"People are going to be surprised," asserts Tom Kmak, head of Fiduciary Benchmarks (www.fiduciarybenchmarks.com), a company that analyzes corporate 401(k) plans. "If you take the passion and the fear-mongering out of it, it is possible to retire on schedule."

Fear mongering has been a part of the "retirement readiness" landscape since workers began having to invest for retirement on their own through Individual Retirement Accounts and 401(k) plans. Companies that make money selling investments also make a regular practice of floating "workers are woefully unprepared and should save more" surveys.

Kmak's firm used a different methodology. It used corporate tax filings to determine how much money was actually in workers' 401(k) accounts, and extrapolated Social Security benefits from salary information. It used fairly conservative figures from Aon Consulting and Georgia State University (here) showing that retiring workers typically need to replace between 72 percent (high earners) and 95 percent (low earners) of their pre-retirement incomes. And it found the average worker already had 92 percent of what was needed to be on track for retirement. Most workers could make up the difference with small additions to their savings, or by working a little bit longer, or living a little bit smaller when they retire.

That sanguine view does depend on a few assumptions. It assumes workers will work until they are 67; that their companies will match 3 percent of their 401(k) contributions; and that Social Security benefits will continue without cuts.

Fiduciary Benchmarks is currently preparing a service that would allow individual workers to go in and check the health of their 401(k) plan as well as their own retirement readiness. In the meantime, here are some (mostly) calming thoughts to keep in mind about your retirement finances.

• Social Security isn't going to disappear overnight. Even if Congress does adjust the program as part of a deficit-reduction effort, it's not likely to tinker much with benefits expected by people who are within 10 years of retirement, or with people at the lower end of the earnings spectrum. People with more than 10 years to go have more time to allow savings and compounding to make up the difference. A person earning $50,000 a year will replace 51 percent of his income with Social Security benefits, says Aon.

• It does, as Kmak reports, take only slight savings adjustments early on to boost retirement income. A 45-year-old earning $40,000 with $50,000 in her 401(k) plan (and that's not an unusual level of funding, he says) need only add $65 per week to be on track for retirement.

"Even if you don't have the money in your account that you should, there are little ways to make up the difference," says Kmak. "You can buckle down for six months; take a part time job, sell something in your house on eBay, just to get started."

• Most measurements of retirement readiness focus on how much you'll need in the first year or two after you retire. But the vast majority of retirees end up cutting their spending sharply by the time they are in their mid- to late 70s, according to the Federal Government's Consumer Expenditures reports. So those necessary replacement rates may be overly conservative.

• You can retire happily on less. It's important to have enough money in retirement to cover everyday expenses and some joys. But many people fund their retirements, at least in part, by moving to a smaller home or a cheaper town. They still enjoy life. Falling a few dollars short doesn't mean destitution, it means making the same budget choices you're already making during your working life.

• That average worker doesn't exist. Anyone within 10 years of retirement should start planning with their own real numbers to see where they stand. To guesstimate annual post-retirement expenses, look at your current expenses, and try to determine which ones will rise and which will fall. There are many online calculators that can crunch those numbers and show you your chances of making it through your post-work years.

Check out those at these Websites: Financial Industry Regulatory Authority (here), AARP (here) and the Choose to Save Ballpark estimate (www.choosetosave.org/ballpark/).

(editing by Gunna Dickson)