Ackley Associates Announce New Retirement Education Program
LEES SUMMIT, MO, September 20, 2010 -- Dennis Ackley, president of Ackley Associates, a retirement education consulting firm, announced the availability of the innovative Retirement Adequacy Incite© program. "Retirement Adequacy Incite provides younger employees with the essential knowledge and motivation they must have to begin using a 401k or 403b to achieve an adequate retirement," says Ackley. "If 401ks and 403(b)s are going to work as retirement plans, then 35-year-old employees should have $50,000 account balances – not 65-year-olds."
RAI is a realistic, honest and hopeful approach to retirement education that's built on trust and clarity. The price of retirement is huge – more than most peoples' homes. For example, a $3,500 monthly income for 25 years (300 months) – from age 65 to 90 – is over $1 million ($3,500 X 300 =$1,050,000). Unfortunately, most employees are unaware of this reality. Good news: employees have Social Security and other sources of income to help pay it. Bad news: half of employees age 60 have less than $100,000 in their 401k accounts.
Accumulating enough for retirement is nearly impossible to do in the last 10 or even 20 years of full-time work. Younger employees can be motivated to begin saving enough…but only if they understand and believe the enormity of the price. That's what RAI does.
"RAI uses adult-education principles and competency-based instruction concepts," says Ackley. "RAI's unique elements include trust, transparency and self-discovery, and most important, self-motivation."
When it comes to money, adults must trust the messages and the messengers before they'll act. Often, financially unsophisticated adults don't have enough trust of outside experts who run 401k meetings to do what they say. So, that education is largely a wasted effort…paid by fees often taken from participants' accounts.
RAI uses the employer's own high-trust messengers to lead the 60- to 90-minute "dialog." The visual format provides novice and seasoned meeting leaders with easy-to-present content for the meetings.
The presentation consists of basic but powerful factual information. There's nothing resembling a sales pitch. There's no "you should do this" financial advice. Most concepts are presented as questions to the group and there are several group quizzes. Employees complete a confidential, one-page worksheet to estimate the price of the retirement they want. They also estimate the "discounts" – the amounts they've already saved, their promised future income benefits, and their estimated future parttime work income. To get an idea of how much they should be contributing today, they can also estimate their "layaway payments." At the end of the meeting, employees complete a short questionnaire to see how much learning took place.
RAI focuses on the specific things employees must know to get a good start using a 401k or 403b to achieve an adequate retirement. Too many employees start too late…and never seek qualified financial advice.
About Ackley Associates
Dennis Ackley worked in instructional research and design before spending 25 years in retirement communication consulting. He's long been a critic of conventional retirement ed. Now, after forming Ackley Associates, he's put his knowledge and creativity into the Retirement Adequacy Incite© program. To learn more about it, visit www.dennisackley.com. If you'd like to see the RAI program, contact Dennis Ackley at dennis@dennisackley.com or 816-695-4808.
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