Farmers Makes Retirement Planning Like Vacation Planning

June 18, 2003 (PLANSPONSOR.com) - Knowing employees are more interested in tropical locales and time away from the office than retirement planning, Farmers Life Insurance Company has rolled out a retirement planning product intended to make the information more manageable.

The reason is that while retirement looms in the future as a vague and somewhat scary goal, frolicking with Mickey Mouse is a clearly fun, and well-defined, goal, with the steps needed to get there equally apparent.    With this finding in mind, Farmers developed the life stage-based system called Financial Blueprint.  

Financial Blueprint seeks to break retirement planning down to simpler, more manageable pieces by life stage – like stringing a series of vacations together – to ultimately produce a “blueprint” to a great retirement and family protection.    With each stage details are provided, investment actions are suggested and common financial situational concerns are addressed.  

The concept is based on survey results that show   more people (55%) believe they will be able to take their next vacation as planned than believe they will be able to retire at the age desired (42%). In fact, the majority of respondents admit they spend about the same amount of time planning for their annual vacations as they do for their retirement or a child’s college education, despite admitting that retirement is more important.

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