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How Do You Measure Up as a Money Saver?
By DaveM | March 25, 2006
According to the 2005 Retirement Confidence Survey (PDF) done by the Employee Benefit Research Institute, a full 52% of all workers have less than $25,000 in savings. Even more shocking is that fully 70% are in the 25-34 age bracket!
In my age group, 35-44 (I’m 37), only 10% has saved somewhere between $100,000-$249,999. With a current net worth of roughly $230K, I guess that puts us (the lovely wife and me) in the upper crust of all savers. And here I thought I was a VIP member in credit card hell! 
That net worth figure does include our home, but when you take that and other tangible assets (cars, furniture, etc) out of the equation, we’re still in that 10% group of savers.
What amazed me is that 39% of workers age 55 and up have saved less that $25K total, and only 19% have saved $250K or more.
By and large, I think Americans are grossly UNDER-prepared for their futures. Part of the problem is that most people just don’t know how much they really need to save in order to survive the retirement years. With all the resources we have at our fingertips today, I don’t believe anyone should claim ignorance about what’s best for their financial future.
For example, I just Google’d “retirement calculator” to see what would come up. Out of the 13,400,000 results, one of my favorite websites was #4 on the list — The Motley Fool. You should head over there now and check out the dozens of “Foolish” calculators they offer. Scroll down to the Retirement section and start with the “Am I saving enough?” link.
If you don’t like The Motley Fool website, then you have 13,399,999 sites to check out for information about how much you should be saving.
So anyway, download that 2005 Retirement Confidence Survey and peruse it a bit. It contains lots of other interesting stats besides the savings numbers I’ve mentioned here.
Until next time… Have a great weekend!