Financial stress affects most Americans, including most retirement plan participants. For six years, John Hancock has surveyed retirement plan participants to learn how their overall financial situations and retirement savings affect each other so we can come up with relevant solutions for both.
In this year’s survey, we find an increasing number of participants saying that their financial situation has gotten worse and their financial stress has increased. The change isn’t significant, but some of the underlying trends are. For example, we see student loan debt playing an outsized role in the savings behaviors of participants across age groups. And a general lack of financial knowledge becomes inaction when people don’t know how to move forward, whether it’s with budgeting or saving for retirement.
John Hancock Life Insurance Company, U.S.A. is a Boston-based insurance company.