Seriously, 18% of millennials may be relying on the hope of a winning lottery ticket to help finance their retirement, according to an analysis of a Stash report by Yahoo Finance.
The report from the investment app found that 59% of millennials (defined as being between the ages of 22 and 37) considered earnings from winning the lottery as a viable retirement strategy. Brandon Krieg, Stash’s co-founder, warned millennials against what he called “the opposite of a safe bet” when announcing the survey.
“Instead of crossing their fingers and hoping lottery jackpot dreams come true, people can take concrete steps to improve their finances,” he said.
However, previous surveys indicated that millennials expect to be working longer into their retirement; a ValuePenguin report from last December determined that only one in three millennial workers would have enough savings to retire at 67. The survey catalogued numerous reasons for low retirement savings, including the absence of pensions, paltry millennial participation in 401(k) plans, stagnant wages and the ballooning cost of living.
According to the Stash survey of 1,156 people (sorry, they do not break down how many were actually millennials in their methodology), 22% of millennials plan to work a part-time job during their retirement, and more than three-quarters of respondents said they were living paycheck to paycheck, making it more difficult to build any kind of emergency fund or long-term savings plan.
Millennials reported they lacked the expertise to invest, but many expressed an openness to consider doing so; the survey found that nearly half of the respondents would consider building retirement nest eggs with better knowledge of investing, and one-third said that “free, high-quality” advice would spur them to invest.
