Don’t count on your employer to boost their 401(k) contributions! At least, that’s my take on a new study.
Forbes post, “What Your Employer Thinks About Your Retirement Future”
Don’t count on your employer to boost their 401(k) contributions! At least, that’s my take on a new study.
That’s a lot of data to mull over. Will have to take my time reviewing it.
What I do know is that when we crunched the numbers decades ago, we calculated that our 6% contribution (with match) to our 401(k)s wouldn’t quite get us to where we wanted to maintain our standard of living in retirement. So we bumped our 401(k) savings rate to near 8% for the 1st half of our careers (not enough to adversely impact our lifestyles), then (once our careers were established) we increased our 401(k) savings rate to almost 16% for the 2nd half of our careers. We averaged an 11.4% 401(k) contribution rate over our entire careers. That along with our company pensions, cash balance plan, and additional savings plan that our company offered us (which we max’d out, also), we think we maximized all the opportunities the company had to offer. (Plus our IRAs, other outside Investments, and eventually Social Security, we’re confident we’ll do ok.)
With all the company made available to us, I think they took as much interest in our retirement future as they should have – their responsibility being to run a successful company, our responsibility being to plan for and be ready for retirement.
It’s almost always about making the right personal choices – including being financially ready for retirement.
(Now I’ll read the article again, crunch some numbers, and see how close we are to the experts’ recommendations.)
I feel the numbers are wildly off. Most people work for more than one employer during their careers. Employers are assuming that the only assets most people have are in their 401k accounts. My husband and I are in our late 50’s and we have assets in 401k’s, IRA’s, Roth Ira’s, individual stocks, HSA’s and 529 programs. My 401k amounts to less than 20% of the total. So I guess I am woefully unprepared for retirement according to this profile. Oh and I am not including Social Security. Every situation is different. What about selling a business before you retire or any inheritance that may be coming your way? Showing people how to utilize what they have managed to save or to have an efficient tax structure for distributions may be more helpful than the doom and gloom projected here.