It’s hardly news that U.S. workers are worried about retirement.

They don’t have enough savings and are afraid that they’ll run out of money during retirement, or that medical expenses will eat up whatever they’ve managed to save.

Yet another study, this one from the Indexed Annuity Leadership Council, has found the same fears among its respondents, with 50 percent being most afraid of outliving their income or the inability to maintain their current lifestyle, and nearly 20 percent worried about having enough money to cover health care expenses.

But workers aren’t saving more, even though they know they need to, the survey said, pointing out that a quarter of boomer respondents have less than $5,000 saved for retirement and nearly one in five don’t even have a clue how much they’ve saved for retirement.

That could be for good reasons, since a white paper from the Financial Services Roundtable found that women, minorities and millennials face special financial challenges that can heavily impede their ability to save for retirement.

So why reinvent the wheel with yet another study about Americans’ failure to prepare for retirement? Well, another finding in this most recent study was that “45 percent of Americans are interested in retirement products, like fixed indexed annuities (FIAs), that protect your principal, even if the stock market goes down.”

The Indexed Annuity Leadership Council is a trade group that lobbies on behalf of annuity providers, and most recently made headlines by launching one of several lawsuits filed by industry groups against the U.S. Department of Labor’s fiduciary rule — which seeks to regulate fixed indexed annuities under the Best Interest Contract Exemption.

It’s no secret that in the wake of the Great Recession people are increasingly worried about running out of money, and are turning to various strategies — including in-plan annuities — in an attempt to make sure they don’t end up destitute in retirement. But the Labor Department rule could put the kibosh on that, with a number of industry experts — including A.M. Best — predicting that the rule “will be one of the market forces exerting downward pressure on publicly traded life and annuity insurers.”

Workers are still worried about the same things. But it remains to be seen whether annuities will help to ease those fears.

Instant Insights /

Workers are afraid they won't have enough money in retirement

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