April 28, 2000

Action is paramount to funding retirement

"Many lack adequate retirement saving," said the headline in Thursday's newspaper.

Duh. It didn't take a study to determine that.

However, the study on which the headline was based &emdash; done by the Federal Reserve &emdash; was useful because it revealed the scope of the problem and the disparities in retirement readiness between different groups of people.

Too many people view the accumulating of retirement resources as something that is done "for" or "to" them, instead of "by" them.

Instead of looking at Social Security and workplace retirement plans as pieces of a retirement package, they often see them as the whole package.

Or they don't worry about retirement at all, figuring that it is the responsibility of some entity &emdash; make that government &emdash; to look after their needs in retirement years.

There also are those who have the right intentions about preparing for retirement, but who never put those intentions to work.

They are missing the key to the issue: action.

A retirement plan does not have to be complicated or vast in scope.

It needs to be started. And continued.

That is true for any period of life. Although it is true that starting at an early age is the best way to ensure adequate retirement funds, getting started still is the priority in middle and later years.

The sooner, the better.