A new paper lays out the dangers of one-size-fits-all savings advice. What assumptions are you making?
If you're relying blindly on hallowed personal finance averages—planning for 40 years of work, saving 15 percent of salary—you could be in for a rocky retirement.
Retirement advice is made to be tailored to our needs and the times. People often sit down to figure out how much they will need and assume they'll spend 40 years in the workforce, from age 25 to age 65, more or less. That's an outmoded assumption from the days when defined-benefit pension plans roamed the earth, said Diane Garnick, TIAA's chief income strategist.
"We don't have that labor market anymore," she said. "It couldn't be farther from the truth."
Women in particular need to look out. These rules of thumb are often inadequate to the reality of their shorter careers and longer lives.1 Women who are widowed are twice as likely to be living in poverty as their male counterparts, according to the National Institute on Retirement Security.
Suzanne Woolley | Bloomberg