my guess is that at least 60%, maybe more don't have nearly enough saved.

It's hard to come up with money for a 401k when your other expenses keep rising WAY faster than your paycheck.

We've got some...but it isn't much.

Once the boomers are gone, retirement will no longer be a thing, I suspect.

If I had retirement savings it would go to all the debt I will still have when I retire.

In a no-win situation.

Last edited Mon Jan 28, 2019, 04:26 PM - Edit history (1)

Medicare is what you get in retirement and is a direct federal program.

Medicaid is for low income individuals and families, is administered by states for their residents and is, therefore, an indirect federal program.

That is what more and more Americans will face going into the future.

"they" just want you to die.

Sad.

I thought this was an interesting gauge

https://money.usnews.com/money/retirement/401ks/articles/2018-07-23/are-your-retirement-savings-ahead-of-the-curve

Check out whether you are beating the 401(k) averages for your age group:

Under age 25
Average 401(k) account balance: $4,773
Average 401(k) savings rate: 4.8 percent

Age 25 to 34
Average 401(k) account balance: $24,728
Average 401(k) savings rate: 5.9 percent

Age 35 to 44
Average 401(k) account balance: $68,935
Average 401(k) savings rate: 6.3 percent

Age 45 to 54
Average 401(k) account balance: $129,051
Average 401(k) savings rate: 7 percent

Age 55 to 64
Average 401(k) account balance: $190,505
Average 401(k) savings rate: 8.3 percent

Age 65 plus
Average 401(k) account balance: $209,984
Average 401(k) savings rate: 9 percent

I consider myself very fortunate.

On top of that, the article doesn't provide a breakdown of who in the upper age brackets still have some sort of vested pension.
We're in that 55-64 bracket and that average savings seems very, very low.
If someone were a long term utility worker, to instance, their pension would be 80% of the average of their last 8-10 years.
So if they had 190k that's gravy.
What would the #s look like if people who saved had nothing other than the 401k?
I suspect it's much higher

The numbers appear to be vanguards stats on its 401k account demographics.

The numbers are much lower across the entire population.

I don't know if this will change with the generations, but it is still true that women tend to live longer and their Social Security checks are much smaller than a man's because of the wage gap. The fact that there is still a wage gap between the sexes is disheartening to me.

I have to chuckle at the concept of the cost of leisure going up when you get older because we have more time on our hands. Ha! Here's a hard fact for those in denial. We live in a country where you either have the time or the money but most of the time you don't have both. When I was in my forties my thoughts were that I had the money to go on a pretty great vacation once a year which I did. In my mind I knew that I would enjoy the vacations much more when I was younger with more energy than when I got older and maybe had some health issues or physical limitations, etc., plus there might be less desire to do all the travel. Now I'm turning 70 and I am so glad I did all those trips and had all those experiences. I actually could afford to take off now and then but I find that it's just not the burning desire that I once had. Air travel just doesn't appeal to me very much any longer, especially the way it is now.

With regards to other expenditures such as the car, not only the cost of gas each month goes down but the mileage goes way down, so the maintenance doesn't happen as often. I've been retired one year now and I have a vehicle that's four years old with only 32,000 miles on it. I haven't had any major repairs yet. The other things the article mentions that they say will stay the same? I don't think so. Every one of my utilities has gone up this year, my house, car and health insurances have gone up. I can't think of a thing that has gone down. Property taxes go up every single year it seems.

For the women, one thing I really like about retirement is that the amount of new clothes I need are next to zero! My sister and I laugh about how our winter wardrobe is sweatpants and long sleeved t-shirts and our summer wardrobe is shorts and short sleeved t-shirts.

My advice would be for people to find balance in their lives between enjoying your life right now and planning for your retirement years. Don't put off going on a trip of a lifetime thinking you'll do it when you retire, but also don't go on a trip of a lifetime every year. I know that as an older person I now find contentment in my life with the little things.

In one breath, a commercial will brag about how much money you can save by going with them vs the other guy. Then in the next, 30 seconds later, they're like "Buy our new shiny thing! You need this right now!!!!". And I wonder how much of the price of the products we pay goes to the fucking advertising?

and the rare times I watch television with commercials I tend to be shocked.

We are surrounded by exhortations to buy, clever little scenarios of how our life will be perfect once we finally acquire that new car, that dress, that vacation to the Greek Islands. TV shows and movies often show characters living in homes or apartments they could not possibly afford if that were real life.

Since I see so very few commercials, even though I watch my share of movies and TV shows (mostly via the internet) I tend to be pretty immune to the sales pitches. I think it helps that I grew up relatively poor, and learned to save like crazy as an adult.

