More Americans Plan on Later Retirement

October 21, 2004, 1:00 a.m. EDT 1 Min Read

Unsure about their savings, more Americans are erring on the side of caution and rolling back their prospective retirement dates, a new survey shows, The Wall Street Journal reports.

"Rethinking Retirement," a survey done by Gallup for Munich-based UBS AG, shows that 57% of workers would wait until after they turned 62 to retire. Two years ago, when the same survey was given, just 47% said they would wait that long. And in 1998, the first time people were polled, just 36% said that 62 or older would be their retirement age.

What the survey shows is "how few people are genuinely prepared for retirement," according to Chief Investment Strategist Mary Farrell of the U.S. wing of UBS, called UBS Financial Services. She said that most people have not figured out that due to the higher average life expectancy, more than 20% of the average individuals life will be spent in retirement. "A lot more people are going to have a lot longer retirement than they planned on," Farrell said.

The report was not all gloom, though. While almost half of the 612 "non-retired" investors surveyed said they feared they would have a problem with healthcare when they stopped working, only 15% of the 412 already retired investors said they had a fear about healthcare.

Unfortunately, though, more than half the non-retired workers said they were either "very" or "somewhat" concerned that they would outlive their savings, a sentiment shared by 35% of those already retired.