While today's retirees are funding their retirement primarily with Social Security and or a pension, younger people in in the workforce expect to have to lean more on personal savings, according to an online survey by Wells Fargo and The Harris Poll.
Moreover, workers across all generations fear they will be "betrayed" by having Social Security taken away from them.
About 86% of retirees fund their retirement primarily with Social Security or a pension and just 5% rely on personal savings, the survey found.
Sixty percent of baby boomers are looking to Social Security and pensions as their main retirement funding, according to the survey.
On the other hand, the quality of retirement for Gen X, millennials and Gen Z will depend almost entirely on how much they save through vehicles such as a 401(k) or IRA, according to the survey.
Forty-five percent of millennial workers say the top source of funding for their future retirement will be an IRA or a 401(k), compared to 25% who say they expect to rely on Social Security or a pension. Forty-one percent of Gen Xers and 44% of Gen Z said they are depending on retirement savings.
Workers across all generations indicated that they fear that Social Security may not be available for retirement, with 71% indicating they are afraid it won’t be available when they retire.
Both workers and retirees expressed strong emotions on the issue. Ninety-one percent of workers and 94% of retirees said they would feel “betrayed” if the money they paid into Social Security were not available when they retire. But the survey found that workers have much more faith in their personal savings than in Social Security. Only 55% of retirees have more faith in personal savings than in Social Security, which compares to 79% of workers, the survey showed.
The survey also found that financial challenges negatively impact the ability of nearly half of workers to adequately save. Fifty-five percent of workers said they are saving enough for retirement. Across generations, that included 61% of baby boomers, 55% of millennials, 51% of Gen Xers and 48% of Gen Z.
Millennials have it hard with debt, the survey found. It said 31% of millennials have an “unmanageable amount of debt,” followed by Gen X (26%), Gen Z (25%) and baby boomers (14%). Additionally, among all workers, nearly half (46%) say they are putting off saving for retirement due to current financial challenges, and 67% of workers paying student loans say the burden of student loans is getting in the way of saving for retirement.