People dream about retirement, yearning for the day when they can leave the workplace behind. Or so we think.
However, a new informal survey from Financial Engines reveals that, instead of dreams about a life of leisure, most people have negative thoughts when the word "retirement" is mentioned.
Readers of FE's RetireWell blog were asked how they felt when hearing the word "retirement." To get a more accurate reading of what people actually thought, the question was open-ended: people could say whatever they wanted, instead of choosing the closest multiple-choice answer.
Recommended For You
So what was their top response? Well, out of the top 10 responses, only three were positive. In order, those top 10 answers were: old, excited, happy, long time away, scared, nervous, anxious, worried, good, and sad. And "old" beat out all the others across all age groups, with 11 percent giving that as their answer. "Excited" may have come in second, but it wasn't a close race.
People were also asked what they'd do differently from the way their parents retired. The top three answers (write-ins, again) were "save more money" (23 percent), "travel" (11 percent) and "work longer" (6 percent).
Again, not a particularly cheery picture.
FE suggested that, since the reaction to the word "retirement" was so negative, maybe it shouldn't even be part of the strategy for getting people to put away money for after they leave work. The FE blog said, "Financial firms like ours often encourage people to focus on their retirement goals, but if the word 'retirement' makes people feel old, scared or sad, they may be subconsciously avoiding the topic. Who likes to feel old?"
Another interesting result of the survey, informal though it was, is that the older the respondent, the more positive they were about how prepared they are to retire. Those aged 60 and older, FE said, "were much more positive about their current state of preparation for retirement (56 percent) than people in their 30s (30 percent) and 20s (23 percent)."
However, there's one more caveat to those responses: "We didn't define the term 'on track.' We let the respondents decide what that meant to them." In other words, depending on their definition, their answers may be dead-on — or way off the mark.
© 2025 ALM Global, LLC, All Rights Reserved. Request academic re-use from www.copyright.com. All other uses, submit a request to [email protected]. For more information visit Asset & Logo Licensing.
