Most Americans’ financial outlooks have been drastically reshaped by the Covid-19 pandemic, but a new survey indicates there's a silver lining: They’re becoming more economically conscious.
Almost two-thirds of the respondents in the 2021 Retirement Risk Readiness Study, a survey of 1,000 Americans sponsored by Allianz Life and fielded in December 2020, said that they are now paying more attention to what they are saving and spending.
Many of the survey’s respondents also said that they are engaging in a number of strategies to help boost their retirement readiness, including saving adequately within a retirement account, diversifying their retirement savings, researching the various risks and expenses associated with retirement, and making a formal plan with a financial professional.
“Our jobs, as financial professionals, is certainly to help our clients invest and prepare,” said Kelly LaVigne, vice president of consumer insights at Allianz Life. “We have to try to help eliminate a lot of the nervousness and stress that our clients today are feeling about the future.”
Allianz compared a prior cohort of respondents from the vintage of the study fielded in December 2019 to the 2020 respondents, finding that the proportion engaging with a financial professional to create a formal retirement plan increased from 29% to 37% year-over-year.
In 2020, 58% of the respondents reported cutting back on their spending.
Unlike the generation that survived the Great Depression, whose values were permanently shaped by their experience, LaVigne said that most of the positive changes that occurred over the first year of Covid-19 are unlikely to be permanent.
“I think we are learning a lesson right now. We are as a population going to plan more for retirement and we’re recognizing that we need to have plans in place, and thus we’re going to talk to an advisor and make appointments,” he said. “My fear is that we, as a population, are also short-term-memory oriented. This is not something that we will soon forget, and we will be telling stories about this pandemic for years to come. I’m reluctant to say, though, that the habits we’re learning right now are going to continue across the years like they did from the Great Depression.”
It’s clear from the study’s responses that the increased focus on retirement readiness and financial responsibility is caused in part by the pandemic, which has caused levels of economic stress much greater than the Great Recession. Allianz asked respondents who were age 21 and over in 2007 to compare their feelings then to their feelings now.
While 39% reported feeling nervous about day-to-day finances during the Great Recession, 61% report feeling nervous now. While a little over one-third of the respondents felt nervous about their retirement savings in 2007, 34%, nearly twice as many, 66%, feel nervous now. Similar increases in economic stress were found when respondents were asked about their career, their ability to save, and their ability to manage market risk.
“People are much more fearful now,” said LaVigne. “A lot of the respondents are looking at their expenses more carefully, they’re cutting back and looking at retirement, and even looking at making a plan, but it seems like a part of that is being done because of the pandemic.”