Financial planners all say: The sooner you start saving, the better off you'll be in retirement.
But that advice often goes unheeded by young workers focused on paying down student debt and car loans. And even for those who can afford to set aside a little cash, investing can seem complicated and risky.
In his State of the Union address Tuesday, President Obama said he's got a way to fix all of that. He calls it myRA — a difficult-to-say-aloud name that is supposed to get people thinking about "my retirement account."
This new way of saving would be different from a traditional tax-deferred individual retirement account, or IRA. For one thing, workers can't lose money in myRAs; the government would protect the principal and help savings grow a bit faster than inflation.
Participating employers could help workers steer portions of their paychecks into the retirement accounts through automatic deductions. But they would face few costs because they would not administer the accounts.
The White House says about half of all workers do not have access to employer-sponsored retirement plans, such as 401(k) plans. The myRAs are aimed at those left-out workers.
"I want more people to have the chance to save for retirement through their hard work. And this is just one step that we can take to help more people do that," Obama said Wednesday while visiting the U.S. Steel Irvin Plant in West Mifflin, Penn., southeast of Pittsburgh.