Nearly one-quarter of Americans don’t have plans to retire, according to a new poll from the Associated Press-NORC Center for Public Affairs Research.
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The data, based on survey responses from 1,423 adults deemed representative of the U.S. population, shows 23% of workers don’t expect to stop working, and another quarter plan to continue working even after age 65.
For many respondents, it comes down to financial discomfort.
In fact, only 14% of Americans under the age of 50 and 29% over 50 reported feeling extremely or very prepared for retirement, according to the poll. Another 4 in 10 older adults said they do feel somewhat prepared, while just about one-third feel unprepared. By comparison, 56% of younger adults say they don't feel prepared at all for retirement.
Among those who are fully retired, 38% said they felt very or extremely prepared when they retired, while 25% said they felt not very or not at all prepared.
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A recent survey from Bankrate also revealed a rising trend of parents putting retirement on hold to help their financially struggling adult children.
Senior economic analyst Mark Hamrick said there are two major reasons behind the trend: the rising cost of education and the rising popularity of higher degrees.
“This is the ironic, unintended expense of people staying in school longer,” he said. “The way young people come of age has changed somewhat over the past 50 years or even longer — there’s no longer a sense of immediate need for young people to enter the workforce, even on a part-time basis.”
But remaining in the workforce may be unrealistic for people dealing with unexpected illness or injuries. For them, high medical bills and a lack of savings loom large over day-to-day expenditures.
Read the full report at apnews.com.
The Associated Press contributed to this report.
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