how to write letter date

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Letter Writing

How to Write the Date on a Letter

Last Updated: January 26, 2024 Fact Checked

This article was reviewed by Gerald Posner . Gerald Posner is an Author & Journalist based in Miami, Florida. With over 35 years of experience, he specializes in investigative journalism, nonfiction books, and editorials. He holds a law degree from UC College of the Law, San Francisco, and a BA in Political Science from the University of California-Berkeley. He’s the author of thirteen books, including several New York Times bestsellers, the winner of the Florida Book Award for General Nonfiction, and has been a finalist for the Pulitzer Prize in History. He was also shortlisted for the Best Business Book of 2020 by the Society for Advancing Business Editing and Writing. There are 7 references cited in this article, which can be found at the bottom of the page. This article has been fact-checked, ensuring the accuracy of any cited facts and confirming the authority of its sources. This article has been viewed 344,603 times.

There are many different ways to write out the date on a letter. How you write the date depends on what kind of letter you’re writing. For instance, there are very strict rules if you're writing a formal letter , but the location of the date doesn't matter as much in an informal letter . Picking the appropriate format for the date on your letter can be a little confusing, but it’s easy once you understand the differences.

Writing the Date on a Formal Letter

Step 1 Put the date flush with the left margin.

Cover letters for potential jobs or letters of complaint are typically written in block format. [2] X Research source

Step 2 Place your date 1 to 2 lines after the sender’s address.

Use the same formatting throughout the rest of your letter. For example, if you skipped 1 line between the address and the date, skip 1 line between the date and the recipient’s information . Consistent formatting will make your letter look neat and organized.
If you’re using a professional letterhead that includes the sender’s address in the header, your date will be written first in your letter.

Step 3 Write out the full date with no abbreviations.

If both you and your recipient of the letter are in the U.S., Belize, or Micronesia, write your date in month-date-year format. For instance, if your letter were dated 02/23/2019, you would write the date as "February 23, 2019." [4] X Research source
In much of the rest of the world, including Europe, Asia, Africa, South America, or most of Central America, the preferred format is date-month-year, which looks like "23 February, 2019." If both you and the recipient live somewhere where this format is used, opt for this style. [5] X Research source
If you live where one format is used and the recipient lives somewhere that the other format is preferred, you can choose which one you'd rather use. You can also sidestep the issue by using a year-month-date format, or "2019 February 23," if you'd like.

Writing the Date on a Semi-Formal Letter

Step 1 Place the date one tab right of center in semi-formal letters.

Semi-formal letters are often used to write to professional people you know well, like a former boss or coworker. [7] X Research source

Step 2 Skip 1 to 2 lines after the sender’s address to write your date.

If you’re typing your semi-formal letter, an existing template in a word processing program can help you format your letter .
If you're including the recipient's address, or inside address, as you would in a professional semi-formal letter, it goes 2 lines below the date. If you're omitting that, the next line will be the salutation, including the recipient's courtesy title.

Step 3 Write out the entire date in the format you choose.

If you'd like, you may opt to write the date as "2019 January 31." [10] X Research source

Writing the Date on an Informal Letter

Step 1 Begin your letter with the date at the top.

After the date, skip 1-2 lines, then write your salutation.

When handwriting a letter, properly formatting the date sets the tone from the outset. Write it out fully in the upper right corner without abbreviations—for example, 'November 30, 2022.' This unambiguous, easily spotted date allows your recipient to instantly contextualize your thoughtful correspondence within the timeline of your relationship.

Step 3 Write the date however you’d like.

There are a few ways to write the date numerically. You can separate the numbers with hyphens(-), slashes(/) or periods(.). For example, "January 31, 2019" might be written in the US format as "01-31-2019," "01/31/2019," or "01.31.2019." [13] X Research source
You can also shorten numbers in an informal letter. "January 31, 2019" might be written as "1/31/19," eliminating the zero and part of the year.

Community Q&A

Write cardinal numbers (1, 2) rather than ordinal numbers (1st, 2nd). For example, you'd write "November 2, 2019" or "2 November, 2019," not "November 2nd, 2019" or "2nd November, 2019." [14] X Research source Thanks Helpful 0 Not Helpful 0
If you often write formal letters for your job, check if there’s a house style guide you should be following. Thanks Helpful 0 Not Helpful 0

↑ https://owl.purdue.edu/owl/subject_specific_writing/professional_technical_writing/basic_business_letters/index.html
↑ https://en.oxforddictionaries.com/writing-help/how-to-lay-out-a-letter
↑ https://www.btb.termiumplus.gc.ca/tpv2guides/guides/favart/index-fra.html?lang=fra&lettr=indx_autr8SPbfCcS_FFE&page=9geHWsOpC7ZI.html
↑ https://grammar.yourdictionary.com/style-and-usage/how-to-formally-write-the-date.html
↑ https://nmu.edu/writingcenter/parts-business-letter
↑ https://www.iso.org/iso-8601-date-and-time-format.html
↑ https://en.oxforddictionaries.com/writing-help/letter-formats-block-modified-block-and-semi-block

About This Article

To add the date to a formal letter, put it 1 or 2 lines below the sender’s address. Write the date out in full rather than using any abbreviations. For example, you would write out the date like “February 19, 2019.” Make sure the date is aligned with the left margin to make it look neat. If your letter is less formal, like to a friend or someone you know well, add the date at the top. You can choose whatever format you’d like for the date, such as using all numbers or abbreviating the month. For tips on how to write a date in a professional letter, such as to a boss or co-worker, keep reading! Did this summary help you? Yes No

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Writing Tips

How to Write Dates Correctly

3-minute read

23rd October 2014

There are many different ways to write dates, so knowing which one to use in your work can be difficult. At a basic level, you need to get the format and information correct. But you also need to consider whether the style in which you’ve written the date is appropriate for your document.

Read on, then, for our guide on how to write dates correctly.

Writing Out the Date

In very formal writing, it’s often best to write out the date in full. The most formal version of this may include using an ordinal signifier (‘th’, ‘rd’ or ‘st’) after the date, like this:

The meeting is on the 23 rd of October 2016.

However, in most cases, you can just give a date, month and year:

The meeting is on 23 October 2016.

You would still pronounce this as ‘the 23 rd of October’ in speech, but in writing you can simplify this to make it easier to read.

Moreover, in some situations, you may want to include the day of the week in the date, especially if it has specific connotations (e.g. Friday the 13 th ).

Shorter Form Dates

In less formal writing, a shorter date format can be used. This typically uses only numbers separated by full stops or slashes, with no need to write out the name of the month. Shortening the year is also acceptable as long as it will be clear which year you mean, such as in the following:

You can also write out the date but shorten the month to save space:

14 January 2016 → 14 Jan 2016
9 October → 9 Oct

Although these options are easy to understand and perfectly acceptable in most writing, they are not typically correct in an academic context.

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Australian vs. American Dates

Another thing to keep in mind is that the date format is different in different places. In Australia , we use a day, month, year format, as shown above.

In America, the month comes first. As such, we can reformat some of the examples above to compare how they’d appear in Australia and America:

As you can see above, we’ve used a comma in the US dates to separate the day and the year, both of which are numbers.

The fact that the day and month are swapped around can lead to confusion, especially if written in number form, so do be aware of this!

The International Date Format

Finally, if you’re sharing information across the world, you may want to use the international date format (ISO 8601) . This is a standardised format that works across borders, so it is commonly used by government organizations and global businesses. And it always uses the format YYYY-MM-DD, which removes any chance of confusion:

We sent the invoice on 2020-07-10 .

The date above, for example, denotes the 10th of July 2020.

How to Write the Date in Academic Writing

There is no single ‘correct’ way to write the date in an essay, but it’s usually better to use a formal approach. Check your university style guide and see what it recommends. If it doesn’t specify a format, pick one you feel is appropriate and use it consistently throughout your document.

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How to Write Dates Correctly (With Examples)

Writing dates can seem straightforward at times and confounding at others. This complexity in writing dates arises due to the different formats used worldwide. Many authors also get confused about how to write them using commas. Understanding the established standards and then applying them consistently and clearly are the keys to conquering this difficulty with dates.

Continue reading to learn how to format dates in American English.

Different methods for writing dates

There are several methods for writing dates that are accepted internationally.

Follow dialectical standards

When using American English, the month should precede the day. First, write the month, then the day, and then the year. Examples are:
September 10
When using American English, separate the day and the year using a comma . If you are including the weekday, place a comma after it as well. A comma is not required if you are using British English. Examples are:
September 10, 2022
September tenth, 2022
Saturday , September 10, 2022
When using British English, the day should precede the month. This system is followed in many nations, including the UK and Australia. First, write the day, then the month, and then the year. Examples are:
10th September
10 September 2022
Saturday the 10th of September 2022.
When using British English, use “of” and “the.” The “of” and “the” should precede the month and day, respectively. It is also crucial to use them both together. Examples are:
The 10th of September
Saturday the tenth of September
When using British English, the day should be followed by ordinal indicators. Use one ordinal indicator like -st, -th, -nd, or -rd that matches the suffix . Though not commonly followed, this format is still accepted in American English. Examples are:
The 21st of September
The 14th of September
The 2nd of September
The 3rd of September
When writing for an international audience, use the International Standard to prevent confusion. In this format, first write the year, then the month, and then the day. Commas are not used and all four digits of the year are written. Examples are:
2022 September 10

Use different degrees of scope and formality

When writing extremely formal invitations, be sure to spell the year, month, and day. The day should be written first even when you are using American English. This format is used for official certificates like diplomas and documents with the highest formalities, including wedding invitations. It is used to show deference and courtesy to the occasion and the reader.
We request the presence of you and your family on the tenth of September in the year three thousand and thirty.
When communicating in a semi-formal or slightly formal setting, spell only the month out. It is appropriate to use digits for the year and the day. This format is prevalent in academic writing. There is also a slight variation in the writing style depending on whether you use American or British English.
For American English: “Queen Elizabeth II ascended the English throne on June 2, 1953.” or “Queen Elizabeth II ascended the English throne in June 1953.”
For British English: “Queen Elizabeth II ascended the English throne on 2 June 1953.” or “Queen Elizabeth II ascended the English throne on 2nd of June 1953.”
Use numerals when writing dates on records and documents. This format is usually followed for memos, impersonal business records like invoices or a piece of communication, or even on lecture notes. This is done to show when the document was made or when it is due. Use all numerals when filling out forms and keeping records. Points to note in this format:
When writing greeting cards, use the MM/DD/YY format and write the date at the top. This will help the receiver know when the card was written. Example: 09/10/22.
The YYYY-MM-DD pattern is usually used in museum databases to indicate the date an artifact was obtained. Example: 2022-09-10.
When filling out government forms, use the MM-DD-YYYY format. Example: 09-10-2022.

Format for numerical dates

Separate the numerals indicating the day, month, and year using hyphens or slashes. For a more elegant look, bullets or periods can also be used. Underscores are also used in some cases. Always use hyphens when writing in an international format. When using American English, the date September 10, 1992, can be written as:
In international standards, it is written as 1992-10-09
A writer can optionally add “0” when the day or month is a single-digit number. Although it is frequently necessary on forms, many forgo it in daily informal settings. Using this format will ensure that the numerical dates all have equal lengths and can be accurately sorted. Example:
June fourth, 2018 can be written as 06/04/18 or 6/4/18. This makes its length similar to that of 12/12/18.
When a form shows “MM-DD-YYYY” or “MM-DD-YY” format, always use numerals. This will also show the order in which to write the date. The number of “M”, “D”, and “Y” indicates the number of digits to be filled in. Example:
“MM-DD-YYYY” can be filled in as 09-10-1992 and “MM-DD-YY” as 09-10-92.

Writing centuries

Centuries are written as plurals and when written in words they are written with all lowercase letters. Do not use apostrophes when writing centuries. Examples are:

Women wore tailored suit dresses in the early 1900s.
Women wore tailored suit dresses in the nineteen hundreds.
Women wore tailored suit dresses in the twentieth century.

Writing decades

Apostrophes should be used before and after two-digit numbers used to represent decades, such as the ’90s. You can either write it as the 1990s or simply the nineties. Examples are:

In the 90s, rock music was very popular.
In the nineties, rock music was very popular.

Should “in” or “on” be used when writing dates ?

When referring to an exact day, write the date using “on.” When referring to the year or the month, use “in.”

I am flying to New York on September 10, 2022.

The cafe will cease operations in September 2022.

How are dates written in technical or official documents?

When writing technical or official documents, always follow international standards rather than American or British English. This will make the document understandable to people belonging to different countries.

Grammarly – How to Write Dates Correctly in English
Cambridge dictionary – Dates
The Editor’s Manual – Dates: How to Write Correctly
LanguageTool – How to Write the Date

Inside this article

Fact checked: Content is rigorously reviewed by a team of qualified and experienced fact checkers. Fact checkers review articles for factual accuracy, relevance, and timeliness. Learn more.

About the author

Dalia Y.: Dalia is an English Major and linguistics expert with an additional degree in Psychology. Dalia has featured articles on Forbes, Inc, Fast Company, Grammarly, and many more. She covers English, ESL, and all things grammar on GrammarBrain.

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How to write dates in english (british and american).

By Magoosh Team

While this seems like a simple thing to do, it can actually get pretty complicated. There are numerous ways to write dates in English. The format, word or number order, and grammar can all vary based on the occasion. The country where you are writing the date can also throw in additional requirements.

So, what is the “correct” way to write dates in English? How can dates vary by location? We will answer both of these questions and more. But first, let’s look at how to write dates in a sentence.

Writing Dates in English

There are numerous ways to write the date. In both American and British English, the word or number order will depend on the context. For example, if you wish to write the date in the form of a full sentence, it will look like one of these:

Today is the 1st of January, 2020.
The date is January 1st, 2020.
It is Monday, January 1st, 2020.
Today’s date is Jan. 1st, 2020.
It is 1 January 2020.
It is the first day of January in 2020. (less common)

So, there are a lot of variations. But here are the most common formats:

“The” + Ordinal Number + “of” + Month, Year (Ex. – The 21st of September, 1990)
Month + Ordinal Number, Year (Ex. – March 3rd, 1947)
Day of the Week, Month + Ordinal Number, Year (Ex – Thursday, June 2nd, 2000)
Abbreviated Month + Ordinal Number, Year (Ex – Feb. 8th, 1983)
Day of the Month + Month + Year (Ex. – 6 January 2020)

Please note that English dates don’t have to include the day of the week or the year. In any of the examples above, these can be added or removed. Removing the year is usually less formal, since it provides less information (ex. October 17th). In any case, a date must include at least the name of the month and the day of the month.

The days of the week and months must always start with a capital letter if included.

Additionally, the months of the year can also be abbreviated to save space. Here are the abbreviations and numerical representations for all 12 months of the year:

January – Jan. – 01
February – Feb. – 02
March – Mar. – 03
April – Apr. – 04
May – May – 05
June – Jun. – 06
July – Jul. – 07
August – Aug. – 08
September – Sept. – 09
October – Oct. – 10
November – Nov. – 11
December – Dec. – 12

As you can see, the abbreviations use the first 3 or 4 letters of every month, followed by a period. The only month that cannot be abbreviated is “May,” because it is only 3 letters long.

Each month is represented by a number between 01 and 12, starting with January (01) and ending with December (12).

Now, let’s see how to write dates numerically in both British and American English:

How to Write Numerical Dates in British English

The primary difference between dates in British and American English is the correct order of numbers. In the UK, numerical dates take one of the following forms:

While the numbers can be separated by periods, slashes, or dashes, the format usually remains the same: Day of the Month/Month/Year . This format is actually pretty easy to remember, since it has a logical order.

