It’s no surprise that Americans are worried about running out of money in retirement. But what is surprising is that lots of those folks are pretty well off.

More than half (57 percent) of the respondents to the American Institute of CPAs’ survey of financial planners, many of whose clients are high-net-worth individuals, said that running out of money is their clients’ top retirement worry.

Fourteen percent of respondents also said their clients don’t know how much money to withdraw from their retirement accounts, while 11 percent said clients’ top retirement worry was medical costs.

That fear of running out of money is apparently a pretty all-encompassing concern for a wide range of reasons, judging by the responses.

When asked to list their clients’ top three worries about outliving their money, respondents cited healthcare costs (76 percent), market fluctuations (62 percent) and lifestyle expenses (52 percent) as the chief reasons clients were stressed out over how much money they’d have to live on.

Of course, those weren’t the only reasons, since it seems money comes with reasons to worry about it.

Clients were also stressed about unexpected costs (47 percent), the possibility that they could become a financial burden on their loved ones (24 percent) and their desire to leave something for their kids to inherit (22 percent).

Worries about unexpected events weren’t just abstract fears about potential emergencies. They reflected actual situations respondents’ clients were dealing with that affected their retirement planning: long-term healthcare concerns, which affected 42 percent of clients; caring for aging relatives, an issue for 28 percent; diminished capacity (26 percent); divorce (18 percent); job loss (18 percent) and adult children returning home (18 percent).

And some of these problems are looming larger for clients than they used to. Respondents said that, compared with client experiences five years ago, there were more instances of unexpected long-term healthcare concerns (59 percent), taking care of aging relatives (43 percent) and diminished capacity (39 percent) — not exactly scenarios for peaceful golden years.

Instant Insights /

Wealthy worry about running out of retirement money

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