A recent report from the financial services firm TIAA emphasized Americans aren't well prepared financially for retirement.
In "State of Financial Preparedness in a Diverse America," 1 in 4 of those surveyed didn't know how much they had saved for retirement. Households with retirement savings dipped below the 50% mark among Black and Native American people in the TIAA survey.
America's retirement system is failing too many people. The lack of savings doesn't reflect the lure of shopping on credit or a lack of financial education. Instead, too many workers live on low and unstable incomes, while too many moderate-income families struggle to pay their bills.
It's hardly surprising a majority has set aside little to nothing for retirement considering the demands on incomes, such as spells of unemployment and caregiving responsibilities. For another, most workers save for retirement through an employer-sponsored plan. Yet nearly half of the private-sector workforce works for companies that don't offer this option.
How to fix this: First, Social Security is the financial foundation of retirement. Boosting benefits is the simplest way to improve financial security later in life. (The program's funding also needs shoring up sooner rather than later.) As journalist Mark Miller put it in "Retirement Reboot," "expanding Social Security offers the best route to improving the financial wellbeing of the elderly in America: Nothing else comes close."
He's right, but improving Social Security isn't enough. Economist Teresa Ghilarducci, in her new (highly recommended) book "Work, Retire, Repeat: The Uncertainty of Retirement in the New Economy," discusses reform proposals, including several she co-authored. Some approaches would provide universal retirement income security while others would focus on giving low- and moderate-income Americans access to a 401(k) modeled on the federal governments low-cost Thrift Savings Plan. It's high time for at least one of these well-designed and affordable ideas to become law. People with savings have more choice in their elder years and rely less on government services.
The first two reforms are relatively simple changes to make compared with the third shift that would transform finances in retirement: transforming bad jobs into good jobs, the kind that come with better wages and opportunities for advancement. Ghilarducci offers a potential blueprint for action for policymakers and citizens in her new book.
"The fact is, we can afford good pensions and better jobs, and we really can't afford bad pensions and bad jobs," she writes. Ghilarducci is spot on.
Chris Farrell is senior economics contributor, "Marketplace"; commentator, Minnesota Public Radio.
