Savers Don’t Know How Much Money They Have

savingsMore than half of workers approaching retirement have confessed they have no idea how much they have saved to fund their lifestyle when they give up work.

The shock response was the result of asking more than 3,000 workers aged between 45 and 64 years old about their financial plans for retirement.

The survey, by financial firm Partnership, revealed too few workers have savings and many of those that have are uncertain how much they have.

Worryingly, says the firm, benchmarking your retirement savings is the starting point for working out what you are likely to need when giving up work and how much you need to save to meet that goal.

Impossible to make decisions

The research found:

  • 35% of workers do not know the value of their workplace pension
  • 21% had no pension savings
  • 23% were unsure how much their private pension was worth
  • 25% did not know the value of easy access savings
  • 24% could not put a value on how much they had saved in a fixed term account

The survey also showed 28% of workers aged over 55 had no workplace pension and 20% had no private pension.

The firm’s managing director of retirement Andrew Megson said: “It’s not easy to plan for retirement when you have some idea of how much money you may have, but it’s impossible to make any financial decisions if you have no idea.”

Reliant on state pension

He explained the key word in retirement planning was ‘planning’ and not enough workers are managing to carry out this simple task.

“What the survey showed us is that more people ought to spend a little more time understanding their current finances and what they need to save to have an enjoyable retirement.”

Megson also argues that the trend looks to be that too many people will have to rely on the state pension as their only source of retirement income.

“Leaving important financial decisions too late is likely to leave many people high and dry financially with no options to improve their circumstances,” said Megson.

“Lots of people are saving for retirement, but they still do not know what they will need and are putting too little in a pension or other savings.”

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