Risking retirement on selling the business

“Practically, in my experience, more clients go out of business than sell their business,” says Marcus Newman, a vice president at GCG Financial outside Chicago. A broad statement, perhaps, but one that makes the findings of two just-published studies particulary disturbing. Data suggests that small business owners are less likely to hold retirement assets and more likely to rely on home equity as their largest asset. They are also less likely than their wage-and-salary counterparts to make retirement plans, with some small business owners planning to work well into their seventies. The solution? Some say we should reexamine federal rules around retirement savings for entrepreneurs, including instituting a program of automatic IRAs for the approximately 75 million Americans who are not covered under employer-sponsored retirement plans.