October is National Retirement Security Month. The aim: to increase understanding and emphasize the importance of planning for retirement, particularly for public employees.

Learn about the history behind this campaign, details and resources available this year, and more below.

• The National Association of Government Defined Contribution Administrators (NAGDCA) has been raising awareness of retirement preparedness since 2006. Originally conceived of as National Retirement Security Week, the campaign grew this year and now spans the entire month of October.
• The United States Senate unanimously approved a resolution acknowledging National Retirement Security Month. The resolution comes “with the goal of increasing the retirement savings and personal financial literacy of all people in the United States and enhancing the retirement security of the people of the United States.”
• Anyone can register for webinars covering a variety of retirement-planning topics. ICMA-RC, an organization founded in 1972 to help public sector employees build retirement security, is hosting.
• In addition to webinars, ICMA-RC created some of the most visually interesting retirement calculators you’re likely to come across.

Retirement planning is a year-round activity at PERA, as these stats from 2019 show.

• The number of times PERA members logged into their PERA account topped 1.6 million.
• Members were busy projecting future income as they planned their retirement budget. They ran more than 323,000 calculations using the monthly retirement benefit calculator on copera.org.
• More than 29,000 attended a presentation led by PERA’s Field Education team.
• PERA’s benefit counsellors held 4,560 individual appointments with members, most of whom are nearing retirement.