ING-commissioned research into the nation’s attitudes toward retirement has revealed Australians across all generations have a similar view to what a comfortable retirement would resemble.
The “My generation behaviours and attitudes towards money, financial advice and retirement” study showed all respondents wanted enough money to live comfortably, to own their own home and not pay rent, enjoy regular holidays and dining out, and generally have no commitments.
However, the report did identify differences with regard to the definition of retirement in terms of employment. Here 57.8 per cent of baby boomers expected to cease working completely when they retired, while younger generations were open to reducing their employment activities gradually over a period of time through decreasing their working hours or moving to casual employment.
Reasons cited for this disparity in attitudes toward working and retirement were lifestyle choice or the reality recognised by younger Australians they will be unable to fund the type of retirement they desire unless they spend a longer time in the workforce.
In line with this finding was the presence of a noticeable gap between when respondents would like to retire and when they think they will be ready to retire.
“For example, gen X want to retire at an average age of 63, but they know they’re not going to be financially ready until they’re about 72,” ING national wealth sales manager Tim Hewson told selfmanagedsuper.
“So there is almost a decade gap in there and if you were to try to quantify that, it’s a reasonable amount of money to have to save and/or spend in retirement.”
To this end, gen Ys (24 to 38 year olds) want to retire at 61, but thought they would be ready to retire at 68, while generation Z (16 to 23 years old) expressed a desire to retire at 62, but an expectation of being able to afford to retire at 65.
Rice Warner conducted the research in July, with responses from over 2000 Australians received and analysed.
