“How Much Needs to be Saved for Retirement After Factoring In Post-Retirement Risks: Evidence from the EBRI Retirement Security Projection Model,®” and “Employer and Worker Contributions to Health Reimbursement Arrangements and Health Savings Account ..

Summary

How Much Needs to be Saved for Retirement After Factoring In Post-Retirement Risks: Evidence from the EBRI Retirement Security Projection Model,®

• This analysis helps answer one of the most important questions that many defined contribution participants face before retirement: How much do I need to save each year for a “successful” retirement? It includes three of the major post-retirement risks (longevity, investment, and long-term care) while allowing the participant to also choose the probability of “success” that is best suited for their circumstances.
• Given the assumptions used in this Notes article, a single male age 25 earning $40,000 with no previous savings would need a total contribution rate (employee and employer combined) of less than 3 percent per year until retirement (age 65) for a 50 percent chance of success. A 6.4 percent contribution rate would achieve a 75 percent success rate and a 14 percent contribution rate would achieve a 90 percent success rate. But if a male earning $40,000 were to wait until age 40 to begin saving, he would need a 6.5 percent total contribution rate for just a 50 percent chance of success and a 16.5 percent total contribution rate for a 75 percent chance of success; a 90 percent probability of success would be impossible even with a 25 percent contribution rate.
• The analysis also shows how large a participant’s current account balance needs to be, by contribution rate, to be “on-track” for a particular level of retirement success.

Employer and Worker Contributions to Health Reimbursement Arrangements and Health Savings Accounts, 2006–2014

• This report presents findings from the 2014 EBRI/Greenwald & Associates Consumer Engagement in Health Care Survey (CEHCS), as well as earlier surveys, examining the availability of health reimbursement arrangements (HRAs) and health-savings-account (HSA)-eligible plans (consumer-driven health plans, or CDHPs). It also looks at employer and individual contribution behavior.
• The percentage of workers reporting that their employers contribute to the account decreased in 2014 for the first time since 2009. Among individuals with individual coverage and employer contributions, the percentage with contributions between $200–$999 decreased while contributions of $1,000 or more increased in 2014.
• Workers’ contributions to their HSAs decreased slightly in 2014.