Many of us won’t be able to retire until our 80s

Posted on February 26, 2013 at 3:46 pm

BOSTON (MarketWatch) — We all think it’s a panacea. If you don’t have enough money saved for retirement, you’ve got a few ways to close the gap between what you have and what you need in your nest egg: Save more, invest more aggressively, and/or work longer.

Well, it turns out that working longer is indeed an option, according to the Employee Benefit Research Institute latest study. The only problem is that the latest research shows that you’ll have to work much longer than you anticipated. In fact, many Americans will have to keep on working well into their 70s and 80s to afford retirement, according to the study, titled “The Impact of Deferring Retirement Age on Retirement Income Adequacy.”

What’s more, it’s even worse for low-income workers, according Jack VanDerhei, one of the co-authors of the study. Those who earned (on average over the course of their careers) less than $11,700 per year, the lowest income quartile, would need to defer retirement till age 84 before 90% of those households would have just a 50% chance of affording retirement.

Those who earned between $11,700 and $31,200 will need to work till age 76 to have a 50% chance of covering basic expenses in retirement. Those who earned between $31,200 and $72,500 will need to work to age 72 to have a 50% chance and those who earned more than $72,500, those in the highest income quartile, catch a break; they get stop working at age 65 to have a 50/50 chance of funding their retirement.

So what can be done to make sure you have enough income in retirement? Well, the sad truth is that not working is no longer an option and working past age 65 is fast becoming a fact of life, at least for those in the lowest three income quartiles. READ MORE…

What are your thoughts? We want to hear from YOU! Go to our TAKE ACTION page and record your own story on your webcam, or leave us your comments, below!

Comments

Comment via Facebook

Post a comment and share it with your friends instantly using Facebook.

Show FB Comments

Comment via this site

Prefer to just post a comment directly to the Broken Eggs site? No problem - do that here!

Show Site Comments

[fbcomments]

One comment

  1. Comment by JessiaMVirts on June 28, 2015 at 7:27 pm

    Hi, i feel that i saw you visited my website so i came to return the choose?.I’m trying to in finding things
    to improve my site!I guess its good enough to make use
    of some of your ideas!!

* Required