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Optimistic investors more active in retirement planning, Fidelity says

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Optimistic investors tend to be more active retirement planners than pessimists, according to data released by Fidelity Investments today.

Out of the 1,000 husbands and wives who participated in Fidelity’s survey, 89% of couples had one partner who tended to be more optimistic than the other and was more involved in making decisions about retirement.

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More than 80% of optimists said they expected a comfortable lifestyle in retirement, while just 61% of pessimists agreed.

When the recession hit, 22% of pessimists said, they panicked and wanted to flee the market, compared with just 11% of optimists. Meanwhile, 77% of optimists -- but only 57% of pessimists -- wanted to stay the course.

Although 27% of optimists have completed a detailed income plan to lay out their retirement finances, just 15% of pessimists have done so.

A quarter of pessimists -- more than double the number of optimists -- aim to preserve their money and tend to accept considerably lower returns. And 45% of pessimists, compared with 33% of optimists, said they were worried about risks to their retirement funds, like the possibility of Social Security being reduced.

But pessimists and optimists generally see eye to eye when it comes to retirement accounts: 88% of pessimists and 89% of optimists have 401(k)s, and 77% of pessimists and 79% of optimists have individual retirement accounts. Three-quarters of pessimists and 71% of optimists have pensions, and 48% of pessimists and 46% of optimists hold annuities.

Both tend to see the 401(k) as the most important account, followed by personal pensions.

If required to take full financial burden in a marriage, 61% of pessimistic spouses said they would worry about their ability to do so, compared with 39% of optimists. And although 55% of pessimists and 62% of optimists said both partners in their marriage had prepared wills, 13% of pessimists and just 9% of optimists rely on their spouses to know where the documents are kept.

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The negative outlook may take a toll: 55% of pessimists said they argued occasionally or frequently about financial matters. Just 39% of optimists did the same.

-- Tiffany Hsu

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