The date begins with the shortest length of time (day of the month), then the next shortest (month), and finally the longest (year). However, some international date formats use the opposite order, going from the longest to the shortest length of time (Ex. YYYY-MM-DD or 2019-03-25).

When writing a numerical date, the numbers do not require ordinal indicators (Ex – 1 st , 2 nd , 3 rd , 4 th ). Instead, they are simply written as two-digit numbers. For numbers that are not two-digits long, you simply need to add a “zero” before the actual number (this applies to both the month and the day of the month).

Here are all of the days of the month as they should be written numerically:

Now that you know how to write dates in British English, you need to know where to write dates in British English.

Thankfully, it’s pretty simple. Just about every country outside of the United States (and some parts of Canada) uses the Day of the Month/Month/Year ( DD/MM/YYYY ) format. Whether you’re applying for a loan in India or writing a check in France, you’ll likely need to write the date in British English.

How to Write Numerical Dates in American English

Writing numerical dates in American English is similar to British English, with one important difference. In American English, dates usually take the following form: Month/Day of the Month/Year . In some cases, the year and month are switched (Ex. – YYYY-DD-MM or 2015-21-06).

Here are a few examples of numerical dates written in American English:

The differences between numerical dates in British and American English can cause confusion for non-native speakers. Sometimes, they even cause issues with international trade and commerce.

For example, if a business or individual records the date in American English (MM-DD-YYYY), someone in another country could interpret it as a date written in British English (DD-MM-YYYY). This is especially true for dates in the first half of each month. Let’s look at a few examples that can cause confusion:

American Date: March 1st, 2020
British Date: January 3rd, 2020
American Date: June 12th, 1997
British Date: December 6th, 1997
American Date: May 7th, 2001
British Date: July 5th, 2001

So, in order to avoid confusion or misunderstandings, you can either write out the name of the month and ordinal number, or simply confirm the preferred date format with the other person or entity.

Though dates look pretty simple on the surface, they are actually quite complicated. There are dozens of ways to write dates in English. This can lead to confusion, especially if you’re writing the date numerically.

Thankfully, most forms include some indication of how the date should be written (YYYY-MM-DD, DD-MM-YYYY, MM-DD-YYYY, etc). If you’re writing the date without any instruction, it’s ultimately up to you to determine which date format suits your style and occasion. In any case, now you know how to write dates in English like a pro!

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Grammar Guide

How to Write a Letter With Examples and Tips

Sarah Oakley

How do you write a letter, how to format a letter in 6 steps, letter format examples, how prowritingaid can help you with writing letters.

Letter writing is still a popular form of communication in a world where we expect instant responses thanks to email and phone calls.

USPS reports they process and deliver an average of 421.4 million mail pieces every day. Millions of those are letters being sent all over the world, not just to the US.

Letter writing is a great way to make your voice heard, make things happen, and show how much you care about something. Writing a letter carries more weight than an email or phone call because it takes more effort, and there are bigger costs involved.

In this article, we’ll talk about how to write a letter to clearly convey your points, and we’ll show you some examples you can use for inspiration.

To write a letter , you need to decide if you’re going to handwrite or type. Handwritten letters show you took the time to express your thoughts on paper. However, typing can save you some time, and you can still hand sign it after it’s printed.

The next part of writing a successful letter is thinking about what you would like your letter to achieve. You could write a love letter, hoping to get a date. It could be a cover letter to accompany your résumé, which needs to secure you an interview. Think about the result you hope to achieve before you plan what you want your letter to say.

You’ll need to decide if your letter will be formal or informal. Depending on the recipient and the reason for the letter, the formality is important, as it can affect how the message is received. If you are writing a personal letter to someone you know, opt for informal. However, if it’s for a job application or for an official, the reader would expect you to use formal letter writing.

Another thing to consider when writing a letter is your tone, which is how your letter sounds to the person reading it. If you’re writing a complaint, you want the reader to know you’re frustrated, but you don’t want to sound rude.

When you’re ready to write your letter, set some time aside for it. Before you write your letter, make a plan for what you’re going to say. Get your writing tools together as well as some envelopes and stamps, then you can start.

A letter is a piece of writing that is easy to identify by the written format. Letters follow a similar format to allow the reader to find and skim the important information.

The formatting details in the next six steps will tell you how to write a letter that gets your point across.

How to Head a Letter

Letterheads start with the sender’s address aligned to the left, right, or in the middle. If you write formal letters, you will need to include this as the receiver may need to respond in writing. For informal letters to those you know, forgo your address if you want to.

If you write lots of letters, consider getting some letterheads printed. Having a stack of paper with your details already printed can save you a lot of time. Alternatively, you can get a custom stamp printed and an ink block.

Which Side Do You Write the Date on a Letter?

Under the sender’s address , you’ll need to add the date you’re writing the letter. Write the date on the same side of the page as your address.

For personal letters where you haven’t included the sender’s address, you still need to add the date. The date gives context to your letter, so you don’t want to leave it out.

If you’re writing a formal letter, write the date out in full with the month first, then the day, then the year. For example, a letter written on 2023-03-15, you would write March 15, 2023. In the US, you need to add a comma between the day and the year.

Be confident about grammar

Check every email, essay, or story for grammar mistakes. Fix them before you press send.

Where to Include the Recipient’s Address on a Letter

The recipient’s address needs to be aligned to the left-hand side on the line below the date.

When writing a formal letter, start the recipient’s address with their name on one line, followed by their job title on the next line. Then write the company name and address below that.

For personal letters, you don’t need to include your recipient’s address.

How to Write an Introduction in a Letter

The introduction in your letter is the greeting and the first paragraph. Leave a line space under the address and start with the greeting.

There are many possible greetings you could start your introduction with, such as “Dear [recipient’s name].” For a formal letter, write their entire name. Alternatively, you can write “Mr.” or “Ms.” followed by their initials and surname. If it’s an informal letter, just write their first name.

If you don’t know the name of the person you’re writing to, you can use “Dear Sir or Madam.” To get the right address for your letter when writing to a company, you can call and request the name of the person you need to write to.

After the salutation, write your introductory paragraph. Always include the subject in your first sentence, and follow up with your reason for writing. For example, in a complaint letter about a faulty product, you would mention the product and any purchase reference in the first sentence, then explain you would like to complain about the quality of the product.

In a personal or informal letter, still include the subject and reason for writing in your first paragraph. This lets the reader know what to expect in the letter and sets the tone.

What to Write in a Letter

The body of your letter is where you’ll add the main points you want to address. All the points should be in an easy-to-follow order so your reader doesn’t lose the overall message of your letter.

Each paragraph should start with an opening sentence, followed by your evidence or additional information. Then you’ll want to close with a concluding sentence that connects to the next paragraph.

The length of your letter can differ depending on what you are writing about. Don’t write too much to make your letter look longer, as you’ll risk losing the reader’s attention. However, you don’t want to leave anything essential out of your letter, either.

If you’re struggling to order your points or know what to say, try using a template to guide you. Just remember, each letter is unique, so don’t rely on a template to write 100% of your letter. You don’t want your letter to sound generic or copied from the internet.

Ways to Sign a Letter

The last part of letter writing is the signature or sign-off. How you sign your letter will depend on the formality of the letter and if you know the recipient.

For formal letters, use “Yours sincerely” when you know the recipient, and “Yours faithfully” when you don’t. If you are writing to an official, such as a politician you will never meet, you can use “Yours truly.”

Sign-offs are not set in stone, though some people might tell you they are. It’s best to use what feels right for your letter based on the formality and tone you’ve used so far.

In an informal or personal letter, you can sign off with something a lot friendlier. You could use “With all my love” or “Your devoted friend.”

If you are typing your letter, you can handwrite your signature under the sign-off to show you have checked it and are confirming the words above are all your own.

For formal letters, include your full name in capital letters under your signature to be clear about who is signing the letter.

If you’re still not sure about how to write a letter, we have some examples to help you get started.

Here is an example of the indented paragraph format:

123 High Street

London, OH 12345

November 23, 2022

Martin Jones

Marketing Director

Advertising Company

456 West Street

London, OH 23456

Dear Mr. M Jones,

I recently saw your television advertisement for the new beauty salon on 7th Street, and I thought you did a great job. I would like to inquire about your rates for a 30-second advertisement for my beauty salon.

Please send me the costs for filming and producing an advertisement for television. I believe this will benefit my business and bring in new clients.

If there is any further information you require for the quotation, please get in touch with me at the above address.

Yours faithfully,

If you’re using the indented paragraph format, indent the initial line. You should then format subsequent paragraphs with indented first lines. The indented paragraph format is a common format used for both business and personal letters.

Here is an example of the block letter format:

1 New Street

Manhattan, NY 12345

January 3, 2023

Managing Director

Example Company

123 Old Road

Brooklyn, NY 67891

Dear Mr. J Bloggs,

I’m writing to you today to discuss the price increase in my energy bill dated December 30th, 2022. I don’t recall being notified of this increase.

As you did not notify me of the increase, I did not budget for it. I cannot afford the extra amount and would appreciate it if you revert my charge back to the previous amount.

I look forward to hearing from you.

In this format, align everything to the left, including the addresses and the date. You do not need to indent your first line, but you should leave spaces between paragraphs. You’ll see the block letter format used by businesses as a formal letter format.

Here is an example of a simplified style letter format:

Janet Jones

Retail Company HQ

456 New Acre Drive

Denver, CO 12345

March 30, 2022

Store Manager

Retail Company

Colorado Springs, CO 34567

STOCK LEVELS OF BANANAS AND ORANGES

The stock levels of bananas and oranges in your store are getting low. I would recommend you place an order for these items soon to ensure you continue to provide these to your customers.

Please let me know if you cannot place an order for these products before April 5th, 2022.

I look forward to seeing you again on my next store visit.

Yours sincerely,

The fundamental difference between this format and the others is that it includes a subject line instead of a greeting.

Once you’ve written your first draft of a letter, you’ll want to edit it to ensure it reads correctly and doesn’t have any grammatical errors. That’s where ProWritingAid can help you.

Start by reading your letter aloud, as this will help you spot any glaring errors. Then you can run it through ProWritingAid to see if there’s anything you’ve missed. The Realtime checker picks up on spelling and grammar errors and passive voice. It also shows places where you can improve readability, which is important for your reader to understand what you’re saying.

You can use the Style and Grammar Reports for a more in-depth analysis of your letter. If you are writing business letters, select the specific document type from the drop-down menu in the Realtime sidebar before you run your reports. This will ensure your results focus on the specific requirements for your letter type.

Even if you’re not typing out your letter, write a first draft and edit it before you write the version you’ll be posting. For tips on editing, you can check out some of the other articles on the ProWritingAid blog.

We hope this article has helped you learn how to write a letter that achieves the results you want.

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Writing the date

We write the date in English in different ways. The most common way in British English is to write the day of the month first, then the month (starting with a capital letter) and then the year:

We can also write the date in numbers only:

Sometimes the last two letters of the number as spoken can be used ( th , rd , st , nd ):

Today is the 7th September.

The grand opening is on 1st June. or … on June 1st.

With the exception of May and June, months can be shortened as follows:

Jan , Feb , Mar , Apr , Jul , Aug , Sept , Oct , Nov , Dec .

Dates in American English

In written American English, the month of the date comes before the day and year. For example, Independence Day in the USA is on July 4th each year. In the year 2000 the date was 4/7/2000 in British English. In American English this is written 7/4/2000.

British and American English

Speaking the date

We ask the date or about dates in several ways. We can add the and of when we reply:

What date did they get married?

A: What date is it? B: It’s the first of June . (1st June)

A: What’s the date today? B: It’s June the first . (June 1st)

A: What’s today’s date ? B: Fifteenth of April . (15th April)

We talk about years like this:

1492: fourteen ninety-two

1700: seventeen hundred

1801: eighteen hundred and one or eighteen oh / əʊ / one

1908: nineteen oh eight

After the year 2000

2000: two thousand

2003: two thousand and three or twenty oh three

2012: two thousand and twelve or twenty twelve

Typical error

Make sure you use the correct abbreviated form:

My birthday is the 28th of January.

Not: … the 28st …

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Writing the Date

There are several different ways to write the date in English. They vary from formal to informal, and there are differences between British and American English. The following table shows some typical formats.

Note: which format to use is a question of formality, politeness and personal choice. Generally, the longer formats, such as B or C, are more polite (since they show more respect for the reader). Shorter formats, such as D or E, are used in less formal situations, for example a memo, a letter between friends or an impersonal business letter. Format F is rather official and is typically seen on an invoice or an official or technical document. Format A is extremely formal and mainly used on printed items, for example a wedding invitation. The numerical formats may use a full stop (.) or hyphen (-) instead of a slash (/), for example: 14.3.2016 or 03-14-16

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How to write the date correctly

Writing dates in English can be done in a variety of ways. Here are some common ways to write dates in British and American English, or you can skip straight to tips for writing dates for IELTS by clicking the jump links.

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What is the correct date format in English? How you do this usually depends on whether you write a formal letter or an informal note, or whether your use the British or American date format. As you can see from the examples below, there are a number of ways in which you can write the same date. A general rule: the more complicated the style of date, the more formal it is.

The date format in British English

In British English, which is the type of English mainly used in Australia, the day is followed by the month, which is then followed by the year. The 6th day of the month September, in the year 2019, might be written in full (in order of complexity):

6 September

6 September 2019

6th September 2019

the 6th of September 2019

the 6th of September, 2019

The last two date formats are more formal. The “the” and “of” are optional but if you do use them, you must add both “the” and “of.” It is incorrect to say only “6th of September” or “the 6th September.”

As for the year, commas are not necessary when you write the date in British English, but you can if you prefer this style.

If you wish to add the name of the day, it should come before the date, and should either be separated by a comma or joined by “the” and “of.”

Saturday, 13 April 2019

Saturday the 13th of April, 2019

How to write the date in numbers?

If you prefer to abbreviate the date, you can use the following style in British English. Again, the day comes first, then the month, then the year.

6/9/19 or 6.9.19 or 6-9-19

06/09/2019 or 06.09.2019 or 06-09-2019

9Sept2019 or 6-Sept-19

The most commonly used separator in the all-numeric date format is a forward slash (/). However, you can also use a hyphen (-) or a period (.).

The date format in American English

When you prefer to write the date in American English, usually the month comes before the day, followed by the year. If we use the same example as before: The 6th day of the month September, in the year 2019, then the date in American English should be written as:

Sept 6

September 6

September 6, 2019

Monday, September 6, 2019

Dates written as April the 13th or April 13th are not incorrect, but are less common in American English.

In American English, if you want to write the date in all-numeric, you will need to use the following style. Here, too, the month comes first, then the day, then the year.

04/13/19 or 04.13.19 or 04-13-19

04/13/2019 or 04.13.2019 or 04-13-2019

Apr. 13, 2019

Other date formats

The international standard .

In an effort to avoid miscommunication between people using the British date format and those using the American date format, an International Standard was developed. If an Australian writes February 3, 2019 as 03/02/2019, but an American writes the same date as 02/03/2019, who’s right? The international standard recommends writing the date as year, then month, then the day: YYYY-MM-DD. So if both Australians and Americans used this, they would both write the date as 2019-02-03.

Writing the date this way avoids confusion by placing the year first. Much of Asia uses this form when writing the date. For example:

January 1, 2018 would be written as 2018 January 1. (Did you notice there’s no comma?).

