Retirement Plan Participants Need Professional Advice: Survey

Thirty-seven percent said their total health care costs are higher than they expected; only 9% said they were lower than expected. In addition, about one-quarter of retirees said their daily living and taxes were more expensive than they had anticipated.

In the meantime, few non-retirees have done the research necessary to make informed decisions about retirement savings. Only 20% of non-retirees report having done the detailed calculations to determine how much income they’ll need in retirement and how much money their retirement accounts will potentially generate. In addition, just 11% have calculated the taxes they will have to pay.

“Information is power when it comes to retirement,” said Ready. “Doing the detailed planning to calculate projected income and taxes pays off in helping to provide confidence — because investors then know what to prepare for.”

Overall, the survey found that investors are relatively optimistic about the current investment climate, though retirees are more optimistic than current workers. They scored a +155 on the optimism scale compared with 134 for non-retirees. For perspective, the index began in October 1996 at +124 and peaked at +178 in January 2000, at the height of the dot-com boom.

The survey’s findings are based on telephone interviews with 1,321 investors, age 18 and older, with total savings and investments of $10,000 or more. Seventy-one percent of respondents were non-retirees with a median age of 47, and 29% had already retired, with a median age of 69. Almost two-thirds reported incomes above $90,000, and slightly more than one-third had incomes below $90,000.

— Check out Older Pre-Retirees Worry a Lot About Social Security: Gallup on ThinkAdvisor.