In response to my most recent post, “Give ‘thoughtomation’ a try,” I received this helpful idea from a reader:
“Why don’t you post a spreadsheet with comparisons of saving early vs saving late in life? That is the most important thing young investors need to see.”
When the stock market sells off, as it did in late July and early August, there is an inevitable surge in commentary on the riskiness of U.S. retirement accounts. The main worry is that retirement investors are taking on too much risk and that retirement assets should be invested in “safer” securities or programs.
From my perspective, many such criticisms seem unduly focused on the short run.
If you haven’t saved enough for retirement, one possible solution is working longer. But a new report by the Employee Benefit Research Institute* paints a somewhat bleak view of the benefit of doing so. The study suggests that if you haven’t saved enough in your working years, even working into your 80s won’t help.
It’s another “retirement blues” story—even working longer, a widely-touted strategy, just won’t help.
I was having lunch the other day with a retired colleague and friend. We catch up periodically, filling each other in on our children’s activities and our lives. This time, he really wanted to spend some talking about the retirement experience.
He’s not your ordinary retiree. In his last several years with Vanguard, he studied for and passed all the Certified Financial Planner™ exams, because he thought it would be helpful personally and as an alternate career option.
We recently asked college students for their thoughts about retirement—when they want to retire, when they’ll start saving, and what they hope to do once they’re retired. Here’s what they told us.