Using the correct date format for IELTS

Whatever the format, in British English, dates are usually written in the order day – month – year, while in American English they are written month – day – year. For IELTS, you can use both date formats.

The correct date format for IELTS Writing

For IELTS, it doesn’t matter if you use American English spelling, or British English. Both are acceptable. However, you should pay attention to the tone of your letter: writing an email to a friend is different than writing a formal letter to your employer. The use of your date format should be appropriate to tone of the letter. For example, in a formal letter, you wouldn’t use contractions (you should write cannot instead of can’t, or would not instead of wouldn’t). If the IELTS Writing task tells you to start with “Dear Sir or Madam” (which indicates it’s a formal letter), you should try to use a formal datestyle.

IELTS Writing tip: With the exception of May and June, months can be shortened as follows: Jan, Feb, Mar, Apr, Jul, Aug, Sept/Sep, Oct, Nov, Dec.

In formal American English or British English, you never want to omit the year (e.g. 20 November or November 20). You also want to avoid a purely numerical form for the date (e.g. 20/11/2019 or 11/20/2019). For example, if you were to write a formal business letter, you’d write out the entire date, including the full month. In British English, you could write the date as 6th September 2019. In American English, you could use September 6, 2019.

IELTS Writing tip: Remember, the first letter of each month is always written in capital letters.

Dates in informal writing

If your task requires a less formal response (for example a letter to a friend), a shorter date format can be used. This typically uses only numbers separated by full stops or slashes, rather than writing out the month. Shortening the year is also acceptable, such as in the following:

23.10.19

23/10/2019

You can also write out the date but shorten the month to save space:

8 December 2019 → 8 Dec 2019

7 October → 7 Oct

If you’re not sure about your IELTS Writing, get in touch with the professionals and get some coaching to increase your IELTS score.

The correct date format for IELTS Listening

The first tip for your listening test: Be careful to note word limits. If there is an instruction in the question: “Write no more than two words,” writing more than two words will mean you will receive no marks at all for your answer, even if some of the words are correct.

When you are writing dates as an answer to any question, remember that there are several correct ways to write them (e.g. 24th April, April 24 and 24 April are all correct).

A second tip: When writing the date in the IELTS Listening test, you can write dates as numbers such as 19/02 or 02/19 (for 19 February). This eliminates spelling mistakes and complies with questions that only allow 1-word answers.

Need some further practice with IELTS Listening ? Check our free online preparation material or attend an IELTS Masterclass near you.

The correct date format for IELTS Speaking

Saying a date in English is sometimes different from how you would write the date. In spoken English, we always use ordinal numbers for dates. Ordinal numbers are numbers that show the order or sequence. Normally a “th” appears at the end of the number. For example, four → fourth (or 4 → 4th) and two → second (or 2 → 2nd).

As you’ve seen before, in written English you may write a normal (cardinal) number without the “th” or “st” etc. after it. Even if it is not written, the ordinal number is still said in spoken English. In American English, it is not common to put the -th after the number in written English.

Speaking test tip: Practise the pronunciation of numbers to be sure that your meaning is clear. For example, many numbers can sound very similar when spoken, so be sure to say them clearly, e.g. ‘Thirty’ and ‘Thirteen’, ‘Forty’ and ‘Fourteen’, ‘Fifty’ and ‘Fifteen’, etc.

Let’s have a look at how you can say the date correctly in your IELTS Speaking test:

30 March 1993

American English: ‘March the thirtieth, nineteen ninety-three’ or ‘March thirtieth, nineteen ninety-three’

British English: ‘the thirtieth of March, nineteen ninety-three’

1 December 2017

American English: ‘December the first, twenty seventeen’ or ‘December first, two thousand and seventeen’

British English: ‘the first of December, twenty seventeen’

How do you say years in English?

When you are talking about years, this is how you would say the year correctly in English:

1100 = ‘eleven hundred’

1309 = ‘thirteen hundred and nine’ or ‘thirteen ‘oh’ nine’

1678 = ‘sixteen (hundred and) seventy-eight’

1910 = ‘nineteen (hundred and) ten’

1946 = ‘nineteen (hundred and) forty-six’

2000 = ‘two thousand’

2007 = ‘two thousand and seven’ or ‘twenty ‘oh’ seven’

2019 = ‘two thousand and nineteen’ or ‘twenty nineteen’

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A Guide on How to Write Date in Formal Letter

Table of Contents

Writing a formal letter is never easy. You may wonder how to write date in formal letter .

What is a Formal Letter?

A formal letter is a written or printed communication sent to an individual or institution by a person or company. This letter mainly involves corporate individuals like entrepreneurs whenever they talk about a deal or specific official topic.

Apart from that, letters can classify into two types: informal letters, which means to address acquaintances. On the other hand, formal letters are written to financially or politically high-ranking somebody. In some countries, a person can write both a formal and informal letter in one instance. This kind of letter is called a mixed letter.

Some individuals involved in affairs like businesses and companies use formal letters for corporate purposes. They usually use these letters to communicate correctly and increase their business connections.

Formal letters must follow a precise and professional format. The letter should begin with a mailing address, sender and recipient contact information, the date, and salutation.

Why is Date Important in Formal Letters?

Why should date be included in a formal letter? When business letters are sent, the date is often used as a legal document to record the date and time of the letter.

Date is usually stated right after the salutation, at the top of the first page of the letter. Formal letter date guidelines are similar to date conventions in a newspaper. More often, date is helpful in documentation: case law, civil records, judicial proceedings, and legal actions such as a lawsuit.

The answer is that when you write a formal letter, you want to make sure you know when it was sent. It also tells how much time has passed since it was delivered, and how long it took to reach the recipient. This is especially important when you’re writing a letter of inquiry, and you want to make sure the recipient can read between the lines.

Writing the date in your formal letter will help your recipient understand when did you write the letter. It helps to increase or decrease the sense of urgency towards the reader, especially if your writing requires immediate or no response.

Although date is an integral part of formal letters, writing it requires formality. Writing the date is not as simple as inscribing the month, day, and year. It has a format, and you should follow that at all times.

There are a number of ways to write the date in English. The English language varies from formal to informal, and British and American English differ.

How to Write Date in Formal Letter?

It’s the month before the day, with a comma between the year and the day: May 12, 2022.

How do you write the date in a sentence? When writing a date, a comma is used to distinguish the day from the month, and the date from the year.

When the day and month is a part of a sentence you should always write its date in full. It usually involves giving the month, month, and year.

Please note that the year follows a comma. However, you can use several formats. This can include omitting the year or adding the day of the week. When writing out the date in full, you may use ordinal instead of cardinal numbers.

Whatever date format you use, ensure that you apply it consistently across all dates in your document. You can write dates using English in a variety of ways. Which is why you have to learn to write dates in British and American English.

The dates written as April 13th or April 13 are not incorrect, but are less common in American English.

Next, write the date on which you sent the letter. Align this information to the left or right margin. Months and dates can be spelled out using letters and numbers. In the entire date. Use the month and day, and year numbers in the month.

For example, you can write the current date as of this writing as May 12th, 2022.

When you write, sign, and send the letter, the information can become an essential record for legal documents, contracts, and agreements.

Correctly using the right date format in your formal letter will help you write excellently . Writing date in formal letter is not difficult if you know some very essential tips and rules. Just remember everything we tackled above.

Pam is an expert grammarian with years of experience teaching English, writing and ESL Grammar courses at the university level. She is enamored with all things language and fascinated with how we use words to shape our world.

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How to Write a Retirement Letter in 2024

A retirement letter serves as an official declaration of your departure from a job, giving your employer ample time to find a replacement or allocate your duties elsewhere. This strategy ensures a smooth transition and minimum disruptions in the workflow. But what are the key components of a retirement letter? Let’s explore together how to craft an effective retirement letter that not only paves the way for a smooth transition but may also help create potential opportunities for post-retirement consulting.

If you need help planning for retirement, consider working with a financial advisor .

Finding a financial advisor doesn’t have to be hard. SmartAsset’s free tool matches you with up to three vetted financial advisors who serve your area, and you can have a free introductory call with your advisor matches to decide which one you feel is right for you. If you’re ready to find an advisor who can help you achieve your financial goals, get started now .

What Is a Retirement Letter?

A retirement resignation letter is a vital piece of the retirement process, establishing formal communication between the retiring employee and the employer. Essentially, it’s an official notice from an employee, communicating their decision to retire from their current role within the organization.

The letter is a professional and respectful way of notifying the employer about the employee’s impending departure, enabling them to plan appropriately. As with any form of professional communication, it’s critical to ensure that the retirement letter is clear, concise, and adheres to the standard business letter format.

A retirement letter performs numerous functions. Primarily, it acts as a vital instrument for companies to plan and strategize for the future. With prior knowledge of an employee’s retirement, the company can commence the process of recruiting a new employee or reallocating tasks among its existing workforce.

The retirement letter also serves as a sign of respect toward the employer. Sending a formal retirement notice exhibits professionalism and courtesy, allowing the employer adequate time to transition.

A retirement letter can also present an opportunity for future consulting opportunities. The retiring employee can express their interest in contributing their expertise on a part-time or consulting basis post-retirement. It’s crucial to phrase such an offer tactfully, for instance, “I would be open to providing my expertise in a consulting role, should the need arise.” This may provide an avenue for continued professional engagement with the company even after retirement.

However, while drafting a retirement letter, it’s important to avoid certain common pitfalls. Ensure your letter is free from negative sentiments or criticisms about the company or colleagues. Also, avoid being overly casual or informal in your tone. Remember, even though it’s a letter of retirement, it’s still a formal piece of communication.

Why You Need a Retirement Letter

From both the employee’s and the employer’s perspectives, retirement letters play a significant role in workplace transitions, as they provide a tangible timeline for both parties to make necessary adjustments and plans. It’s a professional courtesy that benefits both the employee and the organization.

Here’s why you should submit a retirement letter to your employer when the time comes to call it a career:

It’s your formal notice. A retirement letter serves as the official communication that you’ll be leaving your position due to retirement. Submitting a retirement letter well in advance also allows your company to manage this transition smoothly, ensuring that your responsibilities will be adequately covered and that the remaining staff are prepared for any changes.
Gives your company enough time to plan. Without sufficient notice, a company may struggle to fill a sudden vacancy, which can lead to missed deadlines, increased workload for remaining staff and potential loss of business knowledge. A timely retirement letter helps the company plan for these changes, ensuring that the transition does not negatively impact the company’s operations or employee morale.
Shows respect and professional courtesy. A well-written retirement letter can serve as a testament to your professional respect toward your employer. It is an expression of appreciation for the opportunities provided by the employer and a recognition of the positive impact the company has had on your career. Maintaining professionalism in your retirement letter can help keep doors open for future opportunities, such as consulting or part-time work.

How to Write a Retirement Letter

Before beginning your letter, take a moment to reflect on your career. What key experiences stand out? What have you learned? How have you grown professionally? Use this reflection to shape the content of your retirement letter.

Your letter should be seen as a valuable tool to communicate your intentions and set the stage for your departure. Therefore, it should include several key elements:

Provide the Date of Retirement

In the opening paragraph, make it clear that you are retiring. Use straightforward language to avoid any ambiguity and provide your intended retirement date. While you’ll typically want to give at least two weeks’ notice before leaving a job, the more time you can give your employer to prepare for your eventual retirement, the better.

Express Your Appreciation for Your Time at the Company

Before diving into the how-to, it’s important to note why expressing appreciation in your retirement letter is crucial. It not only shows your gratitude for the opportunities the company provided but also leaves a positive impression. To effectively articulate this, consider mentioning specific experiences that contributed to your professional growth. For example, you might say, “I am deeply grateful for the opportunities I have been given and for the professional growth I have experienced during my tenure.”

Recap Your History on the Job

Providing a recap of your job history can serve as a reminder of your contributions to the company, thereby leaving a lasting legacy. Consider mentioning key projects you’ve worked on, roles you’ve held, or milestones you’ve achieved. This will not only highlight your achievements but also provide a sense of closure as you recap your journey at the company.

Offer to Assist in the Transition

Following the recap of your job history, it’s also important to help during the transition period. This respectful and professional gesture reflects positively on you. It shows your commitment to the company’s continuity and your willingness to ensure a smooth transition. You may offer to train your successor or to remain available for questions even after your official retirement date. This can go a long way towards maintaining good relationships with your employer and colleagues.

Explore Consulting Opportunities if You’re Interested

To maintain a connection with the company post-retirement, expressing your interest in possible consulting roles within your retirement letter can be beneficial. This could involve mentioning your openness to consulting opportunities or other ways you can continue to contribute to the team. For example, you could write, “I would be open to discussing potential consulting opportunities or other ways I can continue to contribute to the team after my retirement.”

Communicate Your Needs Before Retiring

Lastly, it’s crucial to communicate any pre-retirement needs in your retirement letter. This may include discussions about pension or retirement benefits, final paycheck or the return of company property. Providing examples of these needs and detailing how to communicate them professionally in your retirement letter ensures that there are no unresolved issues or misunderstandings, paving the way for a smooth transition into retirement.

Provide Your Contact Information

It’s important to ensure that your employer has your current contact information, as well as a way to get in touch with you if you plan to move in retirement.

Example of a Retirement Letter

Let’s put this into practice with a real-world example. Here’s a well-written example of a retirement letter that includes all the necessary elements discussed in the previous sections. The following retirement letter is professionally formatted, cordial, direct and expresses gratitude toward the employer:

123 Main Street

Los Angeles, CA 90001

[email protected]

123-456-7890

XYZ Marketing

456 Main Street

After careful consideration and reflection on my career, I have decided that it is time for me to retire from my position at XYZ Marketing. With this letter, I am providing my formal notice of retirement, with my last day of work proposed to be March 1, 2024.

This decision has not been an easy one, as my time at XYZ Marketing has been an incredibly rewarding and fulfilling chapter in my life. I want to take this opportunity to express my deep appreciation for the support, mentorship and guidance I have received throughout my tenure here. Over the years, I have had the privilege of working alongside dedicated colleagues, and I am grateful for the invaluable experiences and opportunities this organization has provided me.

As I prepare for retirement, I want to assure you that I am committed to ensuring a smooth transition. I am more than willing to assist in any way possible during this period to ensure the continuity of projects and responsibilities. Whether it involves training a successor or providing insights from my experience, I am here to help make this transition as seamless as possible. I am also open to potentially consulting for the company in retirement.

For any matters that may require my attention after my retirement date, please feel free to contact me via email at [email protected] or by phone at 123-456-7890.

I want to thank you once again for the incredible journey I’ve had at XYZ Marketing and for the unwavering support of the entire team. I am proud of the accomplishments we’ve achieved together, and I have every confidence that this organization will continue to thrive in the future.

I look forward to staying in touch and witnessing the continued success of XYZ Marketing from the sidelines.

Bottom Line

A retirement letter is a crucial part of a smooth and professional career transition. It not only serves as an official notice of departure, giving the company time to find a suitable replacement, but also lays the foundation for maintaining a positive relationship with your former employer.

Retirement Planning Tips

Retiring with confidence requires knowing that you’ll be able to generate enough income to cover your living expenses and support your lifestyle. SmartAsset’s retirement calculator can help you determine how much you’ll need to save before you’re able to retire and whether you’re on track to hit that savings target.
A financial advisor can help you save and plan for retirement. Finding a financial advisor doesn’t have to be hard. SmartAsset’s free tool matches you with up to three vetted financial advisors who serve your area, and you can have a free introductory call with your advisor matches to decide which one you feel is right for you. If you’re ready to find an advisor who can help you achieve your financial goals, get started now .

