Here's how much money the average baby boomer has saved for retirement — how do you compare?
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About a decade ago, the roughly 71.6 million men and women of the postwar baby-boom generation began reaching retirement age. It's going to take about another dozen years before the whole generation has reached its full retirement age. That gives a good amount of time to catch up on retirement savings.
So how exactly is retirement shaping up for the generation that went from Woodstock and Watergate to iPhones and Instagram?
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A 2023 survey from the Transamerica Center for Retirement Studies estimates that the median retirement savings of boomers totals $202,000. That might sound like a respectable amount of cash, but that produces just $8,080 a year, or $673 a month.
In many cases, that money gets nibbled away by income tax, too. With that in mind, here are three strategies to bolster your retirement savings.
Get expert financial advice
According to the Federal Reserve, only 36% of non-retirees thought their retirement savings were on track as of 2021. If you feel you could use some help getting your finances back on track, consider reaching out to a financial advisor. With Vanguard, you can connect with a personal advisor* who can help assess how you’re doing so far and make sure you've got the right portfolio to meet your goals on time.
Vanguard’s hybrid advisory system combines advice from professional advisers and automated portfolio management to make sure your investments are working to achieve your financial goals.
All you have to do is fill out a brief questionnaire about your financial goals, and Vanguard’s advisers will help you set a tailored plan, and stick to it.*.
Once you’re set, you can sit back as Vanguard’s advisors manage your portfolio. Because they’re fiduciaries, they don’t earn commissions, so you can trust that the advice you’re getting is unbiased.
If the worst should happen, make sure your loved ones are taken care of
Not only are retirement savings important for you, they affect your loved ones too. When you opt out of life insurance, you are leaving your family on the hook for things like end-of-life expenses.
To avoid leaving your family financially burdened during an already tough time, consider opting for life insurance with SBLI, where you can protect your family's financial future with professional advice, a simple online claims process and no medical exams required for term insurance.
SBLI gives you access to LegacyShield, a streamlined dashboard where you can manage all your financial accounts, store documents and share final wishes, all in one convenient place for you and your dependants.
Read more: Generating 'passive income' through real estate is the biggest myth in investing — here’s how you can do it in as little as 5 minutes
Diversify your portfolio
By mixing up your portfolio with a variety of assets, you have a better chance of balancing risk and reward.
With First National Realty Partners* — a private equity firm — you can gain access to commercial, grocery-anchored real estate. And you don’t have to worry about being a real-estate mogul, because FNRP’s team of pros take care of the investment through its entire lifecycle.
Because these investments are grocery-anchored, they never go out of style even when the economy is volatile. So you can save for your future without having to worry about the health of your investments.*.
Work longer and delay Social Security
Working longer not only delays taking money out of your retirement investments, which allows them to continue compounding earnings growth, but it also pushes back the age at which you’ll need to start collecting Social Security payments.
Take that $202,000 investment portfolio. Invested in a conservative portfolio returning 5% annually — the historical average return on stocks is 11.9% — that money would grow to $233,840 in three years. Assuming you’re following the 4% rule for withdrawals, that would amount to $9,354 per year — an increase of $1,274 each year.
With Acorns* — a saving and investing platform — you can turn spare change into savings, making it easy to grow your investment portfolio and save for retirement without thinking twice.
All you have to do is link your bank account and spend as you normally would and Acorns will round up your everyday purchases to the nearest dollar and then invest your spare change in diversified portfolios that are built by experts with ETFs, and are managed by top investing firms.
Signing up for Acorns takes less than five minutes, and if you sign up now, you can get a $40 bonus investment.*
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This article provides information only and should not be construed as advice. It is provided without warranty of any kind.
