Poll: Americans Unprepared for Retirement

(March 9) -- An increasing number of Americans say they will not be able to save enough money for their own retirement, if they are saving at all.

According to the results of an annual survey by the Employee Benefit Research Institute, 27 percent of adults over the age of 24 say they have saved $1,000 or less toward their retirement. And 54 percent of those surveyed say they have saved less than $25,000.

"This happens every single year," Jack VanDerhei, research director at EBRI and the co-author of the study, told AOL News. "A huge percentage of individuals say they saved nothing. What's different this year is that employees are perhaps finally starting to get a handle on the fact that they are unprepared."

VanDerhei points to the study's finding that just 16 percent of those polled say they are "very comfortable" with the amount they have saved for retirement, but adds that the choices for fixing the problem are not always palatable.

"Either you decide that you have to retire later or you have to start saving more immediately," VanDerhei said. "But retiring later is a risky strategy, because you don't know what may happen 15 or 20 years down the line. A person's health can turn, making it impossible to work."

Apparently, a growing number of Americans are betting on putting off retirement, however. In 1991, just 11 percent of those surveyed said they expected to retire at the age of 65, while 33 percent said the same in 2010.

The amount an individual will need to save for retirement depends on a host of factors, including marital status, real estate holdings, 401(k) plans, overall health and the desired lifestyle to be maintained. Numerous Internet sites provide retirement calculators to asses the amount people should save to attain their retirement goals.

One of the more basic, at CNNMoney, gives you a rough idea of how much you'll need to save by asking three questions: your current age, your current salary and your current savings.

By inputting an age of 38, which is half the median life expectancy in the United States; America's average salary of $43,362; and a generous $25,000 in savings, CNNMoney tabulates that our imaginary worker should try to save $5,116 each year to retire at 65 years of age and earn 80 percent of current wages.

But numerous variables weigh heavily on just how much a person should consider saving. A big one, VanDerhei said, is whether one has worked in a job where an employer offers 401(k) benefits.

"Roughly half of private-sector jobs don't have retirement benefits," VanDerhei said. "Unfortunately, those are the majority of jobs out there."

The EBRI study found that just 46 percent of the 1,153 people interviewed had attempted to calculate how much money they would need for retirement. VanDerhei said that while workers who do have 401(k) plans tended to be much more cognizant of what kind of savings it would take to make it through retirement, those without such benefits "were really pretty clueless."