Photo credit: ©iStock.com/CocoSan, ©iStock.com/FG Trade Latin, ©iStock.com/filadendron

The post How to Write a Retirement Letter appeared first on SmartReads by SmartAsset .

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How to Send a Letter or Postcard: Domestic

Sending mail with USPS is easy! Our video will help you with most letters, cards, and postcards you send domestically (inside the U.S.), including U.S. territories and military bases in the U.S. and abroad.

For how to ship a package, see How to Send a Package: Domestic .

Send Mail: Step-by-Step Instructions

Step 1: Choose Envelope or Postcard

Envelopes are for sending flat, flexible things, like letters, cards, checks, forms, and other paper goods. For just 1 $0.68 First-Class Mail ® Forever ® stamp , you can send 1 oz (about 4 sheets of regular, 8-1/2" x 11" paper in a rectangular envelope) to anywhere in the U.S.!

No. 10 envelope compared to the minimum and maximum envelope sizes

Envelopes must be rectangular and made of paper to qualify for letter prices. Your envelope can be a maximum of 11-1/2" long x 6-1/8" high. (A standard No. 10 envelope is 9-1/2" long x 4-1/8" high.) You can fold what you put in your envelope, but it needs to stay flat—no more than 1/4" thick.

If you want to send letter-sized papers without folding them, you can use a large envelope (called a "flat"); the postage for flats starts at $1.39 . If your large envelope is nonrectangular, rigid (can't bend), or lumpy (not uniformly thick), you'll have to pay the package price.

TIP: If your envelope can't fit through USPS mail processing machines, or is rigid, lumpy or has clasps, string, or buttons, it's "nonmachinable" and you'll have to pay $0.40 more to send it. ( See additional postage in Step 3 .) You'll also have to pay more if your envelopes are square or vertical (taller than they are wide).

Postcards are for short messages that you don't need to put in an envelope. Save money using a $0.53 postcard stamp to send a standard-sized postcard anywhere in the U.S. Standard postcards are usually made of paper, are between 5" to 6" long and 3-1/2" to 4-1/4" high, and are between 0.007" and 0.016" thick.

Envelope and postcard with return address written in the top left corner and delivery address in the bottom center.

Step 2: Address Your Mail

Envelopes: Write your address (the "return" or "sender" address) in the top left corner. Write the delivery address (the "recipient" address) in the bottom center.

Postcards: Postcards come in different formats, so write the delivery address in the space it gives you (on the same side you write your message and put the stamp).

Print your return address and the delivery address clearly, in the correct spots, to make sure your mail is delivered on time.

Address Format Tips

Use a pen or permanent marker.
Do not use commas or periods.
Include the ZIP+4 ® Code whenever possible.

Write Sender Address

Write your address (the "return address") in the top-left corner. Include the following on separate lines:

Your full name or company name
Apartment or suite number
Full street address
City, State, and ZIP+4 Code

Write Delivery Address

Write the delivery address (the "recipient" address) in the bottom center of the envelope. Include the following on separate lines:

Recipient's full name or company name

If the apartment or suite number cannot fit on the delivery address line above the city, state, and ZIP+4 Code, place it on a separate line immediately above the delivery address line.

Write the sender's address in the top-left corner. Include the following on separate lines:

Full street address and apartment or suite number, if applicable

Special U.S. Addresses

Puerto rico.

Some Puerto Rico addresses include an urbanization or community code for a specific area or development. Addresses with an urbanization code, abbreviated URB, should be written on 4 lines:

MS MARIA SUAREZ URB LAS GLADIOLAS 150 CALLE A SAN JUAN PR 00926-3232

More Puerto Rico Address Examples

U.S. Virgin Islands

Virgin Islands addresses have the same format as standard addresses. The right abbreviation for this territory is "VI," not "US VI" or "USA VI":

MS JOAN SMITH RR 1 BOX 6601 KINGSHILL VI 00850-9802

Military and Diplomatic Mail (APO/FPO/DPO)

Mail to military and diplomatic addresses is treated differently:

Do not include the city or country name when you send something to an APO/FDO/DPO address in another country. This keeps your mail out of foreign mail networks.
Do include unit and box numbers if they're assigned:

SEAMAN JOSEPH SMITH UNIT 100100 BOX 4120 FPO AP 96691

More Details on Military Addresses

When you're done addressing your envelope, put what you're sending inside the envelope, then close and seal it (using the envelope's glue or tape).

Envelope and postcard, each with a stamp in the upper right corner

Step 3: Calculate Postage (& Add Insurance or Extra Services)

A First-Class Mail ® Forever stamp costs $0.68 and goes in the upper right corner of the envelope. (You can also use any combination of stamps that adds up to $0.68.)

If your letter is heavier or bigger, or if you want to add insurance or extra services like Certified Mail ® service, you'll pay more.

A standard postcard stamp costs $0.53 . (Large or square postcards will cost more.) Put the postcard stamp in the space provided near the delivery address.

Postage for letters mostly depends on weight and size/shape. You can weigh your letter with a kitchen scale, postal scale , at a self-service kiosk, or at the Post Office ™ counter.

TIP: As a rule of thumb, you can send 1 oz (4 sheets of printer paper and a business-sized envelope) for 1 First-Class Mail ® Forever ® stamp (currently $0.68).

The postage for a large envelope (or flat) starts at $1.39 for 1 oz.

Where Can I Buy Postage?

The Postal Store ® Shop online for all stamps and add-on postage for oversized or heavier envelopes.
Post Office Locations Buy stamps at Post Office locations , self-service kiosks , or at Approved Postal Providers ® such as grocery and drug stores.

TIP: If you're sending larger envelopes (flats) using Priority Mail ® or Priority Mail Express ® service, you can use Click-N-Ship ® service to pay for and print your own postage online.

Additional Postage

If your envelope weighs over 1 oz, you can buy additional postage in the amount you need:

Each additional 1 oz is $0.24, for letters up to 3.5 oz and large envelopes up to 13 oz.
Nonmachinable items, including envelopes that are lumpy or rigid, or have clasps, string, or buttons will cost $0.44 more to send. You'll also have to pay more if your envelopes are square or vertical (taller than they are wide).
You can also buy 1¢, 2¢, 3¢, 4¢, 5¢, and 10¢ stamps at The Postal Store .

TIP: Put the stamp on last; that way, if you make a mistake at any other point, you won't waste a stamp.

Calculate a Price

Add-On Services

If you want insurance, proof of delivery, signature services, or other optional services, you'll have to pay extra.

Our Insurance & Extra Services page has more details; some of the more common add-on services for letters include:

Certified Mail ® : Get proof that you mailed your item and that the recipient signed for it.
Registered Mail ® : USPS's most secure mail service–mail is processed manually, handled separately and securely, and signed for along every step of its journey. The recipient must sign for the mail to confirm delivery (or attempted delivery).
Return Receipt: You'll get a printed or emailed delivery record showing the recipient's signature. You can combine Return Receipt with other services, including Certified Mail, Registered Mail, Priority Mail Express ® service, and more.
Adult Signature Required: Only an adult (age 21+) can sign for the mail after showing a valid government ID .

Postage Options

There are several ways to get postage for your envelope.

The Postal Store ® --> ® and Priority Mail Express ® envelopes.
Post Office ™ Locations --> ® such as grocery and drug stores.

Send your letter or postcard from your mailbox, a blue collection box, or Post Office.

Step 4: Send Your Mail

Once your envelope or postcard has the correct addresses and postage, you can send it several ways, including putting it in your mailbox or dropping it in a blue collection box or at a Post Office ™ location.

Put your letter inside your mailbox and raise the flag (if you have one).
If you have a cluster mailbox, drop it in the outgoing mail slot.
Drop it off in a blue collection box.
Take it to a Post Office lobby drop.

Important Note: If your envelope has postage stamps and weighs more than 10 oz or is thicker than 1/2", you can't put it in a collection box; you have to give it to an employee at a Post Office location. See more details on What Can and Cannot be Deposited in a Collection Box?

Bonus: Sending Mail Pro Tips

The Postal Service uses high-speed sorting machines to help process and deliver 425.3 million mail pieces each day. Here are some extra tips to improve your mail sending experience:

Stay flexible : Don't send rigid (hard) objects in paper envelopes.
Sending embellished invitations (for weddings, graduations, etc.)? Get them hand-canceled or put them inside another envelope.
Need tracking? Learn about your options.

Flexible and flat items only (like paper or photos, less than 1/4 inch thick). Rigid or lumpy Items (like keys or flash drives) can tear your envelope.

Stay Flexible

Postcards, letter envelopes, and large envelopes (flats) all need to bend to fit through USPS ® high-speed sorting machines.

OK: Flexible, flat things like stickers, photos, trading cards, etc. should be okay—as long as your envelope stays flat, not lumpy, and less than 1/4" thick.
Not OK: Don't put rigid objects (like flash drives, coins, keys, hard plastic card cases, etc.) loose in unpadded paper envelopes: They could get torn out of the envelope, jam the sorting machines, cause a delay, or even get lost.

Instead, for rigid and odd-shaped objects (or things you don't want to get bent), we recommend using a padded envelope or small box and sending it as a package .

Sending Embellished Invitations (for Weddings, Graduations, etc.)

If you want to send a specially decorated envelope (like some wedding invitations):

You can pay the extra fee for nonmachinable First-Class Mail ® items, bring your mail to the Post Office™ counter, and ask the retail associate to hand-cancel your embellished invitations.
For externally decorated invitations: If you use wax seals, strings, ribbons, etc. on your envelopes, don't try to send them exposed. Instead, to make sure your envelopes arrive looking the way your designer intended, put them inside another envelope .

Need Tracking?

Tracking is not available for First-Class Mail items. If you'd like to get tracking information for your letter:

You can pay extra to send your letter using Priority Mail Express ® or Priority Mail ® service.
You can get delivery confirmation by adding Certified Mail ® or Registered Mail ® service. (You can even combine it with Return Receipt if you want the recipient's signature.)

Manage communications
Mutual Fund & 529 accounts

I invest on behalf of my clients.

I consult or invest on behalf of a financial institution.

I want to learn more about BlackRock.

Photo of BlackRock’s Chairman and CEO, Larry Fink

Larry Fink’s 2024 Annual Chairman’s Letter to Investors

Time to rethink retirement.

When my mom passed away in 2012, my dad started to decline quickly, and my brother and I had to go through my parents’ bills and finances.

Both my mom and dad worked great jobs for 50 years, but they were never in the top tax bracket. My mom taught English at the local state college (Cal Northridge), and my dad owned a shoe store.

I don’t know exactly how much they made every year, but in today’s dollars, it was probably not more than $150,000 as a couple. So, my brother and I were surprised when we saw the size of our parents' retirement savings. It was an order of magnitude bigger than you’d expect for a couple making their income. And when we finished going over their estate, we learned why: My parents' investments.

My dad had always been an enthusiastic investor. He encouraged me to buy my first stock (the DuPont chemical company) as a teenager. My dad invested because he knew that whatever money he put in the bond or stock markets would likely grow faster than in the bank. And he was right.

I went back and did the math. If my parents had $1,000 to invest in 1960, and they put that money in the S&P 500, then by the time they’d reached retirement age in 1990, the $1,000 would be worth nearly $20,000. 1 That’s more than double what they would have earned if they’d just put the money in a bank account. My dad passed away a few months after my mom, in his late 80s. But both my parents could have lived beyond 100 and comfortably afforded it.

Why am I writing about my parents? Because going over their finances showed me something about my own career in finance. I had been working at BlackRock for almost 25 years by the time I lost my mom and dad, but the experience reminded me — in a new and very personal way — why my business partners and I founded BlackRock in the first place.

Obviously, we were ambitious entrepreneurs, and we wanted to build a big, successful company. But we also wanted to help people retire like my parents did. That’s why we started an asset manager — a company that helps people invest in the capital markets — because we believed participating in those markets was going to be crucial for people who wanted to retire comfortably and financially secure.

We also believed the capital markets would become a bigger and bigger part of the global economy. If more people could invest in the capital markets, it would create a virtuous economic cycle, fueling growth for companies and countries, which would, in turn, generate wealth for millions more people.

My parents lived their final years with dignity and financial freedom. Most people don’t have that chance. But they can. The same kinds of markets that helped my parents in their time can help others in our time. Indeed, I think the growth- and prosperity-generating power of the capital markets will remain a dominant economic trend through the rest of the 21 st Century.

This letter attempts to explain why.

I had been working at BlackRock for almost 25 years by the time I lost my mom and dad, but the experience reminded me — in a new and very personal way — why my business partners and I founded BlackRock in the first place.

A brief (and admittedly incomplete) history of U.S. capital markets

In finance, there are two basic ways to get or grow money.

One is the bank, which is what most people historically relied on. They deposited their savings to earn interest or took out loans to buy a home or expand their business. But over time a second avenue for financing arose, particularly in the U.S., with the growth of the capital markets: Publicly traded stocks, bonds, and other securities.

I saw this firsthand in the late 1970s and early 1980s when I played a role in the creation of the securitization market for mortgages.

Before the 1970s, most people secured financing for their homes the same way they did in the Christmas classic It’s a Wonderful Life — through the Building & Loan (B&L). Customers deposited their savings into the B&L, which was essentially a bank. Then that bank would turn around and lend out those savings in the form of mortgages.

In the movie — and in real life — everything works fine until people start lining up at the bank’s front door asking for their deposits back. As Jimmy Stewart explained in the film, the bank didn’t have their money. It was tied up in somebody else’s house.

After the Great Depression, B&Ls morphed into savings & loans (S&Ls), which had their own crisis in the 1980s. Approximately half of the outstanding home mortgages in the U.S. were held by S&Ls in 1980, and poor risk management and loose lending practices led to a raft of failures costing U.S. taxpayers more than $100 billion dollars. 2

But the S&L crisis didn’t cause the American economy lasting damage. Why? Because at the same time the S&Ls were collapsing another method of financing was getting stronger. The capital markets were providing an avenue to channel capital back to challenged real estate markets.

This was mortgage securitization.

Securitization allowed banks not just to make mortgages but to sell them. By selling mortgages, banks could better manage risk on their balance sheets and have capital to lend to home buyers, which is why the S&L crisis didn’t severely impact American homeownership.

Eventually, the excesses of mortgage securitization contributed to the crash in 2008, and unlike the S&L crisis, the Great Recession did harm home ownership in the U.S. The country still hasn’t fully recovered in that respect. But the broader underlying trend — the expansion of the capital markets — was still very helpful for the American economy.

In fact, it’s worth considering: Why did the U.S. rebound from 2008 faster than almost any other developed nation? 3

A big part of the answer is the country’s capital markets .

In Europe, where most assets were kept in banks, economies froze as banks were forced to shrink their balance sheets. Of course, U.S. banks had to tighten capital standards and pull back from lending as well. But because the U.S. had a more robust secondary pool of money – the capital markets — the nation was able to recover much more quickly.

Today public equities and bonds provide over 70% of financing for non-financial corporations in the U.S. – more than any other country in the world. In China, for example, the bank-to-capital market ratio is almost flipped. Chinese companies rely on bank loans for 65% of their financing. 4

In my opinion, this is the most important lesson in recent economic history: Countries aiming for prosperity don’t just need strong banking systems — they also need strong capital markets.

That lesson is now spreading around the world.

