A new survey by Merrill Lynch and Age Wave, an aging-research and marketing group, tells readers what American’s concerns and fears about health and retirement are.
The research took place last May and included 5,424 respondents.
One takeaway from the survey is that Americans say having good health is the most important ingredient for a happy retirement (81 percent). That ranked well above financial security (58 percent).
The downside to that is that though American’s say good health is paramount, only 29 percent are taking proactive steps such as exercising and changing diets to stay fit. Ten percent are doing nothing, but have been lucky in not having a major health issue, 32 percent are struggling with health challenges, but doing nothing to fix the problems, and 29 percent have had a major incident such as an illness or bad diagnosis and are now trying to correct course.
A looming problem: 25 years ago two-thirds of companies offered retirees health benefits. That has dropped to one-third of companies. Compare that to the number of Americans with potential health problems from the paragraph above, and you can see a potential threat to a happy retirement: 63 percent say they are worried about not being able to afford health care.
When asked what they think about available information on health care costs during retirement, 54 percent said it is overwhelming. And 71 percent said they have not talked about retirement health-care costs with a spouse.
