Both presidential candidates have been very forthright about their devotion to taking care of the middle class, but there's some evidence recently that the middle class hasn't been doing a good job of taking care of itself. The research firm LIMRA has conducted a survey of middle-class Americans - defined as those earning between $40,000 and $100,000 annually - and found that two thirds of them save less than 5 percent of their income for retirement. Nearly fourth of them save nothing at all.
What's even worse is that the closer people are to retirement, the less likely they are to save. Members of the middle class over the age of 55 were actually the most likely to be saving nothing at all, with 26 percent of them in that group. On the other hand, that cohort was also the most likely to say they knew they needed to save 15 percent or more of their income for retirement.
In a separate survey, the Insured Retirement Institute found that 30 percent of all Baby Boomers stopped contributing to a retirement plan during the past 12 months, and 16 percent of them prematurely withdrew funds from a retirement plan. Of course, the Boomers have started retiring, so you'd expect some of them to stop funding a plan - but not 30 percent of them.
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