Are the nation’s retirees looking at a retirement crisis? A recent survey suggests that the answer depends on an individual’s situation.
While 58% of respondents to a PGIM survey agreed that there’s a national retirement crisis, only 48% of retiree respondents with no assets at all (aside from Social Security) described their personal situation as a crisis. That perception dropped to 22% if they had $10,000 to $50,000 in addition to Social Security, and to 11% for those with between $50,000 and $100,000.
Age also plays a role in whether respondents fear a personal retirement calamity. The closer someone was to retirement, the less likely they were to worry. Among workers in their 30s, 48% said they felt their personal retirement situation was in crisis, but only 24% of respondents who were already in retirement said that was the case.
Many advisors would probably pale at the prospect of advising a client facing retirement who thinks they’ll be OK with only $75,000. But David Blanchett, managing director and head of retirement research at PGIM DC solutions, has a different take.
“What I worry about is when I read a survey where now people are saying they need $1.9 million to retire. When most people see that, they’re going to think, ‘What’s the point? I totally give up,’” he says. “It doesn’t take five bajillion dollars to get to retirement and be OK. There is a middle ground.”
He says workers who have access to defined contribution plans will mostly be fine—since they work for larger companies, have larger salaries and access to an employer match. Workers who don’t have those benefits have a much harder time saving for retirement.
“If you have nothing and you’re living off Social Security, it’s easy to feel like you’re one step away from disaster,” he says. On the other hand, those with $50,000 or $100,000 saved, he says, often feel like they can manage. “You can’t pull a lot of money from that, but all of a sudden if you need a new roof, it’s not going to devastate you financially.”
And the good news, he says, is that Social Security is weighted so that poorer recipients receive more in relation to their working income than richer recipients.
“It’s not like where we were 80-plus years ago where if you didn’t save anything you were absolutely destitute,” he says. “Sometimes I feel like we’re in an arms race for who can do a survey to find people who need the most money to save for retirement. Now it’s $1.9 million; soon it will be $2.5 million.
“I just think that’s an incredibly destructive way to communicate what you need to have in retirement to be OK, as very few Americans can get there.”