Nationwide recently launched its new tool to help consumers prepare for retirement. The National Retirement Risk Index (NRRI) recently revealed that over 40 percent of Americans are at risk of being financially unprepared for retirement. This is a pretty scary statistic if you consider the state of Social Security and the lack of defined benefit pensions in today’s environment. My bet is that at least that many (or more) are entirely unaware about the state of their readiness. That is where Nationwide is saying it comes in.

RetirAbility CheckSM guides users through a series of informative steps and questions to arrive at their personal retirement readiness score called an R-Score. It is a number from 1 to 100 that predicts what percentage of their ideal retirement income they’ll actually have at age 65. Based on your R-score, the site provides you tips and action steps you can take to improve your score and enhance your retirement readiness.

After my walk through this tool I would like to share my thoughts with you. Firstly, I am in support of educating people on retirement finances. I think Nationwide is on the mark with providing a tool to allow your average person to learn more about retirement planning as well as his/her own financial situation.

However, after making my way through the tool from beginning to end, I believe the tool is targeted to the novice that is not too involved with their own financial planning. This is neither a pro nor a con, but I can say that if you are on top of your financial details and work with a financial planner, you’ll find the tool too generic and basic to help you out.

That being said, the scoring and comparison to the national averages are intriguing even if I didn’t find them directly helpful myself. I just got depressed that I could have a high score yet when I looked at the demographics of some other people my age in terms of income and home values, I am downright poverty stricken (and I am not even close to poverty).

I found some technical and presentation glitches in the tool to be very discouraging. Firstly, it requires the most recent version of Flash meant that I couldn’t use this tool from the workplace. It also requires that you have cookies enabled on your PC which could trip up someone who has those disabled and doesn’t know how to re-enable them. I also found that the presentation would hang periodically for me as I went through the interview which was frustrating.

In terms of the user interface, I found the animated people to be very irritating. The person matched to me (based on demographics I guess) was an annoying woman who would stare at me and look bored (that rolling eyes, whistling to pass the time because you are a slowpoke look) as I struggled to enter information for all the questions even if they didn’t apply to me (if you don’t enter a “0” it gives you an error until you do). I wanted to hit this virtual escort much like I want to strangle the person on the other end of a voice response “you are on hold forever” system.

The good news is they encourage the user to work with an investment professional. They even have a section with links to help educate you on how to choose one. However, none of the links worked for me. I didn’t know if that was a site glitch or their attempt to have you hire a Nationwide agent. At any rate, it is at this point that I gave up on the exercise.
I don’t mean to sound critical of any well-meaning financial product out there. I think any attempt to educate people on their finances and retirement situation is a positive one.

Too many people choose to bury their heads in the sand and consider playing the Powerball retirement planning. However, when the tool is frustrating to use (and I am technically savvy) it is more likely to reinforce the often held belief that “I don’t understand finances”, “finances are scary”, and “ignorance is bliss”.

I would recommend giving the tools a test drive if you enjoy exploring something new and learning a wee bit more about your retirement finances. Just don’t expect any earth shattering epiphanies and be prepared for some technical and usability frustrations.