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Retirement Planning Ailing Due to Health Insurance Costs, Business Owners Say

What are the strategies business owners plan to employ for a financially secure retirement?

Seven-in-ten American business owners consider rising health care costs to the primary threat to their current or future retirement, according to a new Millionaire Corner survey of 1,100 investors.

“The cost of health insurance” has been ranked the top small-business problem for the last 25 years, according to “Small-Business Problems and Priorities,” an annual report issued by the National Federation of Independent Business. In the 2012 study, 52 percent of the more than 20,000 members who were randomly surveyed, said that the cost of health insurance was their top problem. In comparison, 38 percent said “Uncertainty over Economic Conditions” was the most critical problem they face.

Health insurance costs for small firms, the NFIB state, have risen 103 percent in the last decade, outpacing wages and inflation. Small-business owners have been compelled to cut back employer hours so they would not have to pay benefits, or terminate positions. (The NFIB legally challenged the Affordable Care Act, also known as Obama Care. The Supreme Court upheld the law last summer).

Half (49 percent) of business owners surveyed by Millionaire Corner cite inflation as the major threat to their current or future retirement, inevitably followed by taxes (47 percent).

Cuts in Social Security and Medicare benefits are a primary retirement concern for more than three-in-ten of business owners, as are investment performance and “larger economic events” beyond their control.

What are the strategies business owners plan to employ for a financially secure retirement? Almost one-third said they plan to reduce their current debt level, while 28 percent said they will reduce current spending.

Almost one-fourth (24 percent) forecast having to postpone their retirement. A Wall Street Journal study conducted last August found that nearly half of the 799 small-business surveyed expect to retire after age 65, with 38 percent saying that their planned retirement date is later than they had forecast five years ago. More than half (56 percent) said that most of their retirement nest egg is tied to their business.

 

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