Let’s take a moment of silence to remember the pension. We dearly miss that well-loved, but ultimately unstainable stream of lifetime income that employers used to supply loyal workers in retirement.
Now what? Employers have punted the responsibility of lifetime income and medical care to their employees. They feel really good about providing a 401(k) with a match and the freedom to for employees to choose their own investment mix. What power! What exhilaration!
What crap! What people really need as they approach retirement is a good education on how to be retired. What are some methods for creating an income stream in retirement? How does Medicare work? How can I best utilize Social Security?
Unfortunately, the current system provides a way for employees to accumulate wealth for retirement, but no help at all transitioning from a saver to a spender. Employees retire and are prey to the world of financial sales people who will happily sell them investment products, but give them no help in creating a holistic plan.
How can employers ease that transition? How can they help employees be savvy consumers of financial services in retirement? One way is to provide non-biased education to pre-retirees in the workplace. This would involve hiring a financial professional for education ONLY, not bringing in a free speaker who will then use your employees as a prospecting list.
I provide a great pre-retirement class as well as 30-minute one-on-one appointments to start people on the path to successful retirement. I charge by the day and there is NO follow-up sales pitch to employees.
Contact me at 303-324-0014 or kristi@sullivanfinancialplanning.com to talk about how I can help your employees move to a successful retirement.
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