FedSmith.com users said in a recent poll that they do not have confidence that Social Security will be able to pay benefits to them when they reach retirement.
We asked our users how confident they were that the government will be able to provide them the promised level of retirement benefits from Social Security after retirement.
The answers were as follows:
- Very confident: 10%
- Somewhat confident: 25%
- Not very confident: 30%
- Not at all confident: 35%
Also, the overwhelming majority of respondents said they plan to have other sources of income in retirement besides Social Security. 95% of respondents said they plan to supplement their Social Security income with additional sources.
Federal employees have two major retirement plans at their disposal to help them in retirement, and respondents in this particular poll are obviously planning to put those to use. Employees under the Civil Service Retirement System (CSRS) receive a pension from the government and employees under the Federal Employees Retirement System (FERS) have the Thrift Savings Plan as well as a basic annuity as their primary source of income to draw from during retirement from the federal careers.
The age ranges of respondents in the poll broke out as follows:
- 20-40: 9%
- 41-60: 59%
- 61+: 32%
FedSmith.com author Brenton Smith said in a recent article that Social Security is on an unsustainable path. Smith noted in the article that public opinion has yet to fully reflect the impending inability of Social Security to pay all of its promised benefits, but he notes the financial figures of Social Security are hard to question. If the feedback from FedSmith.com users is any indication, they are seeing the writing on the wall that the general public apparently is missing. For more on this subject, see Smith’s article: The Third Rail is Running Out of Track.
