Sarah Bishop – Senior Retirement Plan Advisor, AIF®, CPFA®, QKA®
As summer comes to a close, many interns are packing up their desks and heading back to campus. Over the past few months, I’ve had the opportunity to work alongside interns in our office and see talented young professionals contributing at many of the organizations we serve.
This summer, my team had the opportunity to meet with Moneta’s interns to discuss 401(k) plans, investing, and the role workplace benefits can play in building long-term financial security. I also had the privilege of speaking with a group of interns at another St. Louis company about personal finance.
One thing quickly became clear in every conversation: these students are thinking about their futures. They’re thinking about careers, graduate school, first jobs, first apartments, student loans, and the many opportunities that lie ahead.
What they’re generally not thinking about is retirement.
That’s completely understandable.
Years ago, I read a fascinating study that stuck with me because it highlights a challenge many of us face when it comes to retirement planning.
The study, conducted by researchers including Hal Hershfield at NYU and Stanford researchers Jeremy Bailenson and Laura Carstensen, showed participants age-progressed images of themselves and found that people became more willing to save for retirement when they could actually visualize their future selves. Researchers concluded that one challenge of retirement planning is that many of us struggle to connect with the person we’ll become decades from now. When retirement feels distant and abstract, it’s easy to prioritize today’s wants over tomorrow’s needs.
As I watched interns prepare to head back to campus at the end of the summer, I found myself thinking about that study again.
Retirement just really isn’t on the radar for most college students, and that’s not all that surprising. But if they could spend five minutes talking with their 65-year-old selves, I suspect many would walk away with the same message:
“Start saving sooner than you think you need to.”
Want to test the concept yourself? Check out one of the age-progression filters available through various photo apps or AI tools and give it a try. Seeing an older version of yourself may feel a little strange at first, but it can also make your future self feel surprisingly real. The researchers found that helping people visualize their future selves influenced saving behavior, and based on my own experience reflecting on the study over the years, I’d say it works. At the very least, it might just change the way you think about the next dollar you save.
Your Greatest Asset Isn’t Money. It’s Time.
Many people assume retirement success is driven primarily by income. While income certainly matters, younger workers possess something even more valuable: time.
A dollar invested in your twenties has decades to grow. A dollar invested in your forties has a much shorter runway.
One of the biggest lessons I’ve learned working with retirement plan participants is that the most successful long-term savers aren’t always the highest earners. More often, they’re the people who started early and stayed consistent.
Unfortunately, many people don’t realize this until much later. Fidelity’s 2025 State of Retirement Planning Study found that 38% of retirees said they would have prioritized saving earlier if they had the opportunity to do it over again.
Don’t Wait Until You Feel Financially Ready
One of the most common mistakes I see is waiting for the “right time” to begin saving.
After all, life gets expensive quickly. There are student loans, rent payments, car expenses, and countless other priorities competing for attention.
In my experience, waiting until you feel financially ready to save is a little like waiting until life becomes less busy. It rarely happens.
There will always be competing priorities for your paycheck. Paying off debt, buying a home, getting married, or starting a family can all make retirement savings feel less urgent.
One financial goal I often encourage young professionals to prioritize early is building an emergency savings fund. Having readily available savings for unexpected expenses can reduce financial stress and help prevent you from relying on credit cards or withdrawing from long-term investments when life happens. It also creates a stronger foundation for pursuing other financial goals, including retirement.
Retirement savings becomes easier when you build the habit early. Starting with a small contribution today often leads to larger contributions tomorrow as your income grows and your career progresses.
Don’t Overlook Your First 401(k)
When evaluating a job offer, it’s natural to focus on salary. But many young professionals underestimate the value of workplace benefits.
A retirement plan can be one of the most valuable benefits an employer offers.
Features such as employer matching contributions, Roth 401(k) options, automatic enrollment, and financial wellness resources can help employees build wealth over time. A 401(k) match should be viewed as additional compensation with the potential to have much greater value in the future and shouldn’t be overlooked.
When we met with interns this summer, one of the topics we discussed was the importance of understanding these benefits before receiving that first full-time offer. Learning how retirement plans work early can create advantages that compound for decades.
Future You Is Counting on Present You
The reason that age-progressed photo study has stuck with me over the years is that it highlights a simple reality: retirement planning isn’t all about money; it’s really about creating options and opportunities for your future self.
The choices made during your first job, your second job, and your early working years may seem small at the time. Yet those decisions can influence the opportunities, flexibility, and financial security you experience decades later.
If you could sit down with your future self today, I suspect they would have plenty of advice. Near the top of that list would likely be a simple request:
“Start sooner.”
Final Thoughts
As this year’s interns head back to school and prepare for the next chapter of their lives, I’m incredibly optimistic about their futures.
They don’t need to have every answer figured out or the perfect financial plan today.
They simply need to take the first step.
Over the years, I’ve spoken with many retirement plan participants as they are nearing retirement, and I’ve never met one who wished they had waited longer to start saving. I’ve met plenty who wished they had started sooner.
The interns working in our offices today will soon begin building careers, families, businesses, and lives of their own. The earlier they begin building healthy financial habits, the more choices they’ll create for themselves in the future.
And if they’re willing to listen to one piece of advice from a retirement plan advisor, I’d encourage them to remember this:
Your future retirement success will likely not be determined by one big financial decision. It will be shaped by the small decisions you make consistently, starting with your very first paycheck.
Sources
Hershfield, H. E., Goldstein, D. G., Sharpe, W. F., Fox, J., Yeykelis, L., Carstensen, L. L., & Bailenson, J. N. (2011). Increasing Saving Behavior Through Age-Progressed Renderings of the Future Self. Journal of Marketing Research, 48(SPL), S23-S37. | Full PDF
Fidelity Investments 2025 State of Retirement Planning Study. Fidelity reported that 38% of retirees said they would have prioritized saving earlier if given the opportunity to do it over again. Fidelity newsroom release
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