THE NEW RULES OF RETIREMENT SAVING • 107
another way, people almost always under estimate how long they’ll live, and thus how much they need to save. You don’t have to take my word for it. There’s a national or- ganization called the Society of Actuaries, which is a leading re- search and education organization supporting actuaries like me. The Society of Actuaries conducted a survey where they asked Americans working today to estimate how long they would live. So go ahead and take a guess. How old do you think you’ll get to be? Here’s the shocking outcome of the survey: 59 percent of peo- ple underestimated their longevity. Fifty-nine percent of people thought they would die sooner than is statistically likely. ¹⁸ In other words, most people are underestimating how many years they’ll spend retired, and because of that they’re underesti- mating how much money they will need to support themselves in retirement.
¹⁸Society of Actuaries. June 2012. “2011 Risks and Process of Retirement Survey Re- port, Key Findings and Issues: Longevity.” https://www.soa.org/files/research/pro- jects/research-key-finding-longevity.pdf.
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