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<\/p>\nEight years after it began, Oregon\u2019s retirement savings program has grown a lot and is showing signs of success. But many of the people using the program are taking money out long before retirement.<\/p>\n
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Belinda Russell is 62 and has about $15,000 saved for her retirement thanks to the OregonSaves system. \u201cI understand that in these days and times, it’s not a lot of money. But I’m 100% grateful to this program because without it, I’d have zero,\u201d Russell said. McMinnville, Dec. 8, 2025<\/p>\n
Kristian Foden-Vencil \/ OPB<\/p>\n
Belinda Russell is an accounting specialist at Provoking Hope<\/a> in McMinnville.<\/p>\n She began saving for her retirement back in 2017, the same year OregonSaves<\/a> started. The 62-year-old now has $15,000 saved.<\/p>\n \u201cI understand that in these days and times, it\u2019s not a lot of money,\u201d Russell said. \u201cBut I\u2019m 100% grateful to this program, because without it, I\u2019d have zero.\u201d<\/p>\n The average retirement savings of a 60-year-old American is close to $250,000<\/a> \u2014 but that\u2019s only counting people who actually save. Roughly 40% of Americans<\/a> don\u2019t have any kind of retirement account.<\/p>\n OregonSaves was started to give Oregonians who don\u2019t have a workplace retirement plan a place to save. Oregon was the first state in the nation to introduce such a program. It\u2019s designed to follow people as they move from job to job, and it comes directly out of their paychecks.<\/p>\n \u201cThe fact that it comes out before you even see it is huge,\u201d said Russell. <\/p>\n Many people don\u2019t have the financial discipline to set up a retirement account at a big national bank or investment firm, Russell said.<\/p>\n \u201cBecause if you have to decide to walk down the street to your local [bank], you\u2019re not going to do it. You\u2019re not going to cash your check and take that money and deposit it there,\u201d she said. \u201cYou\u2019re going to cash that check, and you\u2019re going to spend it.\u201d<\/p>\n By many measures, OregonSaves is a success. Some 180,000 Oregonians now have accounts; that\u2019s equivalent to the entire population of Salem. The average enrollee invests about $200 a month and sets aside almost 7%<\/a> of their income.<\/p>\n The power of compound interest illustrated by the Federal Reserve Bank of St. Louis. Dec. 19, 2025<\/p>\n Federal Reserve Bank of St. Louis<\/p>\n It\u2019s been so successful that 19 other states have followed suit and set up their own versions.<\/p>\n But OregonSaves also has a problem: people keep dipping into their savings.<\/p>\n \u201cYou go in and you take money out,\u201d said Debra Cross, who also works at Provoking Hope. <\/p>\n Until a few years ago, Cross was saving 8% of her income. But then she needed money.<\/p>\n \u201cI was sick with COVID and my sister passed away,\u201d she said. \u201cSo it was between prescriptions and paying for her [funeral] service.\u201d<\/p>\n Of the 180,000 accounts in the OregonSaves system, close to 40% have had withdrawals. A good portion of those withdrawals are from people who have retired. But another sizable portion are from people like Cross who simply needed the money.<\/p>\n The result is that the average account balance at OregonSaves is just $3,000.<\/p>\n Debra Cross saved about $4,000 in her OregonSaves retirement account until taking some out for her sister’s funeral service and medical bills. \u201cWhen it first started, I couldn’t believe how much I accumulated,\u201d Cross said. McMinnville, Dec. 8, 2025<\/p>\n Kristian Foden-Vencil \/ OPB<\/p>\n \u201cClearly $3000 is not enough for retirement,\u201d said Oregon Treasurer Elizabeth Steiner. But she says the $3,000 average is a bit misleading. There are many enrollees who have hundreds of thousands of dollars. In addition, 1,700 new people are enrolling in the system every month, starting with nothing in their accounts. <\/p>\n \u201cWe\u2019re seeing that a significant percentage of savers are people in the age range of 26 to 30. So if you already have $3,000 in the bank at 30, and you\u2019re really working at saving, then your retirement\u2019s gonna be very different.