These Are Americans’ Ten Biggest Retirement Fears
Retirement is a critical stage of life, and with it comes a lot of unknowns — particularly what to do when you are no longer receiving a steady paycheck. But money is not the only worry — health and wellness are also concerns.
A recent MarketWatch article revealed the results of the Retirement Fear Index, which uses various metrics to track issues that might keep retirees up at night. It self-describes as “a monthly meta-analysis and sentiment map of what retirees actually fear.”
The 10 retirement fears tracked by this index, listed from highest weighting to lowest:
- Healthcare and long-term-care costs
- Outliving savings/longevity risk
- Social Security and pension insolvency
- Inflation and rising everyday costs
- Cognitive decline/loss of independence
- Market volatility and sequence-of-returns (the risk that poor investment returns early in retirement would reduce retirees’ portfolios)
- Loss of purpose/identity crisis
- Housing affordability and maintenance
- Family caregiving burdens and isolation
- Taxes and regulatory changes
The key takeaway from the Retirement Fear Index, according to its creator, is that pre-retirees and retirees need to identify their fears and then take steps to address them.
The Seniors Trust is committed to improving the well-being of older Americans. We are doing that financially by encouraging lawmakers to enact the Social Security Expansion Act. This landmark piece of legislation will give retirees an immediate increase of about $200 a month in benefits, a fair annual cost-of-living adjustment (COLA), increased minimum benefits, and ensure the long-term solvency of the Social Security program.
