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Products November 29, 2018
Wells Fargo Launches Retirement Income Planning Center
The new online resource is specifically designed to help those older than age 50 with key issues to consider as they near retirement.
Reported by John Manganaro
Wells Fargo Institutional Retirement and Trust has unveiled a new Retirement Income Planning Center, described as an online resource to help participants solve the “decumulation challenge.”
Jon Graff, Wells Fargo Institutional Retirement and Trust director of Participant Services, says there is clear evidence that many people delay retirement income planning until just a few years or even months before leaving the workforce.
“When you start that late, retirement experts often find there is little to be done to impact your outcome,” Graff says. “But if you start at age 50 or 55, you have 10 to 15 years to change your expected outcomes.”
To help improve participant planning, the Retirement Income Planning Center provides resources to help create a retirement budget and income plan, which Graff says are “two essentials for determining whether you are on track for retirement.” The website also features videos of retiree experiences and tools to help visitors envision what retirement might actually look and feel like. According to Graff, this is also a very commonly overlooked element of retirement planning.
“Accumulating a nest egg is critical, but if people do not optimize Social Security benefits, or if they draw down their savings too quickly, decades of diligent savings behavior can be negatively impacted,” Graff said. “People need help understanding how to convert their savings into a dependable income stream they will not outlive.”
According to Graff, Wells Fargo Institutional Retirement and Trust has also developed Retirement Income Conversations, a service that supports participants wanting to have conversations about their retirement with trained representatives. In addition, onsite meeting presenters are trained to hold these conversations in person at the work site of those companies.
Graff notes that, in pilot testing of these resources, participants frequently discussed the complexities of claiming Social Security benefits and were happy to have someone to talk to about other pre-retirement issues like healthcare costs, budgeting and creating a paycheck in retirement.