How great is the anxiety over retirement? A study shows even greater, for some, than the worry generated over the Sept. 11 terrorist attacks in New York.
That was the finding of a group of researchers at the Center for Retirement Research at Boston College, said Andrew Eschtruth, associate director for external relations at the institute.
"Thinking about retirement induces anxiety," Eschtruth said Tuesday during a presentation at the Retirement Income Industry Association spring conference in Chicago. "People feel powerless. They don't feel that they have control over their destiny … and could be facing a situation that could have a bad outcome or a good outcome."
Eschtruth, whose presentation was entitled "How People Behave: New Insights on Retirement Decisions," broke down his talk into three major areas: retirement anxiety, saving strategies and drawdown behavior.
Unsurprisingly, the Boston institute's research shows that the financial crash of late 2008 has significantly affected the way people think about retirement and the ability of public institutions and private plans to provide for a safe nest egg.
For instance, in the past few years there have been 613 average monthly Google citations with the search terms "state, local, crisis and pension fund."