Articles I read this week were consistently downbeat about retirement. So I thought I would counter that with some specific corrective actions.

Bank of America Merrill Lynch study finds American workforce concerned about overall financial health

As a Merrill Lynch customer, I’m glad they’re conducting these studies. The results simply confirm what I’ve been saying for awhile now.

Regular folks are not prepared for retirement.

Even if employers were to step up and play a role in devising a solution, this doesn’t address those who are self-employed, the participant who is between jobs, or those who already retired.

What we need is more investor education and a new approach to retirement planning. Individuals need to start answering these questions for themselves:

  • What can your savings produce today in retirement income?
  • Can you live on it?
  • If not, what can you do to increase your retirement income?

Baby Boomers feel worse about retirement than they did four years ago

It seems like all the news and studies on retirement are pretty depressing these days… And those feelings are not unjustified.

So what is one to do?

Here’s what.

Find out exactly how much retirement income you’ve already built up. Consider Social Security, any pension, and pension-like income from your savings. Don’t use projections or estimates. Just factor in the hard numbers.

Then consider what can you do to get your numbers up. It’s like your cholesterol readings, but in reverse. The higher the number, the better.

If you don’t know where to start, you may find the resources in the Go2Income Learning Center useful to figure things out.

Many Americans overestimate safe retirement withdrawal rate

More bad news… While many experts benchmark the safe withdrawal rate at 4% annually for the typical retiree, most Americans thought that it was “safe” to withdraw even more than that.

The problem is: we need to strike the phrase “safe withdrawal” from the retirement dictionary. There is no such thing!

It‘s like asking the question, what’s the “safe freefall” from a plane? Even though your parachute will open, do you want to risk it?

Trust me, every study confirms that retirees prefer “guaranteed lifetime income” to withdrawals, whether they believe the withdrawals are safe or not.