Mark Your Calendars: National Retirement Planning Week is April 9-13, 2012

April 03, 2012

Last week, I wrote about the importance of running a retirement calculator or a retirement preparedness assessment.  With National Retirement Planning Week coming up April 9 -13, 2012, there’s no better time to highlight the necessity of your employees knowing where they stand regarding their own retirement readiness.  This year’s theme is “Retire On Your Terms” and is sponsored by the National Retirement Planning Coalition.  The NRPC was formed by a group of prominent financial industry and advocacy organizations to raise public awareness of the need for comprehensive retirement planning and to recognize that the need to educate Americans on retirement planning is an ongoing effort and is committed to making this a national priority.  Members of the NRPC include the Jumpstart Coalition, the American College, EBRI, the Center for Retirement Research at Boston College, and the American Savings Education Council, along with many others.

So how can you participate in the National Retirement Planning Week? One easy task is to send an e-blast to your workforce with a link to a retirement calculator so check with your retirement plan provider to see if there is one available that would already be pre-filled with each of your employees’ data by virtue of logging into their retirement account site.  Another idea would be to host a retirement planning workshop or webcast but if you aren’t able to get a workshop scheduled that quickly for next week, the American College offers a quick alternative.  As a NRPC member, the American College has put together a 5 part series on retirement planning that consists of 5 minute podcasts you can provide to your workforce.  Since the American College is near (45 minutes from me in Bryn Mawr, PA) and dear to me (I studied for my ChFC, CFP®, and my masters degree with them), I want to share their tools with you:

• Part 1 – Improving Your Retirement Security
• Part 2 – What You Must Know About Retirement Planning
• Part 3 – How Social Security Affects Your Retirement Security
• Part 4 – What is Retirement Income Planning?
• Part 5 – Retirement Income Strategies

However, don’t just focus on retirement planning for your workforce for just one week.   Helping your employees prepare for their retirement should be an ongoing strategy from the minute you welcome each new employee to their new career with your company to their very last day on the job as they each make that leap to retirement.