(Bloomberg News) Americans are prepared to work longer in order to save enough for retirement, according to a survey by Wells Fargo & Co.

About 76 percent of respondents said it's more important to reach a specific dollar amount before retiring, compared with 20 percent who said it's more important to retire at a given age, regardless of savings, according to the survey of adults with household incomes or assets from about $25,000 to $100,000.

"Eighty is the new 65," Joseph Ready, executive vice president of Wells Fargo Institutional Retirement & Trust, said in an interview at Bloomberg headquarters in New York before the survey was released today. "It's a real sea change."

About 74 percent expect to work in retirement, according to the survey, with about 39 percent working because they'll need to and 35 percent because they want to. And 25 percent of those surveyed said they expect they'll need to work until at least age 80 because they don't have sufficient savings.

"People are starting to move toward understanding the different levers of what they're going to have to do to make it in retirement," Ready said.

About 68 percent of those surveyed said they're not confident the stock market is a good place to invest their retirement savings. About 45 percent of respondents said if they were given $5,000 they would buy a certificate of deposit, and 50 percent said they'd invest it in stocks or mutual funds.

No Good Alternative

"Even though there's a lack of confidence, I don't know that they see there's a good alternative," to investing in stocks, said Laurie Nordquist, executive vice president of Wells Fargo Institutional Retirement & Trust.

The Standard & Poor's 500 Index returned 1.32 percent this year through Nov. 14. One-year CDs yielded 0.35 percent and five-year CDs paid 1.19 percent on average as of Nov. 3, according to Bankrate.com, an online provider of consumer-rate information and a unit of Bankrate Inc.

Survey respondents had saved a median of $25,000 towards retirement and estimated they'd need a median of $350,000 to support themselves in retirement. About 42 percent expect to receive a pension or already receive one.

"The numbers don't add up," Nordquist said. "The gap is probably larger than what they self identified."

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