Workers' Views On Retirement May Be Too Rosy
Despite recent moves by large companies to freeze pensions and chip away at retiree-health benefits, Americans remain confident -- if dangerously na?ve -- about their retirement prospects, according to new research.
Many workers are counting on traditional pension plans to pay their bills in retirement, even though such plans are fast disappearing. Only 40% of working couples currently are covered by pension plans, but nearly two-thirds of surveyed workers -- 61% -- expect to get income from such a plan in retirement, according to the Retirement Confidence Survey, scheduled for release today by the Employee Benefit Research Institute, a Washington nonprofit, and others.
The responses in the survey, conducted annually for the past 16 years, reflect few worries about the spreading curtailment of pension plans. Twenty-four percent of the survey's participants said that they are very confident that they will have enough money to live comfortably in retirement -- virtually the same number as last year -- and 44% of those surveyed said they are somewhat confident about their financial prospects in later life, an increase of four percentage points from last year.
Mathew Greenwald & Associates Inc., a Washington research firm, interviewed 1,252 people ages 25 and older in January. The overall survey has a three-percentage-point margin of error.
READY TO RETIRE?
See how current workers and retirees compare in their optimism about their retirement prospects.Most of the people surveyed "probably hadn't heard yet that IBM was freezing its pension plan," says Jack VanDerhei, a professor at Temple University in Philadelphia and co-author of the institute's report. "And they certainly hadn't heard about GM," which has diluted pensions for salaried workers and offered buyouts to unionized workers in the past few months. "Next year, my guess is that retirement confidence will go down as a result."
Diane Taylor, a 58-year-old retiree from AT&T Corp. in Dallas, cautions current workers to "do the math before you retire." She took an early-retirement package in late 2003, "and I thought it was going to be a wonderful thing," she says. But after Ms. Taylor realized that she and her husband couldn't maintain their lifestyle with her benefits, she went back to work.
Many workers are underestimating the income they would need to live equivalently when they quit their jobs, the study found. Half think they can maintain a comfortable retirement on 70% or less of their pre-retirement income. "Our rule of thumb is that you need an 85% [income] replacement ratio," says Dan Houston, a senior vice president for Principal Financial Group of Des Moines, Iowa, one of the survey's sponsors. "You're seeing people who are woefully underfunded."
To increase savings rates, pension-reform legislation under debate in Congress would require companies to sign up workers automatically in defined-contribution savings programs, such as 401(k) plans, and increase their contributions along with raises. The survey found that 69% of workers support automatic enrollment and 65% support automatic increases in those savings.
Part of the problem: AT&T changed pension plans while she took a five-year hiatus earlier in her career, and "what I anticipated getting is not what I'm getting today," Ms. Taylor says. "The way business is going, anybody who relies on a pension plan is practicing bad money management."
The research found other red flags:
Just over half of workers ages 55 and older said that they and their spouse have accumulated less than $50,000 in retirement savings.
Only one-quarter of workers ages 55 and older have saved more than $250,000 for retirement -- but 55-year-olds who live to age 90 are expected to need $210,000 (starting at age 65) for medical expenses alone.
The finding shows "the incredible overestimate that younger individuals have of winding up in a defined-benefit plan," says Jack VanDerhei, a professor at Temple University in Philadelphia and co-author of the institute's report. After analyzing the results by age in more detail, he concluded that "it doesn't matter if you're above or below age 45 -- you still think you're going to have a 60% chance of winding up" with a pension.
For example, International Business Machines Corp. said in early January that it will freeze its U.S. pension plan in 2008. Mr. VanDerhei predicts that "a number of large employers will follow suit. Once they saw that IBM was able to do it, they're probably going back and doing a much more detailed analysis on what [freezing their pension plans] would do for them."
美国人的退休预期或许过于乐观
一项最新调查显示，尽管近日有多家大企业冻结退休金或削减退休医疗福利，美国人对退休前景依旧乐观－－不过不知他们是否过于天真了。
尽管传统的退休金计划在很多企业已渐成明日黄花，但美国人依旧对其寄予厚望。由雇员福利研究所(Employee Benefit Research Institute)牵头展开的退休信心调查(Retirement Confidence Survey)显示，目前只有40%双职工家庭被退休金计划覆盖，但却有接近三分之二（61%）的受调查工人表示，他们预计可以从此类计划中获得收入。雇员福利研究所是一家设在华盛顿的非赢利机构，该机构定于周二发布上述调查结果。
此项调查每年进行一次，已持续了16年。今年的调查结果显示，面对很多大企业削减退休金计划的局面，美国人对退休前景依旧从容自若。近四分之一的被调查者表示，他们对于退休后能过上舒适的生活充满信心－－比例与去年相当；44%的被调查者称，他们对以后的财务状况有一定的信心，较去年上升4个百分点。
华盛顿的研究公司Mathew Greenwald & Associates Inc. 在1月份对1,252个年龄在25岁以上的人进行了调查。总体调查结果存在上下3个百分点的误差。
多数被调查者“可能还没有听说国际商业机器公司(IBM)冻结退休金计划的消息，”该报告的合著者、天普大学(Temple University)教授杰克?范德黑(Jack VanDerhei)说。“他们肯定也没听说通用汽车(GM)的事，”近几个月通用汽车稀释了领薪工人的退休金，并对工会工人推出了一次性补偿自愿离职方案。。“我估计明年的退休信心就会下降。”
今年58岁、从美国电话电报公司(AT&T Corp.)退休的黛安?泰勒(Diane Taylor)提醒说，工人们应该在退休前好好算算退休帐。2003年末，她接受了一项提前退休方案，“我以为这会是件好事，”她说。不过后来她发现她和丈夫两个人根本无法凭这项福利来保持现有的生活水平，随后她再次返回工作岗位。
调查发现，很多工人低估了在放弃工作后保持现有生活水平所需的收入。一半的人士认为，他们可以凭藉相当于退休前70%甚至更少的收入来保持舒适的退休生活。“从我们的经验来看，这一比例至少要达到85%，”Principal Financial Group高级副总裁丹?休斯顿(Dan Houston)说。“你可以看见，很多人因此入不敷出。”Principal Financial是该调查的发起人之一。
为了提高储蓄率，美国国会正在考虑要求企业在聘用雇员时自动参加定额交付退休储蓄计划（例如401(K)），并随工资的增加而提高缴存额。调查发现，69%的工人支持自动缴存计划，65%的人支持随工资提高而自动提高缴存额的方案。
