Retirement Issues: Many May Be Forced To Work Until 70

Retirement is a huge question facing many Americans, especially Baby Boomers, who will begin to retire in the next few years.

Suzanna de Baca, vice president of wealth and strategies for Ameriprise, states that:

“We used to talk about the three legs of retirement, including social security, pensions, and a 401k. Pensions guaranteed defined benefits. But much more weight and pressure applies to the 401k and personal savings now.”

Alicia Munnell, director of the Center for Retirement Research at Boston College, wrote in a report that:

“The gist of this whole story is that retirement ages are increasing as people live longer and health care costs rise, and at the same time the retirement system is retracting.”

Munnell’s report reads:

“The majority of today’s retirees are able to afford a decent retirement. However, this group is living in a “golden age” that will fade as Baby Boomers and Generation Xers reach traditional retirement ages in the coming decades.”

Multiple things are causing the retirement system in America to fail. Among them are the fact that eligibility for full Social Security Insurance benefits has raised from age 65 to 67, Medicare premiums are rising, and, according to Munnell, “people really don’t save on their own.

David Wise, an economist at Harvard’s Kennedy School of Government, also reports that, “a substantial fraction of persons die with virtually no financial assets – 46.1% with less than $10,000 – and many of these households also have no housing wealth and rely almost entirely on Social Security benefits for support.”

Munnell goes on to write that:

“The way out of this box is to work longer…now that’s harder in this environment where we have high levels of unemployment, but that’s really in the end what’s going to keep people financially sound. If people work until age 70, I think the vast majority of people would be perfectly fine in retirement.”

Check out more information about Baby Boomers retirement here:

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