New Financial Plan

I’ll assume that if you are reading this you are already saving for retirement, or maybe figuring out how to start.  If either is true you are apparently way ahead of many people.  I just finished reading an article on CNN about scary estimates of how little people are doing to save for the future.

The article can be found here.

One of the main points of the article that I have to question is the estimate that 36.8% of 17 year olds will retire without any retirement plan savings.  It’s easy to guess that very few 17 year olds have retirement savings now, some might not even have jobs yet.  My first read through the article I thought that so many of them not saving a penny over 50 plus years was quite an assumption.  I didn’t want to think that there is so little confidence in the education and drive in today’s teens to believe those numbers.

Of course the other point that surprised me was that only 62% of all workers were offered a retirement plan in 2004, and only 36% of those people participated.  I believe that would make around 22% of workers participated in a retirement plan in 2004.  I feel even more fortunate in my situation seeing that.  When I looked for jobs after college I considered what type of plan and matching contributions were offered.  All of the jobs I looked at had retirement plans.  I assumed most did.

Reading over the article a second time is a little scary.  Looking back at that number I see that only 62% were offered plans, so if that holds steady than 38% would not, right in line with that estimate for 17 year olds who won’t have savings.  Of course not all people are participating.  I guess people will move between jobs and participate at one point or another.  Unfortunately it sounds like there will be lots of people with little savings in 50 years.