You're listening to Bloomberg Business Week with Carol Masser and Jason Kelly on Bloomberg Radio. Havefullily retired? Now array for you retired? Well, I guess some people may be doing a little dance when they retire, but maybe fewer people than you think. And that's because maybe they haven't saved enough money and how they save it is changing. Let's get into that with Frederick Acciter. He is the head of the institutional client group at a Wells Fargo Asset
Management based in San Francisco. Here with me in New York City in our Bloomberg Interactive Brokers studio today. So great to have you with me. Thank you and thanks for all right. So you have done a retirement study, your tenth annual Wells Fargo's tenth annual, and I have to say, reading through some of the details of it, there are some things that really jump out, most notably how much money people have saved by generation, or in
some cases not saved. That's exactly right. I mean, we're seeing a fundamental shift in the retirement landscape with more and more responsibility to the to all of us too. We have to fund our own retirement, so Interestingly, eight six percent of today's retirees are saying that that that either social security or traditional pension plan is a primary source of income in retirement. And then that of course goes down dramatically for for other for for younger generations.
And that brings us to to your really to your question of the mismatch between savings and safety what people have saved and what they perceive they will need to have a safe retirement. So take Generation X as an example. On average, they've saved sixty six thousand dollars and they say that they will need seven two thousand dollars in order to safety retire. It's eleven times more. Wow, So is the mismatch owing to people saying just not getting it.
I mean I have to say I and many many things to my wife for this and our financial planet, like we're pretty maniacal about it. Um And you know, a lot of it is about just the math of Okay, save now, and it grows and hopefully with markets cooperating in things like that. But why aren't people saving? Is
it that they can't or that they just don't. I think it's always a combination, but it's it's you know, we have to kind of step back and say that that most people they don't have the knowledge or interest or time, you know, to to also save. It's difficult. But what we find is that when people have a combination of a long term financial goal and a sense of taking action, what we call when people are in
the planning mindset, extraordinary things happen. That's when you see a real change in terms of savings behavior and just success from a financial standpoint. And so are you seeing the next generations? Are I'm Generation X? Are the younger generations than me? Saving more less? How is it trending? The trend is in many ways favorable. Actually, Generation X
stends out is the most vulnerable generation. We're kind of sandwiched in between two systems of having a traditional defined benefit plan or auto enrollments and automatically being enrolled in plants every younger younger generations, so millennials, for example, they started saving six years earlier than Generation X, so they're better off from that standpoint. They're more of them that feel like they're on track for secure retirements as well.
Almost in every way they they're a little bit better off than Generation X. And is that in part because companies are doing a better job essentially sort of making it more obvious and clearer what their employees need to do. Yes, that's exactly what I mean. More and more companies now are saying that as soon as you start working there, you're automatically do nothing and you still have a sense of taking action. Right, and so what else needs to
be done? What? What? What's the best single piece of advice you can give somebody if they're listening to this and they say, I'm gen x, I'm right where you're talking about or on the lower end, is it just about kind of taking that first step? What do they need to do? Yeah? That that is? That? Is that the really the answer? I mean we find again this planning mindset, combination of a long term goal and a sense of taking action. When you do that, extraordinary things happen.
And that's when you have more than twice the savings. You have twice as likely to say, on track for a secure tirement. So whatever you can do is sit down, establish a financial plan. You know that long term goal, Try to find waste to take action. I mean, maybe that's a roll in your four one K plan, or start saving a little bit more, start paying down debt.
Debt is a big problem as well, so start taking actions so that it's less overwhelming, right, all right, very very good advice, and a survey worth checking out because it really sort of lays it all out very nicely. Frederick Exeter is head of Institutional of the Institutional Client Group excuse me, at Wells Fargo Asset Management, based out in the City by the Bay, San Francisco. Here in New York City today