According to Mark Miller, a retirement specialist and author of the recently released book Retirement Reboot: Commonsense Financial Strategies for Getting Back on Track, at least two-thirds of Americans who are close to retirement age are simply not prepared.
The capacity to sustain your current quality of life in retirement is what determines retirement security, he added. And it’s very obvious that a sizable fraction of households approaching retirement, say 10 years from now, are not doing so with a sizable amount of money.
In his new book, Miller outlines Social Security policy improvements that might assist even more individuals, and he offers solutions for regular people to get back on track even if they are far behind. In an interview with Yahoo Finance, he provided more insights and counsel.
Book Details
Whether or whether we are experiencing a retirement crisis is a hot topic in the United States. People will be relying solely on Social Security since they are ill-prepared. In most cases, Social Security replaces 40% to 50% of pre-retirement income.
Most retirement planners recommend that you replace 70% of your income, if not more. It’s not a terrible way of looking at it as a beginning point. Therefore, it is obvious that many households struggle to maintain their quality of living.
There is no denying that getting a head start on retirement planning is highly advantageous since you get to take advantage of all the compound growth during the years of saving. However, there are several things that may still be accomplished rather late in the game.
Social Security’s Future
Making Social Security larger rather than smaller is a significant change we could make. The 401(k) and IRA experiment has been around for four decades.
It is evident that it performs admirably for wealthier families that have been able to save and accumulate substantial sums of money for usage in retirement.
That represents about a third of all homes. And everyone else is nearing retirement with either no savings at all or meager sums, perhaps just enough to survive a few years.
Other Reports, Elder Index
There are obvious explanations for that. There are no funds available. Middle-income households have endured financial challenges over the previous few decades, and they simply have to cover other, more pressing needs.
According to the University of Massachusetts’ Elder Index, over half of single persons 65 and older struggle to cover their basic living costs. Not much sophisticated stuff is being discussed here. We’re talking about things like keeping the car running, purchasing food, and paying for utilities. Married couples do far better in the statistics. But those are alarming numbers.
