Mark Dolliver's Takes: Life is Too Short for Retirement

Intending to retire and planning to retire are two different things, though many folks are oblivious to this distinction. In a Wall Street Journal Online/Harris Interactive Personal Finance Poll fielded last month, 90 percent of adults said they plan to retire. However, 22 percent haven’t done anything at all to prepare for it. And many of the rest haven’t done much. In fact, just 50 percent of adults claim to have begun “planning” for retirement, which doesn’t necessarily mean they’ve done something tangible like saving money for it.