Avoiding a retirement bust.

• Author: Petrini, Anna
• Position: STATESTATS

National Retirement Planning Week is April 11-15, during which the National Retirement Planning Coalition will be offering several opportunities for Americans to focus on their future financial goals and how to achieve them.

It comes at a good time. Americans are living longer but their retirement savings aren't keeping up. Many retirement accounts are running dangerously low. Fewer workers have traditional pensions. And Americans worry about the future of Social Security. Now more than ever before, saving for retirement is vital.

In a recent Federal Reserve survey, 31 percent of people who had yet to retire reported they had no retirement savings or pension, and of those with household incomes less than $40,000 a year, 55 percent said they plan to keep working as long as possible or not ever retire.

Having a retirement plan through work is key to whether people save for retirement. Today, only about half of private sector U.S. workers are active in one, according to The Pew Charitable Trusts, but the availability of plans and participation in them varies considerably by state.

Since 2012, lawmakers in more than half the states have considered different kinds of initiatives to encourage their constituents to save for retirement. Proposals range from setting up state-sponsored individual retirement account programs to creating voluntary retirement plan...