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Half of All Americans Are Not Saving for Retirement

This article was written by in Investing. 18 comments.


In April, LIMRA, a think-tank for the financial industry, completed a survey intended to focus on the savings and investment preferences of those living and working in the United States. After receiving responses from 2,697 Americans, a representative sample of the country, LIMRA was able to determine that 49 percent of the country is not saving for retirement. Additionally, more than half of Americans between the ages of 18 and 34, at 56 percent, are not saving for retirement.

Saving for retirement — and receiving the associated tax benefits through typical investment types like 401(k) plans and IRAs — requires a public trust in the financial industry. On one side, financial planners, investment salespeople and brokers, columnists, and bloggers are encouraging the use of financial products that, through both apparent and hidden fees, enriches the industry, while on the other side, investment firms are the beneficiaries of massive taxpayer bailouts and frequently in the news for using taxpayer money for paying their executives bonuses that defy the laws of gravity.

Wall StreetIt may be true that the reason many Americans do not save for retirement is ignorance. There are typical excuses for not saving for retirement, such as the lack of good, seemingly trustworthy information about the options that are available, the lack of knowledge about the benefits of investing in 401(k) plans and IRAs, or the belief that during tight personal economic times, not a cent is available to save for the future. After the recession, however, many people just see the financial industry as unworthy of trust. Organizations like LIMRA, working for the industry and promoting financial products, are unlikely to bring this attitude to the public attention.

The industry is more interested in shaming people unwilling to get on the boats rather than analyzing the leadership capabilities and trustworthiness of the boats’ captains.

I’m saving for retirement with 401(k) plans and IRAs. When possible, I choose plans that have low fees, but the choice is not always up to me. Employees may be able to choose from a selection of investments inside their 401(k) plan, employees can’t choose their company’s 401(k) administrator and broker without a coordinated effort among a large portion of employees. That would be nearly impossible in a large company. Unions are intended to solve some of these issues, but it can often reach the point where being a member of a large union is much like working for a large employer. The power of any individual is limited.

The 401(k) is ingenious for the financial industry, particularly now that it’s automatic. In a perfect world, every single employee is enrolled in a 401(k) plan on their first day on their first job. The investments may not perform well over time, but that’s not particularly relevant for the financial industry. As long as every American is investing a portion of their paycheck every week, two weeks, month, or other period, 401(k) administrators and brokers will continue to thrive. The employee probably benefits when retirement approaches, but that is by no means guaranteed. All you need to do is look at the portion of Americans who planned to retire in recent years but saw their nest eggs trampled on during the recession.

Investors bear the responsibility for changing their risk profile as they near their planned retirement, but there is a mixed message. The financial industry says you need to stay invested in stocks (highly volatile, highly risky) as you approach retirement because most people need their funds to last several decades throughout retirement while at the same time warning people to risk only what they can afford to lose. When people receive conflicting information, making decisions becomes more difficult. And when the conflicting information is coming from the same source — that is, the financial industry — the default reaction is the lack of trust.

Does the financial industry wants to do American citizens a favor by providing options for saving for retirement? No. The financial industry wants its companies to not only stay in business but to profit as much as possible. And to that end, it sells products — investment opportunities — designed to enrich the companies and their shareholders. There’s nothing wrong with this, because consumers will only buy products they need or desire enough. Companies will sell towards that need. And when only half of Americans have discovered retirement savings vehicles like 401(k) plans and IRAs, the industry will resign itself to doing a better job in explaining to the country why their products are needs, not wants.

Saving for retirement is important. For most people, stocks are the only investment type that can grow wealth quickly enough to provide the dream retirement so impressed upon Americans through media. It’s risky, as recent would-be retirees have seen. Thanks to the cognitive dissonance resulting in the understanding that the promotion of retirement is a result of the financial industry trying to increase profits on a large scale rather than corporate concern for the well-being of a nation and the knowledge that Americans must do something drastic to save money in order to fulfill the dream of quitting work, some Americans choose to invest while others would sooner give away their firstborn rather than drink the financial industry’s Kool-Aid.