Replicating the success of America’s capital markets

Last year, I spent a lot of days on the road, logging visits to 17 different countries. I met with clients and employees. I also met with many policymakers and heads of state, and during those meetings, the most frequent conversation I had was about the capital markets.

More and more countries recognize the power of American capital markets and want to build their own.

Of course, many countries do have capital markets already. There are something like 80 stock exchanges around the world, everywhere from Kuala Lumpur to Johannesburg. 5 But most of these are rather small, with little investment. They’re not as robust as the markets in the U.S., and that’s what other nations are increasingly looking for.

In Saudi Arabia, for example, the government is interested in building a market for mortgage securitization, while Japan and India want to give people new places to put their savings. Today, in Japan, it’s mostly the bank. In India, it’s often in gold.

When I visited India in November, I met policymakers who lamented their fellow citizens’ fondness for gold. The commodity has underperformed the Indian stock market, proving a subpar investment for individual investors. Nor has investing in gold helped the country’s economy.

Compare investing in gold with, let’s say, investing in a new house. When you buy a home, that creates an economic multiplier effect because you need to furnish and repair the house. Maybe you have a family and fill the house with children. All that generates economic activity. Even when someone puts their money in a bank, there’s a multiplier effect because the bank can use that money to fund a mortgage. But gold? It just sits in a safe. It can be a good store of value, but gold doesn’t generate economic growth.

This is a small illustration — but a good one — of what countries want to accomplish with robust capital markets. (Or rather, of what they can’t accomplish without them.)

Despite the anti-capitalist strain in our modern politics, most world leaders still see the obvious: No other force can lift more people from poverty or improve quality of life quite like capitalism. No other economic model can help us achieve our highest hopes for financial freedom — whether we want it for ourselves or our country.

That’s why the capital markets will be key to addressing two of the mid-21 st Century’s biggest economic challenges.

The first is providing people what my parents built over time — a secure, well-earned retirement. This is a much harder proposition than it was 30 years ago. And it’ll be a much harder proposition 30 years from now . People are living longer lives. They’ll need more money. The capital markets can provide it — so long as governments and companies help people invest.
A second challenge is infrastructure. How are we going to build the massive amount the world needs? As countries decarbonize and digitize their economies, they’re supercharging demand for all sorts of infrastructure, from telecom networks to new ways to generate power. In fact, in my nearly 50 years in finance, I’ve never seen more demand for energy infrastructure. And that’s because many countries have twin aims: They want to transition to lower-carbon sources of power while also achieving energy security. The capital markets can help countries meet their energy goals, including decarbonization, in an affordable way.

[Retirement] is a much harder proposition than it was 30 years ago. And it’ll be a much harder proposition 30 years from now .

Asking the old age question: How do we afford longer lives?

Last year, Japan passed a demographic milestone. The country’s population has been aging since the early 1990s as the pool of working-age people has shrunk and the number of elderly has risen. But 2023 was the first time that 10% of their people exceeded 80 years old, 6 making Japan the “oldest country in the world” according to the United Nations. 7

This is part of the reason the Japanese government is making a push for retirement investment.

Most Japanese keep the bulk of their retirement savings in banks, earning a low interest rate. It wasn’t such a bad strategy when Japan was suffering from deflation, but now the country’s economy has turned around, with the NIKKEI surging past 40,000 for the first time this month (March 2024). 8

Most aspiring retirees are missing out on the upswing. The country didn’t have anything resembling a 401(k) program until 2001, but even then, the amount of income people could contribute was quite low. So a decade ago, the government launched the Nippon Individual Savings Accounts (NISA) to encourage people to invest even more in retirement. Now they’re trying to double NISA’s enrollment. The goal is 34 million Japanese investors before the end of the decade. 9 It will require the Japanese government to expand their capital markets, which historically had very little retail participation.

Japan isn’t alone in helping more of its citizens invest for retirement. BlackRock has a joint venture — Jio BlackRock — with Jio Financial Services, an affiliate of India’s Reliance Industries. Over the past 10 years, India has built a huge digital public infrastructure network that connects nearly one billion Indians to everything from healthcare to government payments via their smartphones. Jio BlackRock’s goal is to use the same infrastructure to deliver retirement investing (and more).

After all, India is aging, too. The whole world is, albeit at different speeds. Brazil will start seeing more people leave its workforce than enter it by 2035; Mexico will reach peak workforce by 2040; India sometime around 2050.

As populations age, building retirement savings has never been more urgent

Chart: Percentage of 2020 National working age population

Source: Working-age population (ages 15-64): UN “medium trend 10

By the mid-century mark, one-in-six people globally will be over the age of 65, up from one-in-11 in 2019. 11 To support them, governments are going to have to prioritize building out robust capital markets like the U.S. has.

But this isn’t to say the U.S. retirement system is perfect. I’m not sure anybody believes that. The retirement system in America needs modernizing, at the very least.

Rethinking retirement in the United States

This was particularly clear last year as the biotech industry pumped out a rush of new, life-extending drugs. Obesity, for example, can take more than 10 years off someone’s life expectancy, which is why some researchers think that new pharmaceuticals like Ozempic and Wegovy can be life-extending drugs, not just weight-loss drugs. 12 In fact, a recent study shows that semaglutide, the generic name for Ozempic, can give people with cardiovascular disease an extra two years of life where they don’t suffer a major condition like a heart attack. 13

We focus a tremendous amount of energy on helping people live longer lives. But not even a fraction of that effort is spent helping people afford those extra years.

These drugs are breakthroughs. But they underscore a frustrating irony: As a society, we focus a tremendous amount of energy on helping people live longer lives. But not even a fraction of that effort is spent helping people afford those extra years.

It wasn’t always this way. One reason my parents had a financially secure retirement was CalPERS, California’s state pension system. As a public university employee, my mom could enroll. But pension enrollment has been declining across the country since the 1980s. 14 Meanwhile the federal government has prioritized maintaining entitlement benefits for people my age (I’m 71) even though it might mean that Social Security will struggle to meet its full obligations when younger workers retire.

It’s no wonder younger generations, Millennials and Gen Z, are so economically anxious. They believe my generation — the Baby Boomers — have focused on their own financial well-being to the detriment of who comes next. And in the case of retirement, they’re right.

Today in America, the retirement message that the government and companies tell their workers is effectively: “You’re on your own.” And before my generation fully disappears from positions of corporate and political leadership, we have an obligation to change that.

Maybe once a decade, the U.S. faces a problem so big and urgent that government and corporate leaders stop business as usual. They step out of their silos and sit around the same table to find a solution. I participated in something like this after 2008, when the government needed to find a way to unwind the toxic assets from the mortgage crisis. More recently, tech CEOs and the federal government came together to address the fragility of America’s semiconductor supply chain. We need to do something similar for the retirement crisis. America needs an organized, high-level effort to ensure that future generations can live out their final years with dignity.

What should that national effort do? I don’t have all the answers. But what I do have is some data and the beginnings of a few ideas from BlackRock’s work. Because our core business is retirement.

More than half the assets BlackRock manages are for retirement. 15 We help about 35 million Americans invest for life after work, 16 which amounts to about a quarter of the country’s workers. 17 Many are educators like my mom was. BlackRock helps manage pension assets for roughly half of U.S. public school teachers. 18 And this work — and our similar work around the globe — has given us some insight into how a national initiative to modernize retirement might begin.

We think the conversation starts by looking at the challenge through three different lenses.

What’s the issue from the perspective of a current worker , someone who’s still trying to save for retirement?
What about someone who has already retired? We have to look at the problem from the retiree’s point of view — an individual who has already saved enough to stop working but is worried the money will run out.
But first it’s important to look at retirement in America like you’d look at a map of America — a high-level picture of the problem, the kind a national policymaker might look at. What’s the issue for the population as a whole? (It’s demographics.)

[Young people] believe my generation — the Baby Boomers — have focused on their own financial well-being to the detriment of who comes next. And in the case of retirement, they’re right.

The demographics don’t lie

There’s a popular saying in economics: “You just can’t fight demographics.” And yet, when it comes to retirement, the U.S. is trying anyway.

In wealthy countries, most retirement systems have three pillars. One is what people invest personally (my dad putting his money in the stock market). Another is the plans provided by employers (my mom’s CalPERS pension). A third component is what we hear politicians mostly talking about – the government safety net. In the U.S., this is Social Security.

You’re probably familiar with the economics behind Social Security. During your working years, the government takes a portion of your income, then after you retire, it sends you a check every month. The idea actually originates from pre-World War I Germany, and these “old-age insurance” programs gradually became popular over the 20 th Century largely because the demographics made sense.

Think about someone who was 65 years old in 1952, the year I was born. If he hadn’t retired already, that person was probably getting ready to stop working.

But now think about that person’s former colleagues, all the people around his age who he’d entered the workforce with back in the 1910s. The data shows that in 1952, most of those people were not preparing for retirement because they’d already passed away .

This is how the Social Security program functioned: More than half the people who worked and paid into the system never lived to retire and be paid from the system. 19

Today, these demographics have completely unraveled, and this unraveling is obviously a wonderful thing. We should want more people to live more years. But we can’t overlook the massive impact on the country’s retirement system.

It’s not just that more people are retiring in America; it’s also that their retirements are increasing in length. Today, if you’re married and both you and your spouse are over the age of 65, there’s a 50/50 chance at least one of you will be receiving a Social Security check until you’re 90. 20

All this is putting the U.S. retirement system under immense strain. The Social Security Administration itself says that by 2034, it won’t be able to pay people their full benefits. 21

What’s the solution here? No one should have to work longer than they want to. But I do think it’s a bit crazy that our anchor idea for the right retirement age — 65 years old — originates from the time of the Ottoman Empire.

Humanity has changed over the past 120 years. So must our conception of retirement.

One nation that’s rethought retirement is the Netherlands. In order to keep their state pension affordable, the Dutch decided more than 10 years ago to gradually raise the retirement age. It will now automatically adjust as the country’s life expectancy changes. 22

Obviously, implementing this policy elsewhere would be a massive political undertaking. But my point is that we should start having the conversation . When people are regularly living past 90, what should the average retirement age be?

Or rather than pushing back when people receive retirement benefits, perhaps there’s a more politically palatable idea: How do we encourage more people who wish to work longer with carrots rather than sticks? What if the government and the private sector treated 60-plus year-olds as late-career workers with much to offer rather than people who should retire?

One way Japan has managed its aging economy is by doing exactly this. They’ve found new ways to boost the labor force participation rate, a metric that has been declining in the U.S. since the early 2000s. 23 It’s worth asking: How can America stop (or at least, slow) that trend?

Again, I’m not pretending to have the answers. Despite BlackRock’s success helping millions retire, these questions are going to have to be posed to a broader range of investors, retirees, policymakers, and others. Over the next few months, BlackRock will be announcing a series of partnerships and initiatives to do just that, and I invite you to join us.

For workers, make investing (almost) automatic

When the U.S. Census Bureau released its regular survey of consumer finances in 2022, nearly half of Americans aged 55 to 65 reported not having a single dollar saved in personal retirement accounts. 24 Nothing in a pension. Zero in an IRA or 401(k).

Why? Well, the first barrier to retirement investing is affordability.

Four-in-10 Americans don’t have $400 to spare to cover an emergency like a car repair or hospital visit. 25 Who is going to invest money for a retirement 30 years away if they don’t have cash for today? No one. That’s why BlackRock’s foundation has worked with a group of nonprofits to set up an Emergency Savings Initiative. The program has helped mostly low-income Americans put away a total of $2 billion in new liquid savings. 26

Studies show that when people have emergency savings, they’re 70% more likely to invest for retirement. 27 But this is where workers run into another barrier: Investing is complex even if you can afford it.

No one is born a natural investor. It’s important to say that because sometimes in the financial services industry we imply the opposite. We make it seem like saving for retirement can be a simple task, something anyone can do with a bit of practice, like driving your car to work. Just grab your keys and hop in the driver’s seat. But financing retirement isn’t so intuitive. The better analogy is if someone dropped a bunch of engine and auto parts in your driveway and said, “Figure it out.”

At BlackRock, we’ve tried to make the investing process more intuitive by inventing simpler products like target date funds. They only require people to make one decision: What year do they expect to retire? Once people choose their “target date,” the fund automatically adjusts their portfolio, shifting from higher-return equities to less risky bonds as retirement approaches. 28

In 2023, BlackRock expanded the types of target date ETFs we offer so people can more easily buy them even if they don’t work for employers offering a retirement plan. There are 57 million people like this in America — farmers, gig workers, restaurant employees, independent contractors — who don’t have access to a defined contribution plan. 29 And while better investment products can help, there are limits to what something like a target date fund can do. Indeed, for most people, the data shows that the hardest part of retirement investing is just getting started.

Other nations make things simpler for their part-time and contract workers. In Australia, employers must contribute a portion of income for every worker between the ages of 18 and 70 into a retirement account, which then belongs to the employee. The Superannuation Guarantee was introduced in 1992 when the country seemed like it was on the path to a retirement crisis. Thirty-two years later, Australians likely have more retirement savings per capita than any other country. The nation has the world’s 54 th largest population, 30 but the 4 th largest retirement system. 31

Of course, every country is different, so every retirement system should be different. But Australia’s experience with Supers could be a good model for American policymakers to study and build on. Some already are. There are about 20 U.S. states — like Colorado and Virginia — that have instituted retirement systems to cover all workers like Australia does, even if they’re gig or part-time. 32

It’s a good thing that legislators are proposing different bills and states are becoming “laboratories of retirement.” More should consider it. The benefits could be enormous for individual retirees. These new programs could also help the U.S. ensure the long-term solvency of Social Security. That’s what Australia found — their Superannuation Guarantee relieved the financial tension in their country’s public pension program. 33

But what about workers who do have access to an employer retirement plan? They need support too.

Even among employees who have access to employer plans, 17% don’t enroll in them, and the hypothesis among retirement experts is this is not a conscious choice. People are just busy.

It sounds trivial, but even the hour or so it takes someone to look through their work email inbox for the correct link to their company’s retirement system, and then select the percentage of their income they want to contribute can be the unclearable hurdle. That’s why companies should make a conscious effort to look at what their default option is. Are people automatically enrolled in a plan or not? And how much are they auto-enrolled to contribute? Is it a minimum percentage of their income? Or the maximum?

In 2017, the University of Chicago economist Richard Thaler won the Nobel Prize, in part, for his pioneering work around “nudges” — small changes in policy that can have enormous impact in people’s financial lives. Auto-enrollment is one of them. Studies show that the simple step of making enrollment automatic increases retirement plan participation by nearly 50%. 34

As a nation, we should do everything we can to make retirement investing more automatic for workers. And there are already bright spots. Next year, a new federal law will kick in, requiring employers that set up new 401(k) plans to auto-enroll their new workers. Plus, there are hundreds of major companies (including BlackRock) that have already taken this step voluntarily.

But firms can do even more to improve their employee’s financial lives, such as providing some level of matching funds for retirement plans and offering more financial education on the tremendous long-term difference between contributing a small percentage of your income to retirement versus the maximum. I also think we should make it easier for workers to transfer their 401(k) savings when they switch jobs. There is a menu of options here, and we need to explore all of them.

For retirees, help them spend what they saved

In 2018, BlackRock commissioned a study of 1,150 American retirees. When we dug into the data, we found something unexpected — even paradoxical.

