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- Creators: Barrett, The Honors College
- Creators: Anand, Rohan
Through research, interviews, and analysis, our paper provides the local community with a resource that offers a comprehensive collection of insight into the Mirabella at ASU Life Plan Community and the projected impact it will have on the City of Tempe and Arizona State University.
Through research, interviews, and analysis, our paper provides the local community with a resource that offers a comprehensive collection of insight into the Mirabella at ASU Life Plan Community and the projected impact it will have on the City of Tempe and Arizona State University.
Through research, interviews, and analysis, our paper provides the local community with a resource that offers a comprehensive collection of insight into the Mirabella at ASU Life Plan Community and the projected impact it will have on the City of Tempe and Arizona State University.
• Are current college undergraduates interested in the idea of saving for retirement?
• Do they have realistic expectations about how much money they need to save in order to live comfortably during retirement?
• Are there differences in expectations between people who are interested in saving for retirement using traditional means and people who are interested in saving for retirement using the extreme-saving FIRE (Financial Independence Retire Early) method?
This paper examines students’ interest in the idea of saving for retirement through a series of lenses: demographics, financial retirement literacy, and expressed commitment to save for retirement. I hypothesized that traditional retirement expected savers and FIRE expected savers, who correctly answer financial retirement literacy questions, are realistic about how much money they will need to save in order to live comfortably during retirement. To investigate this, a survey was sent out to two ASU Tempe campus business classes; 171 completed responses were analyzed. The statistical analysis of the unfiltered survey results showed three findings, but one finding stood out the most: Students who know what a 401k is (Question 5 in Exhibit 1) are significantly more likely to plan on saving for retirement, when compared to students who don’t know what a 401k is.
When filtering survey results to only show responses from students who know what a 401k is, median responses show that traditional retirement expected savers are somewhat realistic with their retirement savings expectations, while FIRE expected savers are not realistic with their retirement savings expectations.
The goal of this paper is to determine whether or not multiple economic and societal changes have or have not made retirement in America, an easier, or harder goal to achieve. My hypothesis is that these changes have created an environment in which retiring and preparing for retirement is much, much more difficult. The analysis considers multiple economic and social changes between May, 1985 and May, 2019, a 34-year span. <br/><br/>In this paper, I will be comparing the average 1985 college graduate to the average 2019 college graduate. The 8 major factors I look at are, annual salary, average student debt (assuming a 120-month repayment period), average housing cost (assuming a 360-month payment period), average car expenses (assuming a 60-month payment period), and average annual food, clothing, taxes and medical insurance costs. All of these figures look at the end points, looking at figures for the average 1985 graduate, and the figures for the average 2019 graduate. The 1985 figures are then put into 2019 dollars, and subtracted from the original salary figure. This will give us an objective way to compare savings, and therefore ability to save for retirement. <br/><br/>My analysis demonstrates that it is actually easier for people today to prepare for retirement than it was 34 years ago. The average 2019 graduate had $4,178.96 remaining at the end of a year. Comparatively, the 1985 graduate had a debt of $12,837.94. This is an effective difference of $17,016.91, benefiting the 2019 graduate by far.
Of the many retirement savings options available, defined benefit pension plans were once a retirement income staple. Due to the highs and lows of the economic cycle, defined benefit pension plans have become severely underfunded. A series of inadequate contributions, enabled by weak funding and risk management policies, poses uncertainty for the retirement of many. The cost of paying pension benefits rises as defined benefit pension plans become increasingly underfunded, burdening the employers who continue to pay them. However, without increasing these already unaffordable pension benefits alongside inflation, they become less valuable to retirees. As pension benefits lose their value and the costs of retirement, such as healthcare and assisted living, increase, defined benefit pension plans may not provide the retirement security that was once promised.