Does it signal market top and time to worry?
EBRI is out with its annual 2019 Retirement Confidence Survey and finds 82 percent of retirees are confident in their ability to live comfortably throughout retirement, comparable to highs measured in 2005 and 2017.
Furthermore, the percentage of workers who say they are very confident in their ability to live comfortably throughout retirement reached 23 percent, reflecting levels seen more consistently in the late 1990s and early 2000s, and prior to the financial crisis of 2008.
This year, retirees are also much more likely than last year to be confident in their ability to afford the lifestyle they are accustomed to and having enough money to last their entire.
Eight in ten retirees indicate they are very or somewhat confident they will have enough money to take care of medical expenses, compared with 70 percent in 2018, and retirees are less likely than last year to say their overall expenses, health care expenses, and long-term care expenses are higher than they expected.
Two-thirds of American workers feel confident in their ability to retire comfortably, with 23 percent feeling very confident.
This reflects a 6-percentage point increase in the workers who feel very confident over 2018.
Though comparable to highs last seen 1997 through 2006 and in 2015 and 2016, worker confidence in 2019 still falls short of the 27 percent high measured in 2007, pre-financial crisis.
Debt and healthcare concerns
While 72 percent of workers are very or somewhat confident about being able to afford basic expenses in retirement, 41 percent are not confident about their ability to cover medical expenses and nearly half do not feel confident about having enough money for long-term care in retirement.
Workers are also more likely to cite debt as a concern compared with retirees. Sixty-one percent of workers say debt is a problem for them, compared with 26 percent of retirees.
“Historically, the RCS has found a correlation between debt levels and retirement confidence,” Craig Copeland, EBRI senior research associate and co-author of the report, said in a statement. “In 2019, 41 percent of workers with a major debt problem say that they are very or somewhat confident about having enough money to live comfortably in retirement, compared with 85 percent of workers who indicate debt is not a problem. Thirty-two percent of workers with a major debt problem are not at all confident about their prospects for a financially secure retirement, compared with 5 percent of workers without a debt problem.”
With more than 20 years serving financial markets, John Sullivan is the former editor-in-chief of Investment Advisor magazine and retirement editor of ThinkAdvisor.com. Sullivan is also the former editor of Boomer Market Advisor and Bank Advisor magazines, and has a background in the insurance and investment industries in addition to his journalism roots.
