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The Retirement Income Juggling Act
Why you need a practical strategy for generating retirement income.
A study by the Stanford Center on Longevity points to two troubling statistics for older workers approaching retirement: (1) one-third of them have NO retirement savings, and (2) for those who have savings, the median balance is about $200,000. The harsh reality associated with either of these scenarios is that they demonstrate why traditional retirement is a big stretch for so many Americans. Layer the economic impact of the pandemic on top of under-funded retirement savings and it’s easy to see why many Boomers realize they’ll need to keep generating income for the foreseeable future.
The average middle-income Boomer can’t solve the problem overnight, but a plan developed by the Stanford Center on Longevity in association with the Society of Actuaries — the “Spend Safely in Retirement Strategy” — is a practical retirement income-generating strategy. Financial expert Steve Vernon, a research scholar at the Stanford Center on Longevity, discusses it in an article published in the January 2021 issue of Benefits Magazine. He suggests that most pre-retirees need to address the following five decisions:
- When and how to retire, including whether to work part-time for a period of time
- When to start Social Security benefits
