Phil Cannella – Phillip Cannella News: Phil Cannella: “Tell us what your background is?”

Dallas Salisbury: “I’ve been in Washington D.C. for 40 years.  My training is in finance and accounting. Two fairly dreary fields, but for 35 years I’ve been doing financial education, savings education, debt, spending, budgeting, you name it.”

Phil Cannella: “What is the mission of your organization?”

Dallas Salisbury: “The mission of the group that I was talking about today, the choosetosave.org and the American Savings Education Council, is to bring basic financial knowledge to all Americans regardless of age, and to make savings and retirement planning a priority for every individual.”

Phil Cannella: “Part of your job is to address the ever changing needs of retirees.  Can you tell us what you find to be the most important issue to those in or near retirement seeking professional advice?”

Dallas Salisbury: “We’ve now done 24 years worth of a retirement confidence survey and in that we always include a survey component of retirees. Consistently over time it is A: ‘I wish I had known more early about how much I needed to save, and how much expenses were actually going to be in retirement.’ Secondly, ‘I wish I had thought about the fact that I should have planned for having money to pay for health expenses because now I know that Medicare doesn’t pay for everything.’ Thirdly, as longevity is there, individuals have the notion that Medicare pays for nursing home care and long-term care, and as they find out that isn’t the case they wish that they had better prepared for that topic at earlier ages. Finally, there’s a point of, ‘I wish I told my children to start thinking about this earlier themselves.’ Then frequently the first thing they do is open up a savings account for their grandchildren.  So there’s positive movement.”

Hear more from the interview with Phil Cannella and Dallas Salisbury on The Crash Proof Retirement Show®. Saturdays at 11am and Sundays at 1pm on Talk Radio 1210AM, WPHT!