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February 18, 2015 at 10:43 AM
Those who continue to doubt that the country is facing a retirement crisis are going to have to overcome the Employee Benefit Research Institute’s latest daunting estimate, which puts the aggregate retirement shortfall at $4.13 trillion.
And that’s the favorable figure, which assumes politicians are able to strike a deal to shore up Social Security before the trust fund’s projected depletion, in 2033.
Variations in readiness vary by demographic, of course. For those early baby boomers on the verge of retirement, the savings deficit for married households is $19,304 (per individual), $33,778 for single men and $62,734 for single women, according to EBRI’s figures.
The organization’s new analysis builds off earlier research, which used proprietary modeling to estimate the probability of households likely to not run short of money in retirement.
Half of the simulated life paths in the study show a functional level of funding for retirement.
But when healthy savers are taken out of the mix, the average shortfall for underfunded boomers goes up, dramatically. Discounting healthy savers, early boomer married couples’ average deficit is more than $71,000 per individual.
