Washington State treasurer: Lack of retirement savings could mean future crisis
A large portion of Americans have little to no retirement savings, and state officials are concerned about an impending "retirement crisis" in several decades when current workers reach retirement age.
"If we are not on the right side of this issue, we are going to have major strains on our state treasury and we are going to have major challenges within communities to meet the essential needs of retirees," said
One of the panelists,
"About half of American households have no savings at all in any retirement account," MacCaul said. "You have half of the population that is not saving."
Pellicciotti and a panel of experts are conducting a series of listening sessions across the state to determine the biggest barriers people encounter in saving for retirement and what the state might do to address the issue.
The meeting at
Following the discussions, Pellicciotti said the information gathered will be coalesced into a report and presented with recommendations to the state Legislature with possible policy options.
"It's a multi-pronged challenge," Pellicciotti said. "There's a need for folks to be aware of the importance of retirement."
"There is a need to make it easy for folks to be able to save for retirement, and it is important to recognize that, for a lot of folks, they're just trying to get by every day and they're not in a position to save for retirement," he added.
Not making enough to be able to save for retirement was one of the issues raised during the feedback portions of the meetings.
About two dozen people attended the meetings, one of whom was
"A living wage for our county is
Several attendees also commented that financial literacy and educating young people about the importance of retirement savings should be made a part of school curriculums.
Others noted it can be difficult for small businesses — which make up a large part of
According to the
A bill to establish an auto-IRA program was introduced in the state Legislature this year, but it was unable to pass during the last session.
Pellicciotti said the listening sessions weren't created with any specific policy goal in mind, but recommendations will eventually be made to the Legislature, hopefully within the next year.
"In a lot of ways,
"Part of our presentation today was outlining the fact that dozens of other states have development mechanisms that allow people to set up retirement accounts for themselves," he added.
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