America Saves Week 2012

America Saves Week 2012 (#ASW2012 on Twitter) starts today. As you might know America Saves Week is a major marketing campaign to get individual Americans to focus on savings and set goals, but also works with employers to promote savings in the workplace. It’s a very worthwhile effort (coordinated by the Consumer Federation of America and the Employee Benefit Research Institute) and we’ve signed up as supporters for years.

I’d encourage individuals and employers to investigate ways that they can participate in America Saves Week. It makes an excellent hook for savings related news too, and that’s why the good folks at the sponsoring organizations decided to release the results of their annual survey on savings and family finances last week and there are some really interesting results. 

The survey shows the on-going impact of the troubled economy, as declining percentages of Americans report engaging in savings behavior, having sufficient emergency and retirement savings over the previous two years. Contrast that with the general picture of an increased personal savings rate over the past few years and you begin to see the importance of digging deeper than that broad metric allows.

The other major takeaway from the survey data is strong evidence that access to automated savings plans has a major impact in the savings behavior of individuals at all income levels. This is no surprise, and it’s a major reason that the Auto-IRA plan is such a good idea. If folks have access to an at-work, automated retirement plan, they take advantage of it, and if they don’t then odds are that they’re not saving for retirement. While we’ve long argued that savings needs extend beyond retirement, there’s no clearer illustration of the needs of American families and the power of automated solutions. 

So congrats to the organizers of America Saves Week 2012, and to our readers please take the time to consider how you can promote savings for others as well as taking the time to examine your own savings plans this week.