Source: Daniel de la Hoz / Getty
A new study finds that 20 percent of Americans don’t believe they will ever be able to retire.
Of these 20 percent, 70 percent of them said the reason they wouldn’t be able to retire is because they wouldn’t be able to afford it. Most workers also don’t expect Social Security or pensions to cover their expenses in retirement.
The survey, conducted by Axios and research group Ipsos, asked 1,238 adults, 210 of whom were older than 55, a variety of retirement related questions.
Almost half of the respondents under 55, around 44 percent, said they have had to change their retirement plans due to economic factors out of their control and only 36 percent older than 55 thought they would be able to retire when they had planned.
Many people said they didn’t have faith that Social Security would cover their bills – 37 percent of Americans who aren’t retired said they thought Social Security would probably cover less than a quarter of their expenses in retirement.
While the vast majority of those said they couldn’t see themselves retiring due to financial reasons, around 20 percent said they simply didn’t want to.
More than half of current retirees (54 percent) said they use a pension for retirement income, and 50 percent said they use retirement accounts like a 401k or IRA. By comparison, 30 percent of respondents who aren’t retired said they plan to use a pension and 66 percent plan to use retirement accounts.
Even though retirement seems like a pipe dream for many, Americans still view retirement as a goal well worth pursuing. 80 percent said that they think the whole point of working hard now is to have a nice retirement.
