The December rate hike by the Federal Reserve could mean thatthose saving for retirement will have an easier timetrying to accumulate enough money to see them through.

According to BlackRock, the anticipation of additional ratehikes after the Fed’s Federal Open Market Committee boostedinterest rates by a quarter point in December gave markets thetaste for additional increases. And that anticipation has alreadyresulted in a 16 percent drop in the cost of future retirementincome.

Related: 10 obstacles to retirementreadiness

Rising interest rates lower the cost of retirement income. Andthe combination of a rate hike and an ongoing stock market rally,said BlackRock, means that investors saving for retirement willbenefit by seeing costs for retirement income fall—and currentlythose costs are as much as 14 percent lower than they were just afew months ago.

The market rally is also helping retirement portfolios, so that“a 55-year-old investor, for example, may now be on track for about18 percent more retirement income than they were a few months ago,”the company said in a statement.

According to BlackRock’s CoRI Retirement Indexes, which aredesigned to help investors estimate how much annual retirementincome their current savings can generate starting at age 65,recent changes indicate a substantial drop in cost for futureincome.

Since early November, the company said, the CoRI Index and theS&P 500 have generally been moving in opposite directions,which has allowed investors to see higher returns from the S&P500, and as a result greater income “buying power” in theirsavings, even as the cost of that income is “getting significantlycheaper.”

While the news is good at present, BlackRock also pointed outthat the December rate hike emphasizes how important it is forinvestors to keep a close eye on how much they need to save so thatwhen retirement comes, they’ll have the level of income they want.“This will be particularly critical in the coming months,” thecompany concluded, “as we continue to see how the markets settleinto this higher interest rate environment.”