Challenge: The Social Security Administration (SSA) develops many publications to help educate consumers on important financial matters, including retirement planning and social security specifically.  In one initiative, Plan-it partnered with BC’s Center for Financial Literacy (funded by the Social Security Administration), to help in the development of educational materials targeted to retirees and pre-retirees.

Objective: Specific goals included understanding consumers’ attitudes and behavior toward retirement planning, including knowledge gaps, important sources of information, and unmet needs.

Solution: Plan-it conducted exploratory interviews with pre-retirees and retirees to better understand how the SSA and BC could best support these audiences’ needs. The interviews included “homework”related to the “ideal retirement,” discussion about the planning stages, sources of information, unmet information needs, emotions associated with the process, and reactions to existing and potential collateral from the Center.

Result: Based on insights gained, recommendations were made to refocus the strategy so The Center’s name, tone, content, and approach would appeal more to these audiences by better aligning with consumers’ retirement realities. Further, Plan-it made suggestions about the tactics that would best support this redefined strategy. This work led to the current “Social Security Fix It” book and “Claiming Guide” available to help those approaching retirement.