The survey showed that after nearly two decades of retirement, the average person still had 80% of their pre-retirement money saved. We’re talking about people who were probably between the ages of 75 and 95. If they had invested for retirement, they were likely sitting on more than enough money for the rest of their lives. And yet the data also showed that they were anxious about their finances. Only 32% reported feeling comfortable about spending what they saved. 35

This retirement paradox has a simple explanation: Even people who know how to save for retirement still don’t know how to spend for it.

In the U.S., this problem’s roots stretch back more than four decades when employers began switching from defined benefit plans — pensions — to defined contribution plans like 401(k)s.

In a lot of ways, pensions were much simpler than the 401(k). You had a job somewhere for 20 or 30 years. Then when you retired, your pension paid you a set amount — a defined benefit — every month.

When I entered the workforce in the 1970s, 38% of Americans had one of these defined benefit plans, but by 2008 the percentage had been cut almost in half. 36 Meanwhile, the fraction of Americans with defined contribution plans almost quadrupled. 37

This should have been a good thing. Beginning with the Baby Boomers, fewer and fewer workers spent their entire careers in one place, meaning they needed a retirement option that would follow them from job to job. In theory, 401(k)s did that. But in practice? Not really.

Anyone who’s switched jobs knows how unintuitive it is to transfer your retirement savings. In fact, studies show that about 40% of employees cash out their 401(k)s when they switch jobs, putting themselves back at the starting line for retirement savings. 38

The real drawback of defined contribution was that it removed most of the retirement responsibility from employers and put it squarely on the shoulders of the employees themselves. With pensions, companies had a very clear obligation to their workers. Their retirement money was a financial liability on the corporate balance sheet. Companies knew they’d have to write a check every month to each one of their retirees. But defined contribution plans ended that, forcing retirees to trade a steady stream of income for an impossible math problem.

Because most defined contribution accounts don’t come with instructions for how much you can take out every month, individual savers first must build up a nest-egg, then spend down at a rate that will last them the rest of their lives. But who really knows how long that will be?

Put simply, the shift from defined benefit to defined contribution has been, for most people, a shift from financial certainty to financial un certainty .

That’s why around the same time we saw the data that retirees were nervous about spending their savings, we started wondering: Was there something we can do about it? Could we develop an investment strategy that provided the flexibility of a 401(k) investment but also the potential for a predictable, paycheck-like income stream, similar to a pension?

It turns out, we could. That strategy is called LifePath Paycheck™, which will go live in April. As I write this, 14 retirement plan sponsors are planning to make LifePath Paycheck™ available to 500,000 employees. I believe it will one day be the most used investment strategy in defined contribution plans.

We’re talking about a revolution in retirement. And while it may happen in the U.S. first, eventually other countries will benefit from the innovation as well. At least, that is my hope. Because while retirement is mainly a saving challenge, the data is clear: It’s a spending one too.

Fear vs. hope

Before I conclude this section on retirement, I want to share a few words about one of the largest barriers to investing for the future. In my view, it’s not just affordability or complexity or the fact that people are too busy to enroll in their employer’s plan.

Arguably the biggest barrier to investing for retirement — or for anything — is fear.

In finance, we sometimes think of “fear” as a fuzzy, emotional concept — not as a hard economic data point. But that’s what it is. Fear is as important and actionable a metric as GDP. After all, investment (or lack thereof) is just a measure of fear because no one lets their money sit in a stock or a bond for 30 or 40 years if they’re afraid the future is going to be worse than the present. That’s when they put their money in a bank. Or underneath the mattress.

This is what happens in many countries. In China, where new surveys show consumer confidence has dropped to its lowest level in decades, household savings have reached their highest level on record — nearly $20 trillion — according to the central bank. 39 China has a savings rate of about 30%. Nearly a third of all money earned is socked away in cash in case it’s needed for harder times ahead. The U.S., by comparison, has a savings rate in the single digits. 40

America has rarely been a fearful country. Hope has been the nation’s greatest economic asset. People put their money in American markets for the same reason they invest in their homes and businesses — because they believe this country will be better tomorrow than it is today.

This big, hopeful America has been the one I’ve known my whole life, but over the past few years, especially as I’ve had more grandchildren, I’ve started to ask myself: Will they know this version of America, too?

As I was finishing this letter, The Wall Street Journal published an article that caught my attention. It was titled “The Rough Years that Turned Gen Z into America’s Most Disillusioned Voters,” and it included some eye-catching — and really disheartening — data.

The article showed that from the mid-1990s through most of the early 21 st Century, most young people — around 60% of high school seniors, to be specific — believed they’d earn a professional degree, would land a good job, and go on to be wealthier than their parents. They were optimistic. But since the pandemic, that optimism has fallen precipitously.

Compared with 20 years ago, the current cohort of young Americans is 50% more likely to question whether life has a purpose. Four-in-10 say it’s “hard to have hope for the world.” 41

I’ve been working in finance for almost 50 years. I’ve seen a lot of numbers. But no single data point has ever concerned me more than this one.

The lack of hope worries me as a CEO. It worries me as a grandfather. But most of all, it worries me as an American.

If future generations don’t feel hopeful about this country and their future in it, then the U.S. doesn’t only lose the force that makes people want to invest. America will lose what makes it America. Without hope, we risk becoming just another place where people look at the incentive structure before them and decide that the safe choice is the only choice. We risk becoming a country where people keep their money under the mattress and their dreams bottled up in their bedroom.

How do we get our hope back?

Whether we’re trying to solve retirement or any other problem, that is the first question we have to ask, although I readily admit that I do not have the solution. I look at the state of America — and the world — and I am as answerless as everyone else. There’s so much anger and division, and I often struggle to wrap my head around it.

What I do know is that any answer has to start by bringing young people into the fold. The same surveys that show their lack of hope also show their lack of confidence — far less than any previous generation — in every pillar of society: In politics, government, the media, and in corporations. Leaders of these institutions (I am one) should be empathetic to their concerns.

Young people have lost trust in older generations. The burden is on us to get it back. And maybe investing for their long-term goals, including retirement, isn’t such a bad place to begin.

Perhaps the best way to start building hope is by telling young people, “You may not feel very hopeful about your future. But we do. And we’re going to help you invest in it.”

Young people have lost trust in older generations. The burden is on us to get it back. And maybe investing for their long-term goals, including retirement, isn’t such a bad place to begin.

The new infrastructure blueprint: Steel, concrete, and public-private partnership

I started traveling to London in the 1980s, and back then, if you had a choice between the city’s two major international airports — Heathrow or Gatwick — you probably chose Heathrow. Gatwick was farther from the city. It was also in a comparative state of disrepair.

But things changed in 2009 when Gatwick was purchased by Global Infrastructure Partners (GIP). They increased runway capacity and instituted commonsense changes, like oversized luggage trays that cut security screening times by more than half.

“The thing about infrastructure businesses... is a lot of them tend not to focus on customer service,” GIP’s CEO Bayo Ogunlesi told the Financial Times . GIP wanted to make Gatwick different. In the process, they also turned the airport into a prime example of how infrastructure will be built and run in the 21 st Century — with private capital. 42

In the U.S., people tend to think of infrastructure as a government endeavor, something built with taxpayer funds. But because of one very big reason that I’ll dive into momentarily, that won’t be the primary way infrastructure is built in the mid-21 st Century. Rather than only tapping government treasuries to build bridges, power grids, and airports, the world will do what Gatwick did.

The future of infrastructure is public-private partnership.

Debt matters

The $1 trillion infrastructure sector is one of the fastest growing segments of the private markets, and there are some undeniable macroeconomic trends driving this growth. In developing countries, people are getting richer, boosting demand for everything from energy to transportation while in wealthy countries, governments need to both build new infrastructure and repair the old.

Even in the U.S., where the Biden Administration has signed generational infrastructure investments into law, there’s still $2 trillion worth of deferred maintenance. 43

How will we pay for all this infrastructure? The reason I believe it’ll have to be some combination of public and private dollars is that funding probably cannot come from the government alone. The debt is just too high.

From Italy to South Africa, many nations are suffering the highest debt burdens in their history. Public debt has tripled since the mid-1970s, reaching 92% of global GDP in 2022. 44 And in America, the situation is more urgent than I can ever remember. Since the start of the pandemic, the U.S. has issued roughly $11.1 trillion of new debt, and the amount is only part of the issue. 45 There’s also the interest rate the Treasury needs to pay on it.

Three years ago, the rate on a 10-year Treasury bill was under 1%. But as I write this, it’s over 4%, and that 3-percentage-point increase is very dangerous. Should the current rates hold, it amounts to an extra trillion dollars in interest payments over the next decade. 46

Why is this debt a problem now? Because historically, America has paid for old debt by issuing new debt in the form of Treasury securities. It’s a workable strategy so long as people want to buy those securities — but going forward, the U.S. cannot take for granted that investors will want to buy them in such volume or at the premium they currently do.

Today, around 30% of U.S. Treasury securities are held by foreign governments or investors. That percentage will likely go down as more countries build their own capital markets and invest domestically. 47

More leaders should pay attention to America’s snowballing debt. There’s a bad scenario where the American economy starts looking like Japan’s in the late 1990s and early 2000s, when debt exceeded GDP and led to periods of austerity and stagnation. A high-debt America would also be one where it’s much harder to fight inflation since monetary policymakers could not raise rates without dramatically adding to an already unsustainable debt-servicing bill.

But is a debt crisis inevitable? No.

While fiscal discipline can help tame debt on the margins, it will be very difficult (both politically and mathematically) to raise taxes or cut spending at the level America would need to dramatically reduce the debt. But there is another way out beyond taxing or cutting, and that’s growth. If U.S. GDP grows at an average of 3% (in real, not nominal terms) over the next five years, that would keep the country’s debt-to-GDP ratio at 120% – high, but reasonable.

I should be clear: 3% growth is a very tall order, especially given the country’s aging workforce. It will require policymakers to shift their focus. We can’t see debt as a problem that can be solved only through taxing and spending cuts anymore. Instead, America’s debt efforts have to center around pro-growth policies , which include tapping the capital markets to build one of the best catalysts for growth: Infrastructure. Especially energy infrastructure.

Energy pragmatism

Roads. Bridges. Ports. Airports. Cell towers. The infrastructure sector contains multitudes, but the multitude where BlackRock sees arguably the greatest demand for new investment is energy infrastructure.

Why energy? Two things are happening in the sector at the same time.

The first is the “energy transition.” It’s a mega force, a major economic trend being driven by nations representing 90% of the world’s GDP. 48 With wind and solar power now cheaper in many places than fossil-fuel-generated electricity, these countries are increasingly installing renewables. 49 It’s also a major way to address climate change. This shift – or energy transition – has created a ripple effect in the markets, creating both risks and opportunities for investors, including BlackRock’s clients.

I started writing about the transition in 2020. Since then, the issue has become more contentious in the U.S. But outside the debate, much is still the same. People are still investing heavily in decarbonization. In Europe, for example, net-zero remains a top investment priority for most of BlackRock’s clients. 50 But now the demand for clean energy is being amplified by something else: A focus on energy security.

Governments have been pursuing energy security since the oil crisis of the 1970s, (and probably as far back as the early Industrial Revolution), so this is not a new trend. In fact, when I wrote my original 2020 letter about sustainability, I also wrote to our clients that countries would still need to produce oil and gas to meet their energy needs.

To be energy secure, I wrote, most parts of the globe would need “to rely on hydrocarbons for a number of years.” 51

I’m hearing more leaders talk about decarbonization and energy security together under the joint banner of what you might call “energy pragmatism.”

Then in 2022, Putin invaded Ukraine. The war lit a fresh spark under the idea of energy security. It disrupted the world’s supply of oil and gas causing massive energy inflation, particularly in Europe. The UK, Norway, and the 27 EU countries had to collectively spend 800 billion euros subsidizing energy bills. 52

This is part of the reason I’m hearing more leaders talk about decarbonization and energy security together under the joint banner of what you might call “energy pragmatism.”

Last year, as I mentioned, I visited 17 countries, and I spent a lot of time talking to the people who are responsible for powering homes and businesses, everybody from prime ministers to energy grid operators. The message I heard was completely opposite to what you often hear from activists on the far left and right who say that countries have to choose between renewables and oil and gas. These leaders believe that the world still needs both. They were far more pragmatic about energy than dogmatic. Even the most climate conscious among them saw that their long-term path to decarbonization will include hydrocarbons, albeit less of them, for some time to come.

Germany is a good example of how energy pragmatism is still a path to decarbonization. It’s one of the countries most committed to fighting climate change and has made enormous investments in wind and solar power. But sometimes the wind doesn’t blow in Berlin, and the sun doesn’t shine in Munich. And during those windless, sunless periods, the country still needs to rely on natural gas for “dispatchable power.” Germany used to get that gas from Russia, but now it needs to look elsewhere. So, they’re building additional gas facilities to import from other producers around the world. 53

Or look at Texas. They face a similar energy challenge – not because of Russia but because of the economy. The state is one of the fastest growing in the U.S., 54 and the additional demand for power is stretching ERCOT, Texas’ energy grid, to the limit. 55

Today, Texas runs on 28% renewable energy 56 – 6% more than the U.S. as a whole. 57 But without an additional 10 gigawatts of dispatchable power, which might need to come partially from natural gas, the state could continue to suffer devastating brownouts. In February, BlackRock helped convene a summit of investors and policymakers in Houston to help find a solution.

Texas and Germany are great illustrations of what the energy transition looks like. As I wrote in 2020, the transition will only succeed if it’s “fair.” Nobody will support decarbonization if it means giving up heating their home in the winter or cooling it in the summer. Or if the cost of doing so is prohibitive.

Since 2020, economists have popularized better language to describe what a fair transition actually means. One important concept is the “green premium.” It’s the surcharge people pay for “going green”: for example, switching from a car that runs on gas to an electric vehicle. The lower the green premium, the fairer decarbonization will be because it’ll be more affordable.

This is where the power of the capital markets can be unleashed to great effect. Private investment can help energy companies reduce the cost of their innovations and scale them around the world. Last year, BlackRock invested in over a dozen of these transition projects on behalf of our clients. We partnered with developers in Southeast Asia aiming to build over a gigawatt of solar capacity (enough to power a city) in both Thailand and the Philippines. 58 We also invested in Lake Turkana Wind Power, Africa’s largest windfarm. It’s located in Kenya and currently accounts for about 12% of the country’s power generation. 59

There are also earlier-stage technologies, like a giant “hot rock” battery being built by Antora Energy. The company heats up blocks of carbon with wind or solar power during parts of the day when renewable energy is cheap and abundant. These “thermal batteries” reach up to 2,400 degrees Celsius and glow brighter than the sun. 60 Then, that heat is used to power giant industrial facilities around-the-clock, even when the sun isn’t shining, or the wind isn’t blowing.

BlackRock invested in Antora through Decarbonization Partners, a partnership we have with the investment firm, Temasek. Our funding will help Antora scale up to deliver billions of dollars worth of zero-emission energy to industrial customers. 61 (One day, their thermal batteries might help solve the kind of dispatchable power problem that Texas and Germany are facing – but without carbon emissions.)

The final technology I’ll spotlight is carbon capture. Last year, one of BlackRock’s infrastructure funds invested $550 million in a project called STRATOS, which will be the world’s largest direct air capture facility when construction is completed in 2025. 62 Among the more interesting aspects of the project is who’s building the facility: Occidental Petroleum, the big Texas oil company.

The energy market isn’t divided the way some people think, with a hard split between oil & gas producers on one side and new clean power and climate tech firms on the other. Many companies, like Occidental, do both, which is a major reason BlackRock has never supported divesting from traditional energy firms. They’re pioneers of decarbonization, too.

