5 Worries Not Weighing Down Retirement Savers

Your clients might be hiding from news stories about COVID-19, stock prices and geopolitics, but fewer of them are worrying over their ability to handle other aspects of retirement — possibly because the nature of their families makes those concerns irrelevant. Single clients, for example, will have no reason to fear the loss of a spouse. Other clients might be failing to consider — or actively refusing to consider — risks they do, in fact, face. Annuity issuer F&G recently asked 1,266 U.S. adults ages 50 years and older about their level of worry about 12 aspects of retirement. For a look at the five aspects that worried the survey participants the least, meaning that the participants said they were "not very worried" or "not worried at all" about those issues, see the gallery above.

What It Means

Many of your retirement planning clients may feel as if they have some retirement planning issues nailed down. If you disagree with clients' self-assessments, and you believe, for example, that they do have living parents (or children) facing high and little-considered levels of financial risk, you will have to figure out how you want to handle that disagreement.

Survey Details

All of the F&G survey participants said they had sole or shared financial decision-making responsibility for their households. All said they either were retired or planned to retire someday, and all owned financial products valued at $10,000 or more. Here were the issues with the highest percentages of survey takers describing themselves as very or somewhat worried:

• Inflation: 80%
• Recession: 71%
• Acute and long-term health care costs: 65%

(Image: Adobe Stock)