MILLENNIALS - Student Debt to Retirement

"Between student debt and part-time work, what Millennials should do now to save for retirement" PBS Newshour 3/17/2015

Excerpt

SUMMARY:  As Baby Boomers approach retirement, the Millennial generation is getting its foothold in the workforce, and facing financial challenges making it hard to save for later years.  Judy Woodruff talks to Jen Mishory of Young Invincibles and David John of AARP about the different factors that have shaped each generation’s saving habits and how young Americans can meet their retirement goals.

JUDY WOODRUFF (NewsHour):  This year, millennials, the group roughly 18 to 34 years old, will overtake baby boomers as the largest living generation in the country.  And even at the dawn of their careers, it turns out they are more worried about retirement than previous generations.  And perhaps they should be.

Here to help fill in the picture, Jen Mishory. She is executive director of Young Invincibles.  It’s a research and advocacy group for young adults.  And David John, he’s a senior policy adviser with AARP.  He also works on retirement issues at the Brookings Institution.

And we welcome both of you to the NewsHour.

DAVID JOHN, AARP:  Thank you.

JEN MISHORY, Young Invincibles:  Thanks so much for having us.

JUDY WOODRUFF:  So we know today the average retirement age for men is 64.  For women, it’s 62.  And we also know that studies are showing that most millennials expect to retire, they say, by age 65, but they plan to keep on working while they’re in retirement.

Jen Mishory, how much are they thinking about retirement, this generation?

JEN MISHORY:  Yes, absolutely.

Young people are thinking about retirement today.  When young people, for example, have access to a retirement account, they are actually saving at relatively consistent rates.  The problem is we’re actually not seeing young people accessing things like retirement accounts at the same rate.

So only about half of workers have access to that kind of traditional retirement account.  Young people, 25 percent of young people are part-time workers, so you’re seeing just fewer and fewer young workers having access to those kinds of mechanisms to actually save and at the same time struggling with things like student debt, struggling coming out of this recession.

So we’re looking at a problem also around wealth accumulation.