Today, BlackRock has more than $300 billion invested in traditional energy firms on behalf of our clients. Of that $300 billion, more than half – $170 billion – is in the U.S. 63 We invest in these energy companies for one simple reason: It’s our clients’ money. If they want to invest in hydrocarbons, we give them every opportunity to do it – the same way we invest roughly $138 billion in energy transition strategies for our clients. That’s part of being an asset manager. We follow our clients’ mandates.

But when it comes to energy, I also understand why people have different preferences in the first place. Decarbonization and energy security are the two macroeconomic trends driving the demand for more energy infrastructure. Sometimes they’re competing trends. Other times, they’re complementary, like when the same advanced battery that decarbonizes your grid can also reduce your dependence on foreign power.

The point is: The energy transition is not proceeding in a straight line. As I’ve written many times before, it’s moving in different ways and at different paces in different parts of the world. At BlackRock, our job is to help our clients navigate the big shifts in the energy market no matter where they are.

BlackRock’s next transformation

One way we’re helping our clients navigate the booming infrastructure market is by transforming our company. I began this section by writing about the owners of Gatwick Airport, GIP. In January, BlackRock announced our plans to acquire them.

Why GIP? BlackRock’s own infrastructure business had been growing rapidly over the past several years. But to meet demand, we realized we needed to grow even faster.

It’s not just debt-strapped governments that need to find alternate pools of financing for their infrastructure. Private sector firms do too. All over the world, there’s a vast infrastructure footprint that’s owned and operated entirely by private companies. Cell towers are a good example. So are pipelines that deliver the feedstocks for chemical companies. Increasingly, the owners of these assets prefer to have a financing partner, rather than carrying the full cost for the infrastructure on their balance sheet.

I had been thinking about this trend and called an old colleague, Bayo Ogunlesi.

Both Bayo and I started our careers in finance at the investment bank First Boston. But our paths diverged. I lost $100 million on a series of bad trades at First Boston and…well, nobody needs to hear that story again. But it led me (and my BlackRock partners) to pioneer better risk management for fixed income markets. Meanwhile, Bayo and his team were pioneering modern infrastructure investing in the private markets.

Now, we plan to join our forces again. I think the result will be better opportunities for our clients to invest in the infrastructure that keeps our lights on, planes flying, trains moving, and our cell service at the maximum number of bars.

More about BlackRock’s work in 2023

In this letter, I’ve shared my view that the capital markets are going to play an even bigger role in the global economy. They’ll have to if the world wants to address the challenges around infrastructure, debt, and retirement. These are the major economic issues of the mid-21st Century. We’re going to need the power of capitalism to solve them.

The way BlackRock figures into that story is through our work with clients. We want to position them well to navigate these trends, which is why we’ve tried to stay more connected to our clients than ever.

Over the past five years, thousands of clients on behalf of millions of individuals have entrusted BlackRock with managing over $1.9 trillion in net new assets. Thousands also use our technology to better understand the risks in their portfolios and support the growth and commercial agility of their own businesses. Years of organic growth, alongside the long-term growth of the capital markets, underpin our $10 trillion of client assets, which grew by over $1.4 trillion in 2023.

In good times and bad, whether clients are focused on increasing or decreasing risk, our consistent industry-leading organic growth demonstrates that clients are consolidating more of their portfolios with BlackRock. In 2023, our clients awarded us with $289 billion in net new assets during a period of rapid change and significant portfolio de-risking.

BlackRock’s differentiated business model has enabled us to continue to grow with our clients and maintain positive organic base fee growth. We’ve grown regardless of the market backdrop and even as most of the industry experienced outflows.

I think back to 2016 and 2018 when uncertainty and cautious sentiment impacted investment behavior among institutions and individuals. Many clients de-risked and moved to cash. BlackRock stayed connected with our clients. We stayed rigorous in driving investment performance, innovating new products and technologies, and providing advice on portfolio design. Once clients were ready to step back into the markets more actively, they did it with BlackRock – leading to new records for client flows, and organic base fee growth at or above our target.

Flows and organic base fee growth accelerated into the end of 2023. We saw $96 billion of total net inflows in the fourth quarter and we entered 2024 with great momentum.

In 2024, I plan to do what I did in 2023 – spend a lot of time on the road visiting clients. I’ve already taken several trips in the U.S. and around the world, and it’s clearer than ever that companies and clients want to work with BlackRock.

For companies where we are investing on behalf of our clients, they appreciate that we typically provide long-term, consistent capital. We often invest early, and we stay invested through cycles whether it’s debt or equity, pre-IPO or post-IPO. Companies recognize BlackRock’s global relationships, brand, and expertise across markets and industries. This makes us a valuable partner, and in turn supports the sourcing and performance we can provide for clients.

Over the past 18 months, we’ve sourced and executed on a number of deals for clients. In addition to the STRATOS direct air capture project, our funds partnered with AT&T on the Gigapower JV to build out broadband in communities across the U.S. We also made investments globally, including in Brasol (Brazil), AirFirst (South Korea), Akaysha Energy (Australia), and the Lake Turkana Wind Farm (Kenya).

Our ability to source deals for clients is a primary driver of demand for BlackRock private markets strategies. These strategies saw $14 billion of net inflows in 2023, driven by infrastructure and private credit. We continue to expect these categories to be our primary growth drivers within alternatives in the coming years.

Our active investment insights, expertise and strong investment performance similarly differentiate BlackRock in the market. We saw nearly $60 billion of active net inflows in 2023, compared with industry outflows.

In ETFs, BlackRock generated an industry-leading $186 billion of net inflows in 2023. Our leadership in the ETF industry is another testament to our global platform and connectivity with clients.

What we have seen in market after market is that if we can make investing easier and more affordable, we can quickly attract new clients. We are leveraging digital wealth platforms in local markets to provide more investment access and accelerate organic growth for iShares ETFs.

In EMEA, BlackRock powers ETF savings plans for end investors, partnering with many banks and brokerage platforms, including Trade Republic, Scalable Capital, ING, Lloyds, and Nordnet. These partnerships will help millions of people access investments, invest for the long-term, and achieve financial well-being.

In 2023, we also announced our minority investment in Upvest, which will help drive innovation in how Europeans access markets and make it cheaper and simpler to start investing.

Then there is our work with Britain’s leading digital bank, Monzo, to offer its customers our products through its app, with minimum investments as low as £1. Through these relationships, we’re evolving our iShares ETF franchise to meaningfully increase access to global markets.

Let me also say a few words about Aladdin. It remains the language of portfolios, uniting all of BlackRock, and providing the technological foundation for how we serve clients across our platform. And Aladdin isn’t just the key technology that powers BlackRock; it also powers many of our clients. The need for integrated data and risk analytics as well as whole portfolio views across public and private markets is driving annual contract value (ACV) growth.

In 2023, we generated $1.5 billion in technology services revenue. Clients are looking to grow and expand with Aladdin, reflected in strong harvesting activity, with over 50% of Aladdin sales being multi-product.

As we look ahead, the re-risking of client portfolios will create tremendous prospects for both our public and private markets franchises. And integrated technology will be needed to help clients be nimble while operating at scale.

These are the times where investors are making broad changes to the way they build portfolios. BlackRock is helping investors build the “portfolio of the future” – one that integrates public and private markets and is digitally enabled. We view these changes as big catalysts. With the diversified investment and technology platform we’ve built, we’ve set ourselves up to be a structural grower in the years ahead.

Positioning our organization for the future

Just as we continually innovate and evolve our business to stay ahead of our clients, we also evolve our organization and our leadership team.

Earlier this year we announced changes to reimagine our business and transform our organization to better anticipate what clients need – and shape BlackRock so clients can continue to get the insights, solutions, and outcomes they expect from us.

For years, BlackRock has worked with clients across the whole portfolio, albeit with distinctions between product structures for ETFs, active mutual funds, and separate accounts.

Now the traditional lines between products are blurring. Clients are building portfolios that seamlessly combine both active and index strategies, including liquid and illiquid assets and spanning public and private markets, across ETF, mutual fund, and separate account structures.

BlackRock has been critical in expanding the market for ETFs by making them accessible to more investors and delivering new asset classes (like bonds) and investment strategies (like active). As a result of that success, the ETF is no longer just an indexing concept – it is becoming an efficient structure for a range of investment solutions.

We always viewed ETFs as a technology, a technology that facilitated investing. And just as our Aladdin technology has become core to asset management, so too have ETFs. That’s why we believe embedding our ETF and Index expertise across the entire firm will accelerate the growth of iShares and every investment strategy at BlackRock.

We’ll be nimbler and more closely aligned with clients through our new architecture with the aim of delivering a better experience, better performance, and better outcomes.

Voting choice

Healthy capital markets depend on a continuous feedback loop between companies and their investors. For more than a decade, BlackRock endeavored to improve that feedback loop for our clients.

We’ve done it by building an industry-leading stewardship program, one that’s focused on engaging investee companies on issues impacting our clients’ long-term economic interests. This requires understanding how companies are positioned to navigate the risks and opportunities they face – for example, how geopolitical fragmentation might rewire their supply chains or how higher borrowing cost might impact their capacity to deliver sustained earnings growth.

To do that, we built one of the largest stewardship teams to engage with companies, often alongside our investment teams, because we never believed in the industry’s reliance on the recommendations of a few proxy advisors. We knew our clients would expect us to make independent proxy voting decisions, informed by our ongoing dialogue with companies – a philosophy that continues to underpin our stewardship efforts today. For our clients who have entrusted us with this important responsibility, we remain steadfast in promoting sound corporate governance practices and financial resilience at investee companies on their behalf.

And for our clients who wish to take a more direct role in the proxy voting process, we continue to innovate to provide them with more choice. In 2022, BlackRock was the first in our industry to launch Voting Choice, a capability that enabled institutional investors to participate in the proxy voting process. Today, about half of our clients’ index equity assets under management can access Voting Choice. And in February, we launched a pilot in our largest core S&P 500 ETF, enabling Voting Choice for individual investors for the first time.

We welcome these additional voices to corporate governance and believe they can further strengthen shareholder democracy. I believe that more asset owners can participate in this important process effectively if they are well-informed. We are encouraged by their engagement and the continued transformation of the proxy voting ecosystem but continue to believe that the industry would benefit from additional proxy advisors.

Strategy for long-term growth

For 36 years, BlackRock has led by listening to our clients and evolving to help them achieve long-term outcomes. That commitment has been behind everything we’ve done as a firm, whether it’s unlocking new markets through iShares, pioneering whole portfolio advisory, launching Aladdin on the desktops of investors and so much more. Clients have been at the foundation of our mindset and our growth strategy, informing the investments we’ve made across our businesses.

The combination of technology and advisory, alongside ETFs, active and private markets capabilities, enables us to deliver a better client experience – leading to clients consolidating more of their portfolios with BlackRock or engaging us for outsourcing solutions. We believe this in turn will drive continued differentiated organic growth into the future.

As we do each year, our management team and Board spent time assessing our strategy for growth. We challenge ourselves to think: What opportunities will this economic environment create for BlackRock and our clients, what more can we do to meet and anticipate their needs? How can we evolve our organization, operating structure, investment capabilities, and service models and, in doing so, keep leading the industry?

We have strong conviction in our strategy and our ability to execute with scale and expense discipline. Our strategy remains centered on growing Aladdin, ETFs, and private markets, keeping alpha at the heart of BlackRock, leading in sustainable investing, and advising clients on their whole portfolio.

We have continually made internal investments for organic growth and efficiency, investing ahead of client opportunities in private markets, ETFs, technology, and whole portfolio solutions.

In private markets, we are prepared to capitalize on structural growth trends. Whether it’s executing on demand for much-needed infrastructure, or the growing role of private credit as banks and public lenders move away from the middle market, private capital will be essential. BlackRock is poised to capture share through our scale, proprietary origination, and track record. And we believe our planned acquisition of GIP will meaningfully accelerate our ability to offer our private markets capabilities to our clients.

In ETFs, we will continue to lead by expanding investment access globally and through innovation. The ETF is an adaptable piece of financial technology, and over time we’ve been able to do more with it than just making investing more affordable. We’ve been able to bring better liquidity and price discovery to more opaque markets. One recent example is offering people exposure to Bitcoin through ETFs.

ETFs have been an incredible growth story in the U.S., with iShares leading the way. We believe global ETF adoption is set to accelerate as catalyst trends that we saw in the U.S. years ago like the growth of fee-based advisory and model portfolios are just beginning to take root. Nearly half of 2023 iShares net inflows were from our ETFs listed internationally in local markets, led by European iShares net inflows of $70 billion.

Active asset allocation, security selection and risk management have consistently been key elements in long-term returns. Our active teams across multi-asset, fixed income and equities are well-positioned to seize on broad opportunities arising out of this new interest rate and potentially more volatile regime. We are particularly excited about the opportunity in fixed income and how artificial intelligence is propelling performance in our systematic investing businesses.

Fixed income is going to be increasingly relevant in the construction of whole portfolios with higher yields and better return potential compared to the low-rate environment of the last 15 years. Now that the rate on 10-year U.S. Treasuries is near long-term averages, clients are reconsidering bond allocations.

BlackRock is well-positioned with a diversified fixed income platform. It’s not going to be just about index, where we manage nearly $1.7 trillion. Or just about active where we manage over $1 trillion. Some of the most interesting portfolio conversations are with allocators who are blending ETFs with active or using innovations like our active ETFs for professionally managed income solutions.

Across asset classes, the need for integrated data, technology and risk management will continue to drive demand for Aladdin. Through its dynamic ecosystem of over 130,000 users, the Aladdin platform is constantly innovating and being improved. Investments in Aladdin AI copilots, enhancements in openness supporting ecosystem partnerships, and advancing whole portfolio solutions are going to further augment the value of Aladdin.

We are honored that our clients entrusted us with $289 billion of net new assets in 2023. And over the past few months, we’ve seen a decidedly more positive sentiment and tone in markets and among clients that I'm very optimistic will carry into the rest of 2024.

Our ability to adapt, evolve, and grow has generated a total return of 9,000% for our shareholders since our IPO in 1999. That is well in excess of the S&P 500 return of 490% and representative of a business model serving all our stakeholders.

Total return since BlackRock’s IPO through December 31, 2023

S&P Global. The performance graph is not necessarily indicative of future investment performance.

Our Board of Directors

BlackRock’s Board plays an integral role in our strategy, our growth and our success.

The diverse experiences and backgrounds of our Directors enable us to have rich discussions and debates. At each meeting, our Directors review components of our long-term strategy and foster constructive dialogue with our leadership team on strategic opportunities, priorities and risks facing BlackRock’s business. This dialogue ultimately pushes us to make the sometimes tactical and sometimes transformational moves to build a better BlackRock. This includes the two transformational moves we made in January: The strategic re-architecture of our organization and our agreement to acquire GIP.

These two transformational changes are the largest since our acquisition of Barclays Global Investors nearly 15 years ago.

Following the closing of the GIP transaction, we plan to have Bayo Ogunlesi join our Board of Directors. We will continue to evolve our Board over time to reflect the breadth of our global business and to guide us as we evolve ahead of our clients’ needs.

A final note

Over the past 36 years, BlackRock has grown from a company of eight people in a tiny Manhattan office into the largest asset manager in the world. But our growth is just a small part of a much larger success story.

It’s part of the same story that includes my parents retiring comfortably after 50 years of hard work. The same story where America was able to endure the 1980s S&L crisis and 2008 financial crisis – and rebound quickly and with growing strength.

