SEATTLE--(BUSINESS WIRE)--June 18, 2003--A recent survey commissioned by Farmers Life Insurance Company shows that twice as many middle income Americans are better at planning for annual family vacations to places like Disney World than they are at planning for their retirement. Surprisingly, respondents said they spend about the same amount of time planning for their annual vacations as they do for their retirement or a child's college education. Yet, universally, they know retirement is more important. However, retirement looms in the future as a vague and somewhat scary goal while taking a vacation is a clearly fun -- and well-defined -- goal, with the steps needed to get there equally apparent.

So how can Mickey Mouse help? The survey results suggest that if people took a page out of how they plan to get to Disney World or some other fun destination each year and transferred that skill to the way they prepare for retirement, they might be better at it and have more confidence in their future. In fact, more people (55%) believe they will be able to take their next vacation as planned than believe they will be able to retire at the age desired (42%).

With this finding in mind, Farmers' Life Insurance subsidiary has developed an industry-unique life stage-based system called Financial Blueprint. It's like stringing a series of vacations together to get to a great retirement and protect the family along the way. The system helps people reduce financial issues to bite-sized chunks by life stage and provides detailed, actionable suggestions on how to address common financial situations faced by middle America. These customized "blueprints" can be generated in just minutes by entering a few pieces of information into a web site.

"Obviously, vacation plans vary by life stage, yet retirement plans often don't. When presented with the life stage idea, consumers embraced it. Sixty percent said they felt traditional financial approaches aren't working. It is difficult for people to see beyond their current life stage to the next one, let alone two or three life stages ahead," said Mike Keller, vice president of marketing at Farmers Life Insurance Company.

"Most financial analysis or programs fail to recognize this reality. And most don't take into account all of life's constantly changing variables. Income increases over time, yet most planning systems don't acknowledge it. People adjust their finances, goals and desires over time based on life stage, but this is not taken into account by most systems," Keller added.