LIMRA may be right — that most people who do not invest for retirement with 401(k) plans and IRAs have not done so because the industry’s message hasn’t successfully penetrated their consciousness. That may be due in part to a lack of education, but for others, it’s a lack of faith and trust in the industry.

Photo: zoonabar
LIMRA

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How to Work Out Without Over Working Your Budget

This article was written by in Frugality, Health. 13 comments.

This is a guest article by Jennifer Calonia, Junior Editor at GoBankingRates. In the article, the author offers suggestions for staying fit without breaking the bank.

It’s that time again: Beach season is fast approaching and franchise gym promotions are in full swing to lock you and your checking account into a pricey workout regimen. It may be tempting to jump on board the latest exercise trend, but expensive programs and spa-like facilities are not only unnecessary, they’re a hazard to your financial well-being.

Instead of signing up for a pricey membership, consider low-cost fitness options and free workout routines that don’t muscle hundreds of dollars out of your pockets monthly.

Skip the treadmill

Purchasing a treadmill can cost at least $400 (or much more) and an annual gym membership runs about the same amount for a mid-level fitness center. A frugal alternative to the treadmill routine is simply running outdoors. If your neighborhood isn’t necessarily runner-friendly, seek out jogging paths near park facilities or visit your community track (typically you can use a local community college or high school track during off-hours) for a free run.

At most, you’ll want to purchase a quality pair of running shoes (which costs anywhere from $75 to $150) to withstand the rougher elements of the outdoors. Not only do you save hundreds by avoiding a gym contract with free workout routines like this, you also get a more challenging workout due to the added wind resistance and have interesting scenery to look at as opposed to the back of someone else’s head.

Editor’s note: See ten things your gym won’t tell you.

Tap into the web

The internet offers a range of free exercise videos that focus on a variety of muscles and help raise your heart rate. These videos are also a great alternative to specialized exercise studios, which charge upward of $100 per month for workouts.

For example, unlike the financial demands that yoga studios can inflict upon your budget, YouTube can satisfy all your yoga needs with beginner to advanced poses at no cost. A simple search using the keyword phrase “yoga workout” bring up a list of 20-minute to full 45-minute yoga classes at varying skill levels. This workout routine will, at most, require you to buy a yoga mat at under $10 from a local sporting goods store.

If you really must have a more standardized yoga practice, try visiting YogaVibes.com, which offers unlimited yoga class streaming for $20 a month. While this option requires that you join a membership program, it is at least cheaper than the $100 or more you’d pay monthly at a boutique yoga studio.

Join the community

For active bodies that are motivated by the perseverance of others, a community fitness event may be more to your liking. Joining group activities like trail hiking or a community basketball league are great ways to get engaged in a fun workout while meeting new people.

These group settings typically come at a low out-of-pocket cost. For example, I joined a paid basketball league and the registration fee was only $20 for the three-month season. To get the same group atmosphere, you can also visit your local recreational park for a free pick-up game at the basketball or tennis courts.

Keep on swimming

If your apartment facility already has a pool, or if your home has the luxury of an average size swimming pool, you might as well use it as an in to free workouts. You’ll get a low-impact workout that is great for muscle definition, just in time for the summer months.

Workout junkies who don’t have a pool at home can visit public swimming pools in the area. Generally, a low entrance fee of about $5 is collected at the door for each swim.

Preparing yourself for a beach-ready physique doesn’t have to topple your finances. There are legitimate and effective free workout routines and free exercise videos that can be used to achieve comparable results and maintain the motivation you need to reach your fitness and health goals.

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Get to Work If You Want to Be Rich

This article was written by in Wealth and Affluence. 12 comments.

How much time do you spend in front of the television, socializing with friends, or watching movies? I freely admit that I spend too much time watching television. There are certain television programs that entertain me, and particularly during stressful times in my life, I need some type of outlet that makes me laugh, raising my spirits. As a single man living alone, I don’t have the opportunity right now to unwind at the end of the day by spending time with family.

