scared of retiring than they were of dying. The most commonly associated fear with retirement that they reported was having a lack of income. This is where pensions help create retirement security, as they produce a modest yet guaranteed retirement benefit for participants to ensure they do not fall into poverty.
Be sure to check back next month for the latest news in the fight for a secure retirement!
