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National Save for Retirement Week

Posted on October 20, 2016
The U.S. population is changing and so is retirement. Boomers are aging, traditional pensions are shifting to voluntary contribution plans, and Social Security faces important financial challenges. Planning—and saving—for retirement is more important than ever. For National Save for Retirement Week, we’re blogging about the state of Americans’ retirement savings, sharing our interactive tool for how your 401(k) plan may perform, and answering some key questions about the future of Social Security. Are you ready to retire? Just over half of households age 55 and older have no retirement savings—such as an IRA or 401(k) plan. And the half that does may have a hard time making their money last through retirement. In 2015, a team led by Charles Jeszeck, a director in our Education, Workforce, and Income Security team, reviewed the financial resources of retirees and workers approaching retirement. Listen to what they found:   We’ll show you how long your money may last Saving for retirement is critical, and many American workers use an employer-sponsored 401(k) plan to do so. But the extent to which plans offer options on how to spend your savings in retirement—such as whether or not they offer a lifetime annuity—can affect how long your savings will last through retirement. Our interactive tool shows you the four options retirees use for their monthly 401(k) income—and how those choices can affect how long the money will last. What about Social Security? Social Security is a bedrock of retirement security—annually providing billions of dollars to older Americans and their families, as well as providing benefits to people with disabilities. But Social Security’s costs now exceed its revenues, and changes are needed to help ensure that its programs can continue to provide all the benefits promised to current workers, retirees, and their families. In this video, we explain how Social Security works—and options to fix it.

How Can We Fix Social Security?

Description

An overview of Social Security's financial challenges and options to address them.

Our infographic also provides high-level findings from our in-depth analysis of Social Security’s future.

Infographic: Social Security's Future