How do most clients make decisions about building their wealth for retirement?
The statistics from The EBR Institute are truly amazing and depressing. When workers were asked how they calculated the amount of money they needed to save for retirement, look at the responses:
Guessed 44%
Asked a financial planner 19%
Asked a financial planner 19%
Did your own estimate 17%
Read or heard about how much would be needed 11%
24% of those surveyed thought they would need in excess of $250,000 just to cover medical costs in retirement (FYI, 23% said they had no idea).
What is truly amazing is that nearly 30% of the average workers believe they only need to accumulate total of $250,000 or less to retire properly. Of course these answers are incompatible and illustrate how confusing and difficult it is to properly plan for retirement.
If you were actively in the stock market from 1998-2008 you had a negative rate of return of approximately 1.45%. Did you know that if you used Retirement Life™ to grow your wealth over this same time frame you would have earned a positive rate of return of approximately 5.3%? Did you know that there are products out there that will guaranteed you a return of between 6-8% coupled with a guaranteed income for life you can never outlive?
Would it surprise you that most financial planners, CFPs, insurance agents, CPAs, and estate planning attorneys no nothing about the wealth building tools alluded to in the previous paragraph? Would it outrage you to know that many financial planners are forbidden from using these tools to help their clients build wealth for retirement (it should).
