Financial Regret at Older Ages and Longevity Awareness

Abstract

Many older people express regret about undersaving; here, we extend prior work by reporting regret about five other critical financial topics. Using the Health and Retirement Study, we first show that older people who regret past financial decisions differ significantly from those who do not. Second, in an experiment, we demonstrate that informing people about objective survival probabilities increases regret about not buying lifetime income by 42% overall, and by more among the high income or those in good health. We also document that, for some, providing such information increases regret about having claimed social security early and undersaving. These results may explain previous findings about why survival information can alter financial decisions.

Keywords: retirement, insurance, benefit claiming, annuitization, financial dependence

JEL Classification: D14, D15, D83, G22, G41, G51