“Time travel” is the creative tool utilized by Lincoln Retirement Institute to learn what Baby Boomers and retirees expect in the future and what they might change about the past.

Lincoln Retirement Institute released a survey of 500 Baby Boomers and retirees, conducted for the company by Zogby International in October, 2007. Subjects were asked to question their future selves about their lives in retirement, and then to counsel the young adults they once were. According to the survey, high on the list of concerns about the future for many respondents are fear of becoming a financial burden for their children. Most of those surveyed (66 percent) said they would ask a future self how effective their financial planning for retirement had been, and just 16 percent of those surveyed said that they would tell a younger self “not to change a thing, you are on the right track.”

More than a third of respondents noted that they would have focused more on creating an income for life. Beginning to save sooner figured high on the list of advice to a younger self for more than 25 percent. Twenty-seven percent would have been better prepared to put insurance policies in place, and to cope with rising health care costs and the need for long term care. Eighteen percent wished they had gotten more financial education. Nineteen percent would have shifted focus from relying on Social Security to augmenting personal savings. Fifteen percent would have focused on paying down credit card debt, while 12 percent would have emphasized investing.

While results were consistent across the income brackets, some answers varied by gender. Most often, changing jobs was the catalyst for men to consider the financial future, while many women reported that the death of a spouse or loved one was the start of their retirement planning.

When asked what they planned to do if their income for retirement proved to be inadequate, those questioned proposed such strategies as scaling down lifestyle, taking out a reverse mortgage, going back to work and turning to prayer.

Related posts

• Life Insurance During Divorce
• The Search for Security at Retirement
• AIG Agrees to Break Itself Up
• First-Ever “Life Insurance Gap” Study Finds That Many Americans Have Just Half the Life Insurance Protection They Need to Meet Their Own Self-Described Financial Objectives
• ‘It won’t happen to me’ keeps life insurance in the dark Down Under