40-52% of workers are delaying their retirement.

70 is the “new 65,” according to Sun Life Financial. Their Unretirement Index, along with Towers Watson’s 2010 Global Workforce Study, show that 40-52% of Americans will delay their retirement due to ill financial health.

Towers Watson found 68% of those workers will continue working in order to keep their health care coverage, while 61% cited their lacking 401(k) plans as the reason for staying. Sun Life found that only 25% are “very confident” they will be able to cover medical expenses in retirement.

Americans are also changing their current lifestyles to meet their financial needs and cope with financial fears by reducing spending and debt, and increasing saving and investing. About 18% are even putting off routine medical procedures to save money.

For whatever transgressions or chain of events we now have a scenario where the government is moving into an unprecedented roll of intervention. The Wall Streeter’s and major US businesses are being treated as naughty school children who were given too many toys, misused them and grew exceedingly selfish. Now the well-resourced head master who, by the way, has never worked in the real world, is coming on scene to set things straight and make sure that these naughty children are transformed into model citizens of the business community and, of course, run model businesses. I’m struggling with how this is going to work.

With so many economic concoctions that have never been tried before along with the unfathomable quantities of dollars being injected into the system, it seems that consumers are responding by running for cover. Some of this is actually good. US household debt, which has been growing steadily since the Federal Reserve began tracking it in 1952, declined for the first time in the third quarter of 2008. In the same quarter, U.S. consumer spending growth declined for the first time in 17 years.

What’s happening here is that we are looking at life differently from a financial perspective. Often, when conducting a corporate financial education course, I encourage the class to categorize their spending habits in very simple ways, rather than working for hours on a detailed budget, which most find less sustainable than a diet. I suggest that, for two months, they note each expenditure with either an “E” for essential or “NE” for non essential. These respective stacks are typically quite revealing and may lead to discovering more about what I call your “Financial Persona”.

For example…

- How you define the word, “essential” when it comes to your spending habits? This may change over time if it hasn’t already.

- Shifting through the non-essential stack, which of those items add significantly to the enjoyment of life and which do not.

- Do you see any opportunities for changing or reprioritizing the contents of the respective stacks?

To put this exercise in context, given what we don’t know about what may be in our economic future, you may want to strongly consider building up a cash account that is equivalent to 6-8 times the sum of the “E” stack. That is, if you find it “essential” to get a good night’s sleep.