Automatic enrollment in retirement plans has been the behavioral scientist’s dream come true. Now roughly 52% of all 401(k) plans use automatic enrollment to boost retirement saving – great news for financial advisors and retirement counselors. If you parse the data further and look at only those employees with a high school diploma or less who were auto-enrolled, the results about retirement saving are even more troubling given that these employees’ debt levels rose by 2.1% for consumer debt, 3.7% for auto debt and 17% of their total wages for mortgage debt. But the results of this research are striking, particularly for the less-educated civilian employee whose higher consumer debt levels offset their retirement contributions. The researchers aren’t as worried about the uptick in mortgage debt because a person can always sell a home or take out an equity loan.

Source: Forbes March 20, 2018 12:00 UTC