Nearly 32% of U.S. adults who would like to retire said they either do not know if they will be able to or do not believe they will ever be able leave the workplace for good.
That's according to a new survey from Pentegra Retirement Services, which surveyed in September 2,397 U.S. adult adults ages 18 and older, among whom 1,927 are not already retired.
Only 19%, or nearly one in five adults surveyed, said they will be able to retire at age 65.
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Adults ages 35 to 54 (27%) were more likely than those ages 18 to 34 (18%) who said they will need more than $1 million to retire.
Those ages 18 to 34 (62%) were more likely than those ages 35 to 54 (45%) to think that they will need only up to $500,000 to retire.
Women (21%) were more likely to be unsure about their anticipated retirement age than men (13%), according to the survey. Twenty-eight percent of men said they would need more than $1 million to retire compared to 17% of women.
While the findings showed that most didn't feel they couldn't retire if they wanted to, the Pentegra survey revealed that the majority of U.S. adults (92%) feel that some of the average person's paycheck needs to go towards retirement planning. On average, they believed that 14% should be contributed from each paycheck towards retirement.
"This is much higher than Pentegra had predicted and we are thrilled that people have solid hopes and plans for their future," said Rich Rausser, senior vice president of client services at Pentegra.
"However, this number can scare people away with the thinking that they could never realistically put that much money away each paycheck – 14% is overwhelming for some people. The important lesson here is that it doesn't have to be all or nothing," Rausser said.
In 2006, NAFCU Services Corp. added Pentegra to its list of preferred partners to offer credit union members qualified retirement plans such as 401(k) plans and defined-benefit plans.
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