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ONE GENERATION OF AMERICANS OWES $86B IN STUDENT DEBT. ITS MEMBERS ARE ALL 60 YEARS OLD OR MORE

Seniors with student debt? Surely that is some sort of a mistake. No, it’s not. A recent article in the Wall Street Journal (WSJ) shined a light on a little known and growing problem. Seniors that have taken on student debt. Some took out loans to help pay for their children’s college tuition and while the child may be out of school for years, the debt remains. Others, in the wake of the most recent recession, took out student loans while trying to reinvent themselves. They needed new skills to make themselves more attractive to potential employers. Many of those dreams withered on the vine but again, the debt remains.

Environmental, social and governance investing – better known as ESG to those in the know (by the way, I was one of those not in the know) is a hotly debated topic in the 401(k) world. Research from Cerulli Associates, which specializes in worldwide asset management and distribution analytics, found that 45% of investor households cited ESG factors as a preferred method of investing, with enthusiasm highest (surprise, surprise) among younger investors.

Findings from MassMutual’s 2018 “State of the American Family” illustrates that on average, respondents expect to retire at age 62, as opposed to age 64 when the study was last conducted five years ago in 2013. Surprisingly, 40% of the respondents from the study intend to retire before age 60, up from 32% from that same 2013 study. With all of this optimism, did any of the percentages go down? Well yes, actually. 22% of respondents now expect to retire after age 65, down from 30% from the 2013 study. So there was a decrease in the percentage of folks who expect to retire after age 65 and an increase in the percentage of folks who expect to retire before 65.

For many Millennials saving for retirement has become a binary choice. Either they choose to pay down their student debt or they choose to save for retirement. Either one or the other. As many Millennials are in the earliest years of their working careers, difficult choices about how to allocate their hard earned paychecks must be made. Therefore, for many Millennials, paying down their student loan trumps deferring into their company’s 401(k) plan.