This is, of course, an excuse or a rationalization of why I don’t just spend more time working. A new study, wherein the researchers’ intent was to reevaluate whether the consumption gap between the wealthy and the poor grew alongside the income gap between 1980 and 2010, also has indicated a correlation between education level and leisure time. The authors of the study then make the connection from education level to wealth, when asked by the Wall Street Journal.

Low-educated men saw their leisure hours grow to 39.1 hours in 2003-2007, from 36.6 hours in 1985. Highly-educated men saw their leisure hours shrink to 33.2 hours from 34.4 hours… Low-educated women saw their leisure time grow to 35.2 hours a week from 35 hours. High-educated women saw their leisure time decrease to 30.3 hours from 32.2 hours. Educated women, in other words, had the largest decline in leisure time of the four groups.

Movie marqueeThe higher a person’s level of education, the less time they spend on leisure activities like watching television, going out to see movies in a theater, socializing with friends, talking on the phone, and playing games. The study authors content that as unemployment has grown at a higher rate for lower-education individuals, that factor has contributed to about half of the change in leisure time for that segment of the sample.

How do we get from a measurement of education to a measurement of wealth? The study authors contend that education is a proxy for wealth, as level of education tends to correspond with income. There are probably some pieces missing in this leap from education to wealth in general, but if nothing else, a higher education opens more opportunities for traditional methods of earning income. (There are always counter-examples, with Ivy League dropouts forming companies that go onto being worth many billions of dollars, but that is exceedingly rare.)

No one is pointing to a causality — that working more and spending less time on leisure activities alone — will result in an increase of income. But if there is a correlation, it makes sense. There is, however, a perception that those at the top of the corporate ladder, earning more money, do not “work harder” than rank-and-file employees. On the job, employees during the grunt work may work just as hard or harder as an executive whose primary function seems to be attending meetings and farming out work to his or her underlings while consolidating reports and presenting reports to the Board of Directors, for example. This study doesn’t look at how hard one works at the workplace, but at how much leisure time is used outside of the office.

There is a message: get to work. Those with higher incomes spend less time on activities outside the office that aren’t productive. Family time is excluded, of course. Highly-educated individuals (who we’re assuming are also earning higher incomes) are more likely to spend time at home cooking and caring for children.

Do rich people work harder? Can less time wasted on leisure activities like watching television translate to higher income?

Photo: angeloangelo
Wall Street Journal, National Bureau of Economic Research

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The Over-Marketization of Social Behavior

This article was written by in Economics. 9 comments.

Do you reward your children with money for performing well in school? Do you use the promise of an allowance to ancourage appropriate behavior in the family? These are big issues, because they take appropriate behavior and can turn the incentive to financial gain. Children growing up believing that financial gain is the reward for correct social behavior rather than seeing the intrinsic benefit.

The idea that everything has a financial value seems to have become more prevalent over the last two decades, according to a new book. In What Money Can’t Buy: The Moral Limits of Markets by Michael J. Sandel, the author argues that our trend of attributing market thinking to an increasing array of behavior could be detrimental to society.

The book has not yet been released as of the time of writing this article, so I haven’t read it yet. A review in Fortune Magazine is inspiring me to pre-order the book before its release.

The author notes how Americans are now more comfortable with marketing or selling things they might have not in the past. Selling ad space on foreheads, accepting money for branded tattoos, and paying students for each book they read are a few examples of things that might have been unthinkable a few years ago. I would add that the pervasiveness of the Internet has made some of this possible, when it comes to selling ourselves. Through the democratized ability to self-publish, people can easily market themselves without much effort. If you get enough attention, some company also looking for attention would be happy to pay you to do something newsworthy, like slapping a brand on your car for a year.

With the popularity reality television, the idea that anyone can become famous — not just for fifteen minutes but for an entire television season — and wealthy (think: Kardashians) is enticing.

