(Christy Bieber)
When you're planning for retirement, you can't count on Social Security to be your primary source of income. These benefits are simply too small to live on, because they replace just about 40% of pre-retirement income, when most experts project you'll need 80% or more.
For most people, the rest of their money will need to come from investments.
The good news is, there's one investment out there that could help future retirees go a long way toward having the money they need for their later years, assuming they start investing in it early enough.
Image source: Getty Images.
This investment could be the ticket to financial security as a retireeIf you want a safe investment that's all but certain to provide more than $32,000 in annual income, an S&P fund many be just the thing.
The S&P 500 is a financial index made up of shares of around 500 of the largest U.S. companies. It has consistently produced around 10% average annual returns. If you put $5,000 into an S&P fund each year for 30 years, your nest egg would be worth more than $822,000 by the time you hit retirement age (assuming your returns are similar to historical averages, which there's every reason to believe will be the case).