And it’s the story that, hopefully, will include more people around the world. Nations that can outgrow their debt. Cities that can afford to power more homes and build more roads. Workers who can live out their golden years with dignity.

All of these stories are only possible because of the power of the capital markets and the people who are hopeful enough to invest in them.

Laurence Fink Chairman and Chief Executive Officer

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As a global investment manager and fiduciary to our clients, our purpose at BlackRock is to help everyone experience financial well-being. Since 1999, we've been a leading provider of financial technology, and our clients turn to us for the solutions they need when planning for their most important goals.

1 Based on a $1,000 investment from January 1960 to December 1990. Assumes reinvestment of all dividends. Past performance is not indicative of future results.

2 Federal Reserve History , Savings and Loan Crisis

3 OCED Economic Surveys: United States (2016)

4 Securities Industry and Financial Markets Association , Capital DMarkets Fact Book (2023), p.6

5 World Federation of Exchanges , Market Statistics-February 2024, (2024)

6 World Economic Forum , Ageing and Longevity, (2023)

7 United Nations , World Population Ageing, (2017), p.8

8 The Wall Street Journal , Japan’s Nikkei Tops 40000 for First Time, Driven by AI Optimism, ( 2024)

9 Cabinet Secretariat of Japan , Doubling Asset-based Income Plan, ( 2022), p.2

10 Note: 1. Format adapted from Adele M. Hayutin, New Landscapes of Population Change: A Demographic World Tour (Hoover Press, 2022). Data from United Nations Population Division, World Population Prospects. (latest refresh 2022), Medium Fertility Projection. 2. Peak year is defined as the year in which working age population reaches its maximum for a country. Sources: United Nations Population Statistics (as of 2022). OECD (as of 06/2023). World Bank (as of 2022).

11 United Nations , UN DESA releases new report on ageing , (2019)

12 The New York Times Magazine , Can We Live to 200? ( 2021)

13 National Library of Medicine , Estimated Life-Years Gained Free of New or Recurrent Major Cardiovascular Events With the Addition of Semaglutide to Standard of Care in People With Type 2 Diabetes and High Cardiovascular Risk, ( 2022)

14 Source 1: Bureau of Labor Statistics , Employee Benefits in the United States , (2023), p.1; Source 2: Bureau of Labor Statistics , Employee Benefits in Industry , (1980), p. 6

15 BLK Estimates based on AUM as of December 31 st , 2021 and Cerulli data as of 2020. ETF assets include only qualified assets based on Cerulli data, and assumes 9.5% of institutionally held ETFs are related to pensions or retirement. Institutional estimates includes assets defined as “related to retirement” and are based on products and clients with a specific retirement mandate (e.g., LifePath, pensions). Estimates for LatAm based on assets managed for LatAm Pension Fund clients, excluding cash.

16 BlackRock as of Dec. 31, 2021. The overall number of Americans is calculated based on estimates of participants in BlackRock’s Defined Contribution and Defined Benefit plan clients. The Defined Contribution number is estimated based on data from FERS as well as ISS Market Intelligence BrightScope for active participants across 401(k) and 403(b). Defined Contribution includes plans with over $100M+ in assets where participants have access to one or more BlackRock funds; some may not be invested with BlackRock. The Defined Benefit number is estimated based on data from public filings and Pension & Investments for the total number of participants across the 20 largest U.S. Defined Benefit plans that are not also Defined Contribution clients of BlackRock.

17 U.S. Bureau of Labor Statistics , Labor Force Statistics from the Current Population Survey, (Feb. 2023)

18 Represents the total number of active public schoolteachers enrolled in defined benefit plans with assets managed by BlackRock. Excludes Virginia, Alaska and Pennsylvania pension clients, as the states’ DB plan is not the default plan for its participants. Public school teachers count from the National Center for Education Statistics, projection for 2022 school year. Pensions participation rate based on data from the U.S. Bureau of Labor Statistics: 89% as of March 2022.

19 Social Security , Life Tables for the United States Social Security Area 1900-2100, Figure 3a

20 Social Security , When to Start Receiving Retirement Benefits, (2023), p.2

21 Social Security , Summary: Actuarial Status of the Social Security Trust Funds, (2023)

22 Dutch Government , Why is the state pension age increasing? (translated from Dutch)

23 U.S. Bureau of Labor Statistics , Civilian labor force participation rate, (2000-2024)

24 U.S. Census Bureau , Survey of Income and Program Participation (SIPP) , (2022)

25 Federal Reserve , Economic Well-Being of U.S. Households in 2022, (2023), p.2

26 BlackRock , Emergency Saving Initiative: Impact and Learnings Report, (2019-2022), p.2

27 BlackRock, Emergency Savings Initiative: Impact and Learnings Report, ( 2019-2022), p.12

28 BlackRock , What are target date funds?

29 AARP, New AARP Research: Nearly Half of Americans Do Not Have Access to Retirement Plans at Work, (2022)

30 CIA: The World Factbook , Country Comparisons: Population (2023 est.)

31 OECD , Pensions at a Glance 2023 , (2023), 222

32 Georgetown University Center for Retirement Initiatives , State-Facilitated Retirement Savings Programs: A Snapshot of Program Design Features, (2023)

33 Parliament of Australia , Superannuation and retirement incomes

34 Human Interest , The power of 401(k) automatic enrollment, (2024)

35 BlackRock , To spend or not to spend? (2023), p. 2-5

36 Source 1: The Wall Street Journal, The Champions of the 401(k) Lament the Revolution They Started, (2017); Source 2: Social Security Office of Retirement and Disability Policy, The Disappearing Defined Benefit Pension and Its Potential Impact on the Retirement Incomes of Baby Boomers , (2009)

37 U.S. Chamber of Commerce , Statement of the U.S. Chamber of Commerce, (2012), p. 3

38 Harvard Business Review , Too Many Employees Cash Out Their 401(k)s When Leaving a Job, ( 2023)

39 The Wall Street Journal , Why China’s Middle Class Is Losing Its Confidence, (2024)

40 The Wall Street Journal , Covid-Era Savings are Crucial to China’s Economic Recovery , (2023)

41 The Wall Street Journal , The Rough Years That Turned Gen Z Into America’s Most Disillusioned Voters , (2024)

42 Financial Times , How Adebayo Ogunlesi’s contrarian bet led to $12.5bn BlackRock tie-up , (2024)

43 American Society of Civil Engineers (ASCE ), 2021 Report Card For America’s Infrastructure, (2021), p. 5

44 International Monetary Fund , Global Debt Is Returning to its Rising Trend, (2023)

45 Fiscal Data: U.S. Treasury , Debt to the Penny, ( Debt was $23.4T in March 2020 and $34.5T in March 2024)

46 The Wall Street Journal , A $1 Trillion Conundrum: The U.S. Government’s Mounting Debt Bill, ( 2024)

47 US Department of Treasury , Table 5: Major Foreign Holders of Treasury Securities

48 As of March 2024. Net Zero Tracker, https://zerotracker.net (last visited March 18 th , 2024)

49 Associated Press News , The year in clean energy: Wind, solar and batteries grow despite economic challenges, (2023)

50 BlackRock iResearch Services global survey, sample size n=200, May-June 2023. Survey covered institutional investors’ attitudes, approaches, barriers, and opportunities regarding transition investing. 83% of EMEA respondents surveyed have net zero by 2050 or other date as a transition objective across their portfolio. https://www.blackrock.com/corporate/literature/brochure/global-transition-investing-survey.pdf

51 BlackRock’s 2020 Letter to Clients , Sustainability as BlackRock’s New Standard for Investing, (2020)

52 Reuters , Europe’s spend on energy crisis nears 800 billion euros, (2023)

53 The New York Times , Germany Announces New L.N.G. Facility, Calling It a Green Move from Russian Energy, (2022)

54 Texas Fall 2023 Economic Forecast

55 Federal Reserve Bank of Dallas, Texas electrical grid remains vulnerable to extreme weather events, (2023)

56 U.S. Energy Information Administration : Electricity Data Browser

57 U.S. Energy Information Administration , Solar and wind to lead growth of U.S. power generation for the next two years, (2024)

58 BlackRock Alternatives, CFP, 2023

59 Kenya Power , Annual Report & Financial Statements, (2022)

60 Reuters , BlackRock, Temasek-led group invest $150 mln in thermal battery maker Antora, (2024)

61 Business Wire , Antora Energy Raises $150 Million to Slash Industrial Emissions and Spur U.S. Manufacturing, ( 2024)

62 Oxy, Occidental and BlackRock Form Joint Venture to Develop STRATOS, the World’s Largest Direct Air Capture Plant, (2023)

63 As of June 30, 2022. “Energy companies” refers to corporations classified as belonging to the GICS-1 Energy Sector.

MKTGH0324U/M-3470283

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3 Easy Ways To Write The Date On A Letter
How to Write a Formal Letter
Letter Template Date The Five Steps Needed For Putting Letter Template
Formal Letter Format Examples
How To Write Date On Formal Letter
How To Write a Letter (With Types and Example)

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3 Easy Ways to Write the Date on a Letter
Download Article. 1. Begin your letter with the date at the top. In an informal letter, you don't need to write out your name and address first, or the recipient's address on the letter itself. Begin your letter by writing the date. 2. Align your date to the left or to the right of center.
How to Write the Date in a Document
Note that the year follows after a comma. You can, however, use a few different formats. This can include omitting the year or adding the day of the week. In addition, you can use ordinal instead of cardinal numbers when writing the date out in full with the day before the month: Thursday, October 3. Tuesday, August 6, 2019.
Date in a Letter
Style dictates spelling out the month. You may write: January 1, 2005 (or) Jan 1, 2005. 1 January 2005 (or) 1/2/05. You can see that we can put either the date first or the month; both ways are acceptable. In India, we usually give the date in the order - day/month/year. However, Americans usually prefer the order - month/day/year.
How to Write Dates Correctly
Shortening the year is also acceptable as long as it will be clear which year you mean, such as in the following: 23.10.16. 23/10/2016. You can also write out the date but shorten the month to save space: 14 January 2016 → 14 Jan 2016. 9 October → 9 Oct. Although these options are easy to understand and perfectly acceptable in most writing ...
How to Write Dates
To write the exact date, spell out the month, and write the day and the year in numerals. The American date format is month-day-year, with a comma between day and year (May 1, 2022), while the British format is day-month-year, with no comma between month and year (1 May 2022).Don't use ordinal numbers in dates in formal texts (May 1st, 2022).You may also show the day of the week (Sunday, May ...
How to Date a Letter Properly (With Different Date Formats)
Here's how to write the date in this format: Indicate the name, address, and phone number of the sender. Write the date in big-endian format. Align the sender's information and date to the left if using the block format. Align the sender's details and the date to the right or center if using the indented format.
How to Write Dates Correctly (With Examples)
First, write the month, then the day, and then the year. Examples are: Sep 10. September 10. 09/10/2022. When using American English, separate the day and the year using a comma. If you are including the weekday, place a comma after it as well. A comma is not required if you are using British English.
How to Formally Write the Date
Learn how to write the date in different parts of the world and various situations. Find out when to use a comma and when to abbreviate. ... For example, if you were to write a formal business letter, you'd write out the entire date, including the full month (January 4, 2005). Writing it out in such a way allows the notation to be understood by ...
How to Write the Date Correctly
When you need to write the entire date, place a comma after the day. Here's what it looks like: July 4, 1776. When we see the date, we read the day in our heads, or out loud, as ordinal numbers. However, it's not necessary to actually use ordinal numbers (e.g. 4th) when you write the day.
How to Write Dates in English (British and American)
Day of the Week, Month + Ordinal Number, Year (Ex - Thursday, June 2nd, 2000) Abbreviated Month + Ordinal Number, Year (Ex - Feb. 8th, 1983) Day of the Month + Month + Year (Ex. - 6 January 2020) Please note that English dates don't have to include the day of the week or the year. In any of the examples above, these can be added or removed.
Date In A Letter ( Guide: Formal Letters And In Business)
In the United States, when you're writing a formal letter, you should write out the date in full by putting the month, day, and year (October 1, 20XX). In the US, you'll need to separate the day and the year with a comma. In other parts of the world, you'll write the day first, month, and year in full (1 October 20XX).
How To Date a Letter
The international standard for dates uses dashes to separate numbers, but a slash (/) or a dot (.) is acceptable too. When writing the date in a formal letter, it would be written as "December 1, 2019" in the U.S. In other parts of the world, such as in European countries, the date would be written as "1 December 2019.".
How to Write Dates Correctly: The Ultimate Guide
So whether you're writing a letter, an email, or a formal document, make sure you follow this guide to ensure you use the correct date format! How to Write Dates in Words. There are many ways to write dates in words. The most common way to write the date in American English is to write the month first, followed by the day (e.g., January 1 ...
How to Write The Date in English
American English date format. The date format in American English is Month-Day-Year. Similar to British English, the month is written in words and the day and year with numbers. Unlike British English, there is a comma used before listing the year. When using only numbers to write the date, it's written as MM-DD-YYYY.
How to Write a Letter With Examples and Tips
The date gives context to your letter, so you don't want to leave it out. If you're writing a formal letter, write the date out in full with the month first, then the day, then the year. For example, a letter written on 2023-03-15, you would write March 15, 2023. In the US, you need to add a comma between the day and the year.
How to Write Dates: Proper Formats for Sentences and Numerals
In the first format, month-day-year, a comma should be placed between the day and the year. Note that when the month is spelled out using the month-day-year format, only cardinal numbers (1, 2, 3…) should be used, not ordinal numbers (1st, 2nd, 3rd…). The exception to the above rule is when "of" is used.
Dates
Dates - English Grammar Today - a reference to written and spoken English grammar and usage - Cambridge Dictionary
Writing the Date
The numerical formats may use a full stop (.) or hyphen (-) instead of a slash (/), for example: 14.3.2016 or 03-14-16. Note that another format exists which writes the date numerically in the order Year-Month-Day, for example: 2016/03/14. This is rare in British or American English and used mainly in very official or technical documents.
Correct date format
For example, if you were to write a formal business letter, you'd write out the entire date, including the full month. In British English, you could write the date as 6th September 2019. In American English, you could use September 6, 2019. IELTS Writing tip: Remember, the first letter of each month is always written in capital letters.
A Guide on How to Write Date in Formal Letter
Next, write the date on which you sent the letter. Align this information to the left or right margin. Months and dates can be spelled out using letters and numbers. In the entire date. Use the month and day, and year numbers in the month. For example, you can write the current date as of this writing as May 12th, 2022.
How to Write a Retirement Letter in 2024
A retirement resignation letter is a vital piece of the retirement process, establishing formal communication between the retiring employee and the employer. Essentially, it's an official notice ...
How to Send a Letter or Postcard
Postage for letters mostly depends on weight and size/shape. You can weigh your letter with a kitchen scale, postal scale, at a self-service kiosk, or at the Post Office ™ counter. TIP: As a rule of thumb, you can send 1 oz (4 sheets of printer paper and a business-sized envelope) for 1 First-Class Mail ® Forever ® stamp (currently $0.68). The postage for a large envelope (or flat) starts ...
Larry Fink's 2024 Annual Chairman's Letter to Investors
63 As of June 30, 2022. "Energy companies" refers to corporations classified as belonging to the GICS-1 Energy Sector. MKTGH0324U/M-3470283. In a letter to investors, Larry Fink discusses retirement as an expression of hope, and why investing in capital markets is crucial for prosperity at every level.