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Online Stock Market Trading Americans are increasingly pessimistic about their retirement prospects with dreams of early retirement all but gone, according to a new national survey.Visit our AXcess News Forum and add your comments on this story. Try your hand at writing, the best story will be published on our news network. Take our business poll too!

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Stock Market Game May 24, 2004 (AXcess News) Boston - Americans are increasingly pessimistic about their retirement prospects with dreams of early retirement all but gone, according to a new national survey of defined contribution plan participants by John Hancock Financial Services.

Stock Investing Game According to the survey:

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Journal Prime Rate Street Wall * The average age at which people said they expected to retire rose to 64.4, up more than three years from the 2002 survey and nearly five years from the 1995 survey;* Nearly 18 percent of respondents said they don't expect to be able to retire until age 70 or older, nearly double compared to the 2002 survey and more than triple the 1995 survey results; and

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Stock Market News * Nearly 70 percent of respondents are either somewhat or very concerned that they will not have enough money to live comfortably in retirement; up 11 percentage points from the 2002 survey.

Stock Investing Basics Survey author Wayne Gates, general director, Market Research and Development, said some of the pessimism may be a hangover from the 2001-02 economic downturn, but most of it is well-founded."Beyond simply putting money into their 401k plan, most participants are almost entirely disengaged from the retirement planning process," he said. "Even during the boom years, they essentially were leaving retirement security to luck. I think belatedly they may be coming to this realization and now fear they're running out of time-and luck."Advertisement

Stock Investing Software The national survey of 800 defined contribution plan participants, the ninth Hancock has conducted since 1991, examined their knowledge, attitudes and actions relating to retirement savings. Mr. Gates said that, consistent with past surveys, most participants have only minimal active involvement with their plans. For example:

Stock Market Trading * Only slightly more than half of respondents have ever calculated how much money they will need to maintain their existing lifestyle in retirement;

Stock Investing For Dummy * Nearly half have never made any changes at all to their investment contributions or asset allocations;* Nearly 60 percent made no changes to the asset allocation mix of their retirement portfolios or contributions in the past year;

Stock Market Crash * More than half spend no more than twenty minutes a month planning for retirement or managing/monitoring investments;

Stock Investing Tip * More than half say they don't have time to manage their retirement investments; and

Stock Market Chart * Nearly half say they have little or no investment knowledge and less than 20 percent consider themselves relatively knowledgeable (the numbers have gotten consistently worse with each survey).

Online Stock Investing The consistency of the survey's results over the past decade and a half has convinced Mr. Gates that participant behavior will not change and a new approach is needed. The new approach has two facets: encouraging participants to seek professional financial planning assistance and at the same time encouraging plan sponsors to redesign plans to reflect human behavior, not economic theory.

Stock Market Crash Of "The theory was that if you offered the right combination of investments and educational tools, participants would take on the challenge of investing responsibly to achieve financial security by retirement. The reality is that this has never happened," he said. "We've had more than a decade of educational efforts and investing experience, including a full boom and bust market cycle, and most participants are no more knowledgeable, nor any more engaged today than they were in 1991."

Stock Investing For Beginner "We need to dramatically simplify the retirement planning process. The solution isn't more education, it's more simplification and more automation." He noted that the one unqualified success of defined contribution plans has been automatic payroll deduction. "Once participants start saving with payroll deduction, they rarely stop," he said. "Plans need to be simplified so that investing is nearly as automatic as saving. Do-it-yourself investing for retirement should be an option, not a requirement."

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