It’s fairly common for people of the millennial generation to think, “What’s the big deal? We have plenty of time to save for retirement.” But millennials can benefit the most by adopting a different view of retirement and financial planning while they're still young. We offer steps to help provide millennials with an overview of retirement security while acknowledging the special economic challenges they face. The steps they can take include beginning retirement saving early, understanding the plan, increasing deferrals over time, taking advantage of retirement savings estimate tools, appreciating the power of compound interest, resisting the temptation to tap retirement savings for other purposes (e.g., hardship distributions), and keeping plan beneficiary designations up to date. Together, these steps will help move millennials down the path to increased retirement security.

Reproduced from the Second Quarter issue of Benefits Quarterly, published by the the International Society of Certified Employee Benefits Specialists.