How High-Income Millennials Get Advice About Advisors

January 17, 2020 at 02:15 PM
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High-income U.S. millennials may be much more likely than other millennials to get advice about financial advisors at the workplace.

Those high-income millennials may have a neutral or positive attitude about annuities, and they may not be all that concerned about an advisor's fees.

The Insured Retirement Institute (IRI) has published figures supporting those interpretations in a summary of results from a new survey of millennials.

Resources

  • Links to the IRI survey report and related materials are available here.

IRI is a group for organizations with an interest in annuities and other insured sources of retirement income.

 The Survey

IRI hired an outside survey firm to conduct an online survey.

IRI has defined the term "millennial" to include U.S. adults ages 24 through 41. When IRI breaks the results out by income, the category for people in households earning $150,000 or more per year is the highest income category.

The sample included 802 people.

"Trusted Sources When Looking for a Financial Advisor"

About 33% of all millennials in the sample said their parents were their top source of advice about financial advisors.

Roughly one-quarter of the millennials would talk to their friends, and roughly one-quarter would look at online ratings.

Just 10% said they would consider recommendations from their employees.

Only about 30% of the highest-income millennials said they would get advice about advisors from their parents. The highest-income millennials had less interest in their parents' recommendations than millennials in any other income category.

About 13% of the highest-income millennials said they wanted to hear their employers' recommendations. The highest-income millennials were more interested in their employers' advice than millennials in any other income category.

Traditionally, for example, people in the insurance community may have seen the worksite market as a market for moderate-income workers. But only about 6% of the millennials with annual household income under $35,000 said they were interested in their employers' advice about financial advisors.

Other Results for the Highest-Income Millennials

Savings: Millennials in households with annual income over $150,000 are much more likely than others to have significant retirement savings, but 25% reported having less than $50,000 in retirement savings, and 10% reported having less than $10,000 in retirement savings.

Expense Expectations: The highest-income millennials are more concerned about health care costs and travel costs than other millennials are. About 34% expect health care to be their biggest post-retirement expense, compared with an average of 28% for all millennials. And 21% expect travel to be their biggest post-retirement expense, compared with 13% for other millennials.

Active Efforts to Save for Retirement: About 63% of the highest-income millennials have started saving for retirement, but 22% say they're "waiting," and 15% said they see no need to save for retirement.

Confusion: About 2% of the highest-income millennials said they'll start saving for retirement when they're making more money, about 2% said they don't know how to save, and about 3% said Social Security benefits will be enough.

Attitudes toward Annuities: Only 10% of the highest-income millennials said they would never consider buying annuities, and that was close to the overall average of 11%.

About 39% of the highest-income millennials said they were already planning to buy annuities, compared with 29% of all millennials in the sample.

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