The Millennial Disconnect: Ideal Retirement Age vs. Likely Savings

News November 18, 2018 at 05:40 PM
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Retirement is on everybody's mind, it seems, whether they're close to that age or whether they're financially prepared for it.

Senior living communities company Provision Living asked respondents to tell them what their ideal retirement would look like, and participants obliged with everything from the city they'd like to call home once they retire to how they want to spend their time when it's theirs to call their own.

What may surprise you is how often people think about retirement, and which age at which they plan to retire. With 52% of respondents saying they think about it four or more times a week, the average age they'd choose for retirement is 60—but when it comes to boomers (who, admittedly, are a lot closer to retirement than millennials), they'd choose 64. Millennials, on the other hand, are aiming for 56.

But whether they'll actually be able to hit that age remains to be seen, since millennials think they'll need to have $687,000 saved up before they can turn out the office lights—yet realistically they only expect to be able to set aside $357,000.

Oh, and 37% of millennials think they won't need Social Security when they retire—while 39% of respondents overall don't think they'll be able to get by without it.

In choosing a retirement location, 78.87% said they want to stay in the U.S., while 21.3% would love to move abroad—and the top country choice for those adventuresome souls is Italy. At home, the more prosaic cities of Miami, San Diego, Denver, New York and Orlando were the five most popular choices.

They'd rather walk dogs (27%) than drive an Uber (12%) as a gig job once they retire, although 53% said they'd work part time after retirement; 68% said they'd volunteer. But it might be tough to squeeze in a job, considering that their ideal retirement day breaks down into other activities that pretty much eat up the hours: sleeping for 7–8 hours, watching TV for 1–2 hours, dining out for 1–2 hours, socializing for 2–3 hours, leisure activity for 3–4 hours and spending time working on their hobbies for 2–3 hours.

And that's not even including the traveling they want to do (34.9% intend to), or the family time that's important to 21.8% of them.

Interestingly, boomers expect to change jobs 7 times before they get to retirement while millennials only expect to do so 6 times. And they say millennials are the job-hoppers?

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