maze of highways with conflicting signs on them

No longer a straight path from employment to retirement with a pension, a U.S. employee's work history today is cobbled together from "a mosaic of past jobs, patchy defined contribution (DC) plan participation and a scattering of savings."

And that leads to holes in retirement strategy that aren't always getting filled in.

That's among the findings of State Street Global Advisors' latest Global Retirement Reality Report, which also points out that plan sponsors "aren't seeing participants' full retirement picture," which could prove disastrous to those participants in years to come.

Says the report, "43 percent of respondents anticipate that participants will have less than 10 percent of their current income available to them in retirement, yet 79 percent express confidence that participants will be able to retire on time."

In fact, the report adds that 26 percent of respondents only "expect replacement ratios between 10 percent and 30 percent" but nevertheless "are optimistic about their participants' ability to retire at retirement age and afford their current lifestyle once in retirement."

How can such conflicting views of participant preparedness exist?

Those aforementioned blind spots could have a lot to do with it, as can employers counting on workers saving money outside the workplace and having alternate sources of income, such as Social Security, retirement savings from earlier jobs, real estate and investments, spousal income and benefits.

But such beliefs don't take into account the financial struggles many employees have in just making ends meet, as well as threats to sponsors' ability to find additional ways to help participants better prepare financially for retirement.

Another problem is that sponsors are divided on who should end up finding and paying for financial advice on retirement readiness, with even the majority of sponsors who want to do the right thing seeing that responsibility as falling on the employee, not the employer.

In addition, the rise of target-date funds could be seen as younger generations' reliance on a "point-and-click" style of retirement saving that mirrors what they find elsewhere.

The study also found that not saving enough (74 percent), lack of understanding (57 percent) and debt (40 percent) were the chief causes of inadequate savings.

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Path to retirement readiness littered with blind spots

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