You’ve got to Start Sometime

There was big news at Chez Carlino a few weeks ago.

After slogging through two years at temporary positions, where she did everything from walking dogs, taking her boss’s car to the repair shop to supervising contractors on construction of a pool, my eldest daughter landed a full-time and hopefully, permanent gig at a marketing and communications company, which incidentally were her two pursuits of study in college.

Not to temper her feelings of employment euphoria, I told her one of the first things she needed to do after signing up for company health benefits was to enroll in their 401(k) savings plan.

After outlining to her the basic principles of compound investing and explaining how if she began saving now by the time she was ready to retire she would have a sizeable sum to begin drawing from, she hopefully will take my advice and do just that.

In a remarkable coincidence to my paternal savings lecture, financial services specialist Bankrate recently released a survey which said that more Americans are saving for retirement than ever before.

That’s the good news.

The bad news is that that figure stands at just 21 percent of those polled. So obviously there’s still some work to do. Better news is that the study found just 5 percent chose not to save for retirement – a record low. Hopefully that number will get closer to zero in years to come.

Another new high this year was the amount of Americans (56 percent) who are saving the same amount for retirement as last year.

Bankrate’s survey also examined age groups leading the way in saving more now than last year for their retirement. The poll found that Generation Xers (ages 36 to 51) led the pack at 26 percent followed by younger millennials (those ages 18-25) at 22 percent.

With any luck she will be among those in that latter category in next year’s poll.

So unlike my repeated lectures on the cleanliness of her room or the dangers of running up online purchases at Amazon.com, I hope this complimentary consult will sink in. By contrast if she chooses to ignore my recommendation, I explained that living in a used refrigerator box under a bridge and frying squirrel for dinner holds precious little appeal – at any age.