43 percent Americans have less than 10,000 dollars for retirement

By Arun Kumar, Washington, March 10 : As the number of American workers with virtually no retirement savings grew for the third straight year, over four in 10 had less than 10,000 dollars, according to a new survey.

The percentage of workers who said they had less than USD 10,000 savings grew to 43 percent in 2010, from 39 percent in 2009, according to the Employee Benefit Research Institute's annual Retirement Confidence Survey released Tuesday.

That excludes the value of primary homes and defined-benefit pension plans. Workers who said they had less than USD 1,000 jumped to 27 percent, from 20 percent in 2009.

Confidence in the ability to save enough for a comfortable retirement hovered at 16 percent of respondents, the second lowest point in the 20-year history of the survey.

"Americans' attitudes toward retirement have clearly tracked the economy the last couple of years, and that seems to be the case in 2010," said Jack VanDerhei, EBRI's research director and co-author of the survey, in a statement.

The percentage of workers who said they have saved for retirement fell to 69 percent, from 75 percent in 2009.

The gap between what Americans have saved and what they'd need for retirement is forcing workers to prolong their working years.

According to the survey, 24 percent of workers said they postponed their planned retirement age in the past year, up from 14 percent in 2008.

But even as fears over healthcare costs and job prospects mount, the survey found that only 46 percent of workers have tried to calculate what they need for a comfortable standard of living in their golden years.

"People just don't want to think about this," said VanDerhei. "Everybody thinks they're too young to think about it, until suddenly they're too old to do anything about it."

In general, financial planners say that retirement savings, including Social Security benefits and pension, should be large enough to provide about 80 percent of pre-retirement income.

To reach that target, "most Americans need to be saving within the healthy range of 6 percent - 10 percent (of their salary)", said Beth McHugh, vice president of workplace investing for Fidelity Investments cited by CNNMoney.

But the survey found that 54 percent of the workers with some form of savings said they have less than USD 25,000 stowed away.

The EBRI surveyed 1,153 US workers and retirees, age 25 and older, in January.