Retirement Confidence Up for No Good Reason: EBRI

"One possible reason for the improved confidence is the rising stock market and property values, and to the extent that those factors carry forward to retirement savings account balances, there may be merit to that assessment," VanDerhei said.

Mathew Greenwald, president of Mathew Greenwald & Associates, which conducted the survey for EBRI, agreed with the assessment that economic improvements drive investors' optimism. "It appears that people make some assumptions about how financially secure they will be in the future based on how well the economy is performing now," he said on the call. However, "with economic conditions being somewhat cyclical, this obviously is not a good way of making judgments or predictions about the future."

There were the same familiar obstacles to saving—cost of living, day-to-day expenses—but the study found debt is another major impediment. Of workers who said debt was a major problem for them, just 3% said they are very confident about their ability to retire. By comparison, 29% of workers who said debt was not a problem reported feeling very confident.

Debt affects retirees, too. Forty-four percent of retirees said they were uncomfortable with their level of debt. Nearly 60% of workers agreed.

Burrows urged advisors to work with their clients on a budget to identify where they can cut back and address problems with debt.

"I can't emphasize enough the importance of understanding the expense side of the ledger in order to put yourself in a position to save," he said. "Saving's not an easy thing. It's not unlike a diet. When you start a diet you think about what you eat and monitoring what you do. With more information, people can be in a better position to make decisions that might be helpful to them. It really does start with some of the basics. We understand that the basics can be really hard, but they're really important, especially over the long term."

Another troubling finding in the 2014 survey is that current workers may rely too much on their chances of just working longer if they reach retirement age and don't have enough. Two-thirds of workers said they plan to work for pay in retirement. However, only 27% of retirees said they do so.

"We seem to be in the midst of a redefinition of retirement," Greenwald said. "The biggest shift we have seen in the 24 years we have conducted the Retirement Confidence Survey is the movement of workers toward planning to work later in life."

Greenwald noted that in 1991, 84% of workers planned to retire at 65 or younger, and just 9% planned to work to 70. Now, 50% plan to stop by age 65 and 22% plan to work until at least 70. Furthermore, "Even with the planned delay in retirement, three in four expect that either they or their spouse work for pay after they retire."

Greenwald said that this represents a "change in the very life course" for many people. "The goal of retiring reasonably young and enjoying retirement when they're, as they say, 'young enough to enjoy it' is being replaced by an expectation by many of working to an age that has been considered by many to be fairly old."

That's a consistent theme among workers, too, according to Burrows. "Where advisors can be very helpful when they build a long-term plan is to not necessarily depend on being able to work in retirement as the backbone of their retirement strategy. Let that be a bonus to a retirement strategy." Burrows noted that more than 60% of retirees indicated they couldn't work in retirement for their own personal health reasons or those of a family member.

A Gallup survey conducted last spring found that, on average, current retirees left the work force at 61.

VanDerhei said that with proposals to alter the limits and tax preferences currently provided to workplace plans this year, respondents were asked how they would respond if the law was changed so they could no longer contribute to retirement plans on a pre-tax basis. "Perhaps responding to their already expressed sense of shortfalls or concerns about the future tax environment, two-thirds say they would continue to contribute at their current rates, though 10% indicate they would reduce the amount they contribute and 5% say they would quit contributing altogether," he said.

EBRI released the 2014 Retirement Confidence Survey, conducted in January by Mathew Greenwald & Associates, on Tuesday. The survey is based on information gathered in 20-minute phone interviews with 1,000 working Americans and 501 retirees.