Common wisdom holds  that small company owners drag their feet when it comes to retirement planning for themselves. Now a study from the Kauffman Foundation calls that assumption into question.

The study looked at Federal Reserve Board Survey of Consumer Finances data from 1989 to 2007. The research contains a wealth of information on household wealth, as well as attitudes toward saving and borrowing.  Researcher Tami Gurley-Calvez compared responses from business owners actively running their companies to wage and salary workers and found--among other things--that business owners think it's more important to save for retirement than everyone else, and they save for longer time horizons.

Specifically, 45 percent of business owners reported that socking away money for retirement was one of their top three reasons for saving--compared to just 32 percent of non-business owners. And 33 percent of business owners reported that they're saving over a 5-to-10 year horizon vs. 24 percent of other respondents.According to Gurley-Calvez, the majority of the businesses fit the Small Business Administration definition of small company--which is under 500 employees.

That flies directly in the face of a recent study from the SBA that found alarmingly low rates of retirement savings among small business owners. For example, just 18 percent have a 401(k) and, among those with fewer than 10 employee, the rate is 10 percent.

What gives? According to Gurley-Calvez the findings aren't really all that contradictory. Small business owners are interested in saving for retirement. They just don't tend to use conventional vehicles. Instead, they turn to their own businesses or real estate holdings as the likely source of their retirement money. "It's not that these business owners are reticent about saving," she says. "It's that they tend to take other avenues to get there."

That's all well and good, as long as those businesses and real estate holdings retain their value. If not, these company owners are up a creek.  

Then again, you could say the same thing about the value of everyone's 401(k).