NEW YORK -- Millions of Americans are finding that they will have to continue working during their supposed retirement years, a new survey of baby boomers shows.

This realization is turning their worldview upside down - changing everything on where they might live, what they might do in their golden years and ultimately what is most important in life - according to a poll commissioned by financial firm Thrivent Financial for Lutherans.

"The average 70-year old is probably pretty well situated now because they had pensions and will get social security," Pamela Moret, executive vice president at Thrivent said in an interview on Tuesday.

"But the same does not hold true for baby boomers where roughly 25 percent say they have saved nothing for retirement," she said. Baby boomers are the post-war generation of Americans born between 1946 and 1964, which are just now starting to reach retirement age.

The survey, which polled 2,500 baby boomers between Sept. 26 and Oct. 7, will be released in the next few days.

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Faced with the cold, hard fact that they have not saved enough to live out their years comfortably, 43 percent of Americans say they will have to re-enter the work force almost as soon as they leave it, according to the survey.

Thirty-five percent of those polled said lyrics from the song "The Long and Winding Road" most closely resembled their vision of retirement while 8 percent said the lyric "I hope I die before I get old" best describe their vision.

Thrivent was founded to help families cope if a breadwinner died young. Now it is also trying to help Americans make sure they don't outlive their financial means as people are dying later, Moret said.

The survey shows that nearly half of all men say they plan to work in what would have been their retirement.

While the survey did not suggest what types of jobs these Americans might try to get -- whether it will be bagging groceries or pumping gas -- 43 percent of those surveyed said they would try to find less stressful employment after they retire from their current jobs.

These findings are the latest showing that Americans, who had long relied on increasingly scarce company pensions for retirement income, face gloomy prospects because many have not saved enough to live comfortably during old age.

Moret said the new survey found that people are facing hard choices on where they will live, how they will find affordable housing and where they will have access to good medical care. The survey found that 41 percent expected it to be tougher to pay for medical bills.

Even as they plan to hold down new and different jobs, nearly half of Americans are expected to travel far more than their parents did during their retirement. But only 45 percent said they expect to be able to fulfill their dreams of more travel.

The expected financial crunch in their twilight years was illustrated most starkly by 61 percent of those polled saying they would use an unexpected windfall of $1 million to invest for retirement. Only 3 percent said they would use that money to buy a luxury home while 4 percent said they would start a business.

While many Americans may have to suffer through lean years during retirement, they want a better life for their children. Eighty-six percent strongly urged the next generation to start saving for retirement as soon as possible.

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