Gen Z workers are worried . . . about retirement
Welcome to Fast Company Daily, our new daily newsletter on LinkedIn, featuring our top story of the day as well as a roundup of recently published articles. First time seeing this? Please?subscribe.
Retirement may seem like a long way off for members of Gen Z, but that doesn’t mean they’re not worried about it. In fact, when it comes to planning for their retirement years, workers in their teens and early 20s are even more likely than their older counterparts to say they feel significantly overwhelmed by the idea, according to an exclusive new Fast Company-Harris Poll released on Monday.
In a survey of 1,022 adults conducted earlier this month, 31% of Gen Zers strongly agreed with the statement “planning for retirement is overwhelming to me.” That compares to 24% of millennials, 23% of Gen Xers, and only 12% of baby boomers who said they felt the same way.?
Retirement stress is by no means limited to a single generation, however. Among all survey respondents, 65% agreed that planing for retirement is overwhelming—albeit not always significantly so—compared with only 35% who indicated that retirement planning causes them no stress. This despite the survey finding that 82% of Americans want to partially or fully retire at some point in the future, whether they have the financial means to do so or not.??
As for whether or not American workers are feeling prepared for retirement, 56% of respondents said they haven’t saved enough money to live well in their post-working years. Members of Generation X—defined in the survey as people aged 42 - 57—were by far the most likely age group to say they are financially ill-prepared for retirement, perhaps fulfilling some of those grim, decades-old predictions about how Gen Xers would be the first generation to end up worse off than their parents. Asked if they had enough money and resources to comfortably retire, 67% of Gen Xers said they did not, compared to 55% of millennials and 47% of boomers and Gen Zers.
Not that most Americans even have clue as to how much savings they’ll need. Asked whether they agree with the statement “I don’t know how much money I need to save to retire comfortably,” 65% of respondents said they agreed and 26% said they strongly agreed. Members of Gen Z were most likely to say they didn’t know how much savings they’ll need (73%), followed by Gen Xers (69%), millennials (66%), baby boomers (51%), and members of the Silent Generation (10%).?
Experts typically say you should have 10 to 12 times your annual salary sacked away to retire comfortably by the time you reach your mid-60s. Or to put it more specifically, guidance from Fidelity Investments recommends saving twice your annual salary by age 35, 7 times your salary by age 55, and 10 times your salary by 67.?
领英推荐
More than half of the survey’s respondents (55%) said the most appropriate age to retire is 65 or older, while another 26% said retiring in your early 60s seems just about right. Only 14% said retiring in your 50s was the most appropriate age, although Gen Zers were more likely to support the idea of retiring younger, with 24% in that age group saying 50s was the most appropriate age. Meanwhile, a very small number of Americans apparently plan to keep working forever. Among all respondents, 6% said the most appropriate time to retire is “never.” Interestingly, the oldest members of the survey group were the most likely to say they don’t want to retire at all.?
In case you missed it...
Yahoo Mail is back with a vengeance: the 25 year-old mailing service launched all new features to help you find stuff faster in your inboxes, writes Steven Melendez .
At the Tesla AI Day event, Elon Musk unveiled two Tesla robots. Michael Grothaus introduces the Bumble C and Optimus.
Ambition Diaries is a mini series that tells the story of 14 mother and daughter relationships as they navigate work life balance, discrimination, and economic hardship. Tune into the first episode on Apple Podcasts and Spotify.
And on the topic of Gen Z...a new survey from Morning Consult reveals TikTok, Discord, Snapchat, Instagram as standout brands among Gen Z,?Jude Cramer?writes.
Resume Writer - hospitality, retail, events, sales | Recruiter | Human Resources Professional | Hospitality | Retail
2 年Gen Z, millennials, Gen x, boomers, I think every generation is ????
Next Trend Realty LLC./wwwHar.com/Chester-Swanson/agent_cbswan
2 年Talk with Edward Jones or Started reading Financial Planning.
Product Design | User-Centric Solutions for Banking & Financial Services
2 年It’s always scary to predict future / retirement, perhaps it’s better to plan sooner ?
Senior Telecoms Program Manager/Director
2 年I just plan to keep on working on interesting projects. Job done.
Tucson, AZ
2 年Between the ages of 20-35 if they don’t put away minimum 10 years into retirement account there is a much higher possibility they won’t ever be able to retire.