Just One in Five Participants Reviewed Accounts in 2016

Results from a recent consumer survey by Voya Financial suggest that many Americans are not spending enough time on important decisions related to their retirement plan.

“This could have a significant impact on how successful they are in achieving their future financial goals,” researchers warn.

According to Voya, a significant majority of respondents (80%) said that they had not taken the time to review or revise their retirement plan within the past year. Further, more than half (53%) confirmed that they did not review their retirement plan even after experiencing a major life change that impacted their finances.

“While it’s human nature to put off difficult tasks, more than one quarter admitted they would procrastinate longer on making a retirement plan decision than they would with other activities, such as preparing to speak in public (23%), studying for an important exam (17%) or researching a personal loan (17%),” the survey report explains. “When it came to making decisions related to the retirement plan process, nearly two thirds (63%) said they spent too little or no time at all on this important topic.”

Voya researchers were surprised to see that age and gender had little impact on the time Americans spent reviewing their retirement plans. Nearly as many Boomers (26%) as Millennials (30%) said they would put off making retirement decisions longer than they would other activities.

Regarding the breakdown of the data by gender, Voya suggests slightly more men (22%) have reviewed or revised their retirement plans within the past year compared to women (18%). However, men and women were equally as likely to delay making retirement decisions due to the amount of thought required. Similarly, they are equally inclined to feel they spend too little or no time at all making retirement decisions, at 63%.