DTWNews

The Obama administration is keeping the needs of American seniors in mind. Just this past week, the president finalized a new regulation that encourages states to help seniors develop retirement plans with automatic enrollment features for private-sector employees.

This regulation’s goal is to push Americans to set up their own retirement plan so they don’t have to rely solely on social security benefits. This rule will give each state its own road map for establishing retirement plans.

Some states have already passed their own legislation concerning retirement plans. These systems will enroll workers without a pension or a retirement savings plan into a program that will ensure they will not end up financially destitute. California just passed a plan last week to enroll around 6.8 million people. Connecticut and Maryland rolled out a plan within the past few months.

Additionally, the Labor Department announced that they have created a proposal that will enable large cities to create similar plans. These cities must have a population that is larger than Wyoming — the least populous state in the nation with 586,000 people in 2015 — to qualify.

The Labor Department’s rule is designed to allow states to bypass the tough requirements of the Employee Retirement Income Security Act, which some states believe is a huge barrier to many residents.

According to The Wall Street Journal, workers would contribute a portion of their earnings to a retirement savings account under this plan, and then the state would be responsible for investing the savings and setting up investment plans. The state would also be responsible for making sure the payroll deductions and employee savings are secure.

However, retirees in Detroit may not be so lucky. Considering that the city has had a history of financial instability within the past couple decades, those who are coming close to retirement age are finding their pensions and savings to be greatly reduced from what they originally thought.

When the city declared bankruptcy in 2013, the city-owned about $3 billion towards pension funding, but their settlements determined that the city would not be able to fiscally contribute to additional pension systems for over a decade, no matter how much Obama pushes.

Throughout the nation, the average age of retirement is 63-years-old.