The Anxious Generation

By Ronald Brownstein

Stressed-out Americans over 50 wonder if they’re ever going to be able to retire.

They worry that the Great Recession will have a lasting impact on their security.

When the parents of Julie Gray, a veterinarian in Las Cruces, N.M., retired, each of them could rely on company pensions as well as their own retirement accounts. At age 52, her situation is very different.

“I own my own business, so all I have is a 401(k), and my husband does have compensation from his employer, but they are constantly cutting those benefits,” she sighs. While her mother retired in her 50s, Gray says she and her husband expect to be working into their 70s. “I think it will take us a lot longer to accumulate the money we need to retire, plus I think we’ll need to compensate for inflation,” she says. “It’s just one of those things.”

Gray is a charter member of what could be called the anxious generation. In the latest Allstate/National Journal Heartland Monitor poll, Americans like Gray who are nearing the end of their work careers are much more uneasy about their prospects for retirement than those who have already stopped working.

Compared with today’s retirees, Americans who are over 50 but have not yet retired are substantially more stressed about their current financial circumstances; more skeptical of relying on the stock market to provide their income after they stop working; more concerned that the Great Recession and its aftermath will lastingly diminish their prospects; and much more worried that they will not enjoy as secure a retirement as their parents did. On average, near-retirees expect they will need to keep working as many as six years longer than today’s retirees did when they received the gold watch.

Read entire article here. . .

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