Here are some thoughts from the Fortune Magazine review of the book:

The price we pay for this behavior plays out in several ways, Sandel argues. First off, poorer people are impacted disproportionately by the commercialization of personal space. How many affluent people are lining up to turn their houses or bodies into billboards? In this way, the decision to sell isn’t necessarily as independent and free as it may look. In a society increasingly driven by financial power, moreover, the wealthy hold even better hands than they would otherwise. Why bother encouraging your kid to study hard if you can simply grease his path into Harvard or Yale with the promise of a massive donation?

The more emphasis we place on money in society, the more power society gives to those who have it. I don’t think that today’s plutocratic oligarchy is too much different than western society in most of recent history, however. Those with money have always had the power. We like to think of government in the United States as “of the people, for the people, by the people,” but the Founding Fathers were mostly wealthy and mostly represented the wealthy, though several did their best to be sympathetic to those who were not as fortunate.

It was difficult to leave all old-world philosophies behind; property owners were afforded more rights than those who did not own property. A subtle class distinction still persists between homeowners and renters today.

Political and societal power has always been focused on an elite group of people who have the most money. This is why social change — giving the right to vote to all adults rather than a select few, extending human rights to all citizens rather than a select few, etc. — is only successful through revolution. Those with power and money aren’t much interested in sharing.

At times, market principles put in place to make an altruistic act look even more attractive do just the opposite. Sandel cites the case of a small village in the Swiss mountains called Wolfenschiessen that was once a candidate to house a nuclear waste site. When surveyed by economists, a majority of residents said they’d accept the site as an act of civic duty. The economists then added money to the equation, offering the residents as much as $8,700 each to accept the waste site. At this point, support for the deal plummeted among the villagers. From their perspective, the cash turned a sacrifice for the greater good into a plain old bribe.

Money changes the equation, whether used to encourage someone to do the right thing — who then learns that doing the right thing should always be rewarded the compensation — or to encourage someone to do something that would otherwise give him or her pause.

Fortune Magazine laments that the book does not offer any alternatives for a way of living that does not suffer from over-commercialization. Were wealth not to provide an individual so much power, it couldn’t be used as an effective incentive for changing someone’s behavior. Is there a way for the United States to hold onto the capitalism that’s such an important piece of the success of its individuals and the nation as a whole while taking money out of the power equation?

Also, how far will you go for money? Everyone has his price. Would you sell your body parts? Your kidney for $1,000? Your foot for $100,000? Your arm for $1 million? Would you kill someone for $100,000? For $50 million? For $1 billion? Morals may stand in the way to an extent — but that extent is most likely broken at some level.

Fortune Magazine

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Citi Platinum Select / AAdvantage Visa Signature Review

by Flexo

If you travel by airplane often, and you find that the best prices for your routes center around one airline, it can often be beneficial to join that airline’s frequent flier loyalty program. In addition, many airlines also partner with credit card companies to offer travel rewards credit cards that help you accrue frequent flier ... Continue reading this article…

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How to Handle a Credit Card Data Breach

by Flexo

Last week, Global Payments confirmed a massive security breach involving credit and debit card numbers and information. Global Payments operates a gateway; when you use your credit or debit card to purchase an item — and this could be online or in a brick-and-mortar store — your card information is sent through Global Payments or ... Continue reading this article…

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Spring Cleaning Tips: Finding Items for Sale to Earn Money

by Guest Author

This is a guest article by Jennifer Calonia, Junior Editor at GoBankingRates. In the article, the author offers suggestions for making spring cleaning work for you. We are officially one week into spring, and many are shedding winter stagnation for more productive ways to save money — and earn money — using items around the ... Continue reading this article…

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Will You Buy the iPad 3?

by Flexo
iPad

All signs are pointing to Apple releasing the latest iteration of its popular tablet this coming week. I gave in last year and purchased the original iPad, and I made this decision just days before the iPad 2 was announced. Now, tech geeks are expecting the iPad 3 to hit to streets this week. The ... Continue reading this article…

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