What’s in your retirement account?

The likely answer is “not enough”

Retiring is a major goal of most Americans and as the retirement age rises to 66 and older, seniors are looking for more ways to reach their retirement dreams. In case you’re one of the great many Baby Boomers wanting to retire in the next few years, it’s important to step back and examine the funds you have allocated for your retirement.

Recently, The Wall Street Journal ran an opinion piece that fought Americans were not confronting a retirement emergency. Perusers reacted with both enthusiasm and caution:

Diane Oakley, official executive of the National Institute on Retirement Security, refuted with the most recent information from the Federal Reserve’s Survey of Consumer Finances. The numbers state everything: “The middle retirement account balance for every single American family unit in 2013 was zero.” What’s more, she called attention to, “The offer of families with resources in retirement accounts keeps on dropping, from 50.4 percent in 2010 to 49.2 percent in 2013.”

Is it normal to not have retirement savings?

Two recognized financial specialists from The New School of Social Research took a look at the issue from the pay point of view. They referred to the most recent information from the U.S. Registration Bureau’s American Community Survey that indicates “the middle (ordinary) salary of U.S. retirees is under $16,000, contrasted and that of the middle American laborer, at $31,000 … Resigned laborers got a normal of $1,294 per month in Social Security benefits as of December 2013; that indicates an immaterial $15,528 per year—a long way from a sizeable sum to live on when one’s hospital expenses are piling on.”

A specialist from Ohio summed up the individual side of the circumstance for Baby Boomers in their late 60s: “They have little funds and much obligation, are coming up short on long stretches of gainful work, and don’t have the foggiest idea how they can ever stand to resign.”

Who is to blame?

It’s difficult to put the fault on Baby Boomers’ ways of managing money until you look more carefully at where the cash went and what measures were put in place to stifle any spending. In 2012, when the National Center for Policy Analysis examined the ways of managing the money of Baby Boomers, the numbers demonstrate that from 1990 to 2010, luxury buys, including eatery spending, dropped 20 percent for adults 55 to 64. They spent 25 percent less on home goods, and 70 percent less on apparel.

A neglected potential solution for Baby Boomers’ retirement woes is the life settlement option.

The Life Settlement Option

A life settlement is defined as the sale of an existing life insurance policy for more than its cash surrender value, but less than its net death benefit. Once the sale is complete, ownership of the policy is transferred to a third-party intermediary (Abacus) who is responsible for all future premium payments and will collect the death benefit when the policy matures. A life settlement is not a loan. It is a one-time transfer of money from an institutional investment fund to the insured in exchange for policy ownership. Once the cash is transferred, it belongs entirely to the policyholder. You will never be expected to pay back any portion of your policy.

Retirement doesn’t have to be a far-fetched goal, even if you’re planning for retirement without savings. For more information on life settlements, please visit our comprehensive Learning Center or Contact Us and one of our life settlement professionals will be more than happy to assist you over the phone or via e-mail.

Abacus Life Settlements functions as a leader in the secondary market for life insurance. Our primary mission: work to help you understand your financial options. If you decide selling all or a portion of your policy is right for you, we can offer to purchase it from you at fair market value. We will provide all the numbers and details to show you how we determined its value and our offer, and if you decide to accept our offer we will provide you a lump sum amount and then take on all future obligations for the policy, including premium payments.