On the recordMarch 29, 2017
here in America we hope that families will have the opportunity to build successful lives in preparation for a beautiful retirement. That involves many different factors. It involves the solvency of Social Security. It involves the foundation of a good, living-wage job. It involves, certainly, the question of whether, through one's life, they are able to save for retirement. This has become more and more important over time because fewer and fewer jobs have a retirement pension plan. Without that, it is really incumbent on the individual to be able to succeed to put money aside, and we know how difficult it is for an ordinary working family to have the extra funds to be able to put into a retirement account. Certainly, we want to make that as simple and as easy as possible. But what we know is that the simplest strategy--which is to be able to save through your work, to be able to have funds automatically deducted from your paycheck so you never actually get it in your hands--is often unavailable. According to one 2013 study, 40 percent of small business owners themselves had no retirement savings, 75 percent had no plan to fund their own retirement, and of those who are working for employers who hire and have 100 or fewer employees, more than 60 percent--62 percent of the workers--do not have access to a work-based retirement plan. We can imagine the difference between going to work at a job where the employer says: Hey, we have a retirement plan.…