\u201d<\/p>\n Steiner said there\u2019s also no plan to make it more difficult to get money out of OregonSaves. <\/p>\n \u201cPeople make these withdrawals, but they don\u2019t clean out their accounts. They take the minimum they need to solve whatever their immediate problem is, and they go right back to saving,\u201d said Steiner.<\/p>\n Oregon state Sen. Elizabeth Steiner, D-Portland, during a press conference, held at the Oregon state Capitol on the first day of the legislative session, Feb. 5, 2024, in Salem, Ore.<\/p>\n Kristyna Wentz-Graff \/ OPB<\/p>\n That\u2019s true for Cross. While she did pull money out of her account, she\u2019s still paying into the system and says OregonSaves gave her an appreciation for the power of compound interest. <\/p>\n \u201cWhen it first started, I couldn\u2019t believe how much I accumulated,\u201d Cross said.<\/p>\n She still has $1,000 in her account. If she keeps paying in $200 a month and earns a respectable 7% interest, then she\u2019ll have $46,000 when she turns 70. <\/p>\n A third of that, almost $17,000, will have been generated by interest in just 12 years.<\/p>\n \u201cThat\u2019s really nice if I don\u2019t touch it and just leave it there and let it draw interest,\u201d she said. <\/p>\n The importance of saving is only growing. The Bipartisan Policy Center<\/a> expects Social Security to be significantly depleted by 2033<\/a>. So unless Congress acts, people are likely to see benefits reduced by 23% in just eight years. <\/p>\n And as the end of this year approaches, economists are recommending people fully fund their retirement accounts. <\/p>\n","protected":false},"excerpt":{"rendered":"Eight years after it began, Oregon\u2019s retirement savings program has grown a lot and is showing signs of…\n","protected":false},"author":2,"featured_media":207066,"comment_status":"","ping_status":"","sticky":false,"template":"","format":"standard","meta":{"footnotes":""},"categories":[14],"tags":[72,176,61,60,174,175,108472],"class_list":{"0":"post-207065","1":"post","2":"type-post","3":"status-publish","4":"format-standard","5":"has-post-thumbnail","7":"category-personal-finance","8":"tag-business","9":"tag-finance","10":"tag-ie","11":"tag-ireland","12":"tag-personal-finance","13":"tag-personalfinance","14":"tag-retirement-economy"},"_links":{"self":[{"href":"https:\/\/www.newsbeep.com\/ie\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts\/207065","targetHints":{"allow":["GET"]}}],"collection":[{"href":"https:\/\/www.newsbeep.com\/ie\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts"}],"about":[{"href":"https:\/\/www.newsbeep.com\/ie\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/types\/post"}],"author":[{"embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/www.newsbeep.com\/ie\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/users\/2"}],"replies":[{"embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/www.newsbeep.com\/ie\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/comments?post=207065"}],"version-history":[{"count":0,"href":"https:\/\/www.newsbeep.com\/ie\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts\/207065\/revisions"}],"wp:featuredmedia":[{"embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/www.newsbeep.com\/ie\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/media\/207066"}],"wp:attachment":[{"href":"https:\/\/www.newsbeep.com\/ie\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/media?parent=207065"}],"wp:term":[{"taxonomy":"category","embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/www.newsbeep.com\/ie\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/categories?post=207065"},{"taxonomy":"post_tag","embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/www.newsbeep.com\/ie\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/tags?post=207065"}],"curies":[{"name":"wp","href":"https:\/\/api.w.org\/{rel}","templated":true}]}}![\"The](\"https:\/\/www.newsbeep.com\/ie\/wp-content\/uploads\/2025\/12\/TRUUZETT4FFPTN7D3CSB24QKNE.png\")
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