Retirement 911: Are You Prepared? It's Never Too Early To Start
MIAMI (CBSMiami) -- Angela Velez works as a nail technician at Leslie's Nail Salon in Weston. Her husband, Roberto Mulieri is an architect with an office in Pembroke Pines. The couple, in their 50s, is planning for their Golden Years, looking forward to getting old together and retiring.
"I love to travel," Angela said. "I want to be one of those old ladies that travels a lot."
The sad reality is that most people won't have the savings for the type of retirement Angela dreams about. According to the National Institute on Retirement Security, 45-percent of Americans do not have a 401K or IRA. And 66-percent of people near retirement age have no retirement savings at all.
Financial planner Charles Sachs calls it a retirement crisis.
"The main issue here is having the dollars to make sure you can do the things you want to do when you retire," Sachs said. "You are not going to be working so you will have to live off Social Security, your 401K and any other retirement account. There are so many people who aren't saving up for retirement and don't know how long they'll live in retirement."
Charles Sachs paid a visit to Angela and Roberto to go over their retirement plans. While he found they are contributing to retirement accounts, he also thinks they can do better. He advises them to cut back on things like going out to dinner and taking family vacations.
"They're at a critical point in time," Sachs said. "They need to put a certain amount of money away each month to hit their retirement goals. They have to learn how to budget and save. They have to commit to pay themselves first and put that money to work on a monthly basis for their retirement."
Sachs advises clients to start saving early, putting away at least 10 percent of their salary. By the time they're ready for retirement, he says they should have eight times their annual income socked away. That's a lot of money, but Sachs says you'll need it.
"Not only do you need the money, you're not going to make money and as you see with the price of movies or the cost of a postage stamp, prices are going up so you need the dollars to catch up to inflation," he said.
In order to avoid a retirement crisis, Jose and Angela say they're already starting to change old habits.
"We used to go out with friends and we would pick up the bill," said Angela. "It's a lot of money. The intentions are good but I don't think we'll be doing that again."
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