Remove the income cap which is taxed for Social Security and Medicare.

I've seen what's it's like to try to live on Social Security only, it's a bleak existence, one where disaster is around every corner.

a 401K or IRA.

Both these instruments were a Ronnie RayGun products to move the burden of pension funds away from employers and place all the burden on the employee (How many companies currently have a pension plan, for new hires?)
Then giving our 401K/IRA savings to Wall St. so they can loot by rigging the system or fee'ing us to death.

I followed all the rules, and still got burned during the mortgage meltdown. Pretty much lost it all, because I was out of work for almost 2 years. 25 years lost.

I wish we would do what they do in Germany.
1) Boards have a member who is a worker.
U.S., the board members get a salary, just to sit on the board and no working member.
2) Company pension contributions are deposited into an account that the company can not access, at all.
U.S., pensions are controlled by the company themselves, and they dip into it anytime (meeting certain conditions), never worrying about repaying it, because they could just buy a company who's pension is over funded, raid those over-funded pensions, then sell off the company after 2 years of raiding the company, leaving pensioners from the raided company wondering if they'll ever get their promised pensions.

Welcome to the Conservatives Middle Class retirements structure.
What's weird, was 35 years ago (1984), I told a friend, after RayGun was elected, within 30 years, we won't have a middle class.

This is exactly what they wanted.

I don't trust my employer to stay solvent. Plus I'm in IT so I've had 10 employers over 20 years.

Then giving our 401K/IRA savings to Wall St. so they can loot by rigging the system or fee'ing us to death.


It's almost impossible to lose money in a 401K or IRA if you just leave it the hell alone. The problem is people don't do that.

Defined benefit were fine when people worked at one place for 35 yrs. Hardly anyone does that anymore

I like most, worked for several employers over my 35 year career. Half was spent at one employer and the other half at a variety of others. Under a traditional pension plan, half of my working years would have resulted in earning me nothing towards retirement. Since I had a 401k, I was able to keep building retirement wealth at all of them and roll it over to the next. Yes, the company also contributed as I had an employer match at all of them.

I can't imagine working at a job with a defined benefit pension and being stuck there for the rest of my life because of the years already spent towards the pension and being afraid to take a better opportunity.

I am sorry about your personal loss.

I worked for a company that declared bankruptcy and got out from under its pension obligations. I'm getting less than one-third of what I should be getting. But at least that job was long enough ago, that I never expected that pension to amount to anything. It's the people who played by the rules, stayed on the job for 30 years, who counted on that pension to be a substantial portion of their retirement, who likewise saw it cut by two-thirds and are now financially devastated. That should never have been allowed.

Which is why, for all of the praising of pensions that happens here, I consider them to be far shakier than your own savings and investments.

And pensions were never as universal as the mythology holds. A quick check on-line says that at some point 88 percent of private sector workers had a pension, but the rules to collect them were often so onerous that in the end probably 40% at best of workers ever actually collected one. They weren't portable, so if you changed jobs you left the pension behind, although you'd probably get back whatever sum you might have contributed. You often had to work 20 or more years and be some specific age, typically 55 or 60 to actually start collecting. And so on.

that's why I believe pensions should be run more like they are run in German and really most of Europe.
Employers deposit pension money into an account that they can no longer touch.
And if they don't make their deposit, they are penalized severely.

Instead of giving more and more money to the top execs. Just sayin'.

are you trying to b your username? How the hell are the company owners and members of the board going to be able to afford their 59,000 sf houses in three places, the chauffer, the maids, the big ass yachts and those absolutely delightful vacations away from the riff raff if they pay their emplyees more?

You are a bad man (person) Dirty Socialist.

Next thing you'll want universal healthcare and public education systems.

Bad, bad, bad, bad.


(I don't have to use the thingie, I hope.

They want a bigger yacht than the one they bought last year.
I'm a mal hombre.

to amount to much, and when you have to live paycheck to paycheck, there is never much left over to save..

The only reason we retired well, was after we lived TOTALLY on social security for the last three years my husband worked. We saved every penny of his salary for 3 years..

We also had ZERO credit card debt, two relatively new paid-for cars, and 190K equity in our home..

With the proceeds from the house sale and some of our savings, we managed to retire nicely and to not have to touch our IRAs/401-ks (other than the minimum required withdrawals)..

Had our experiment failed, we would not have felt safe enough to do it.

3 years on SS alone in Southern Calif, proved we could do it..

Now that I am alone, it's still working out pretty well even though I lost MY social security,,and lucky for me, I have two sons who have offered to subsidize my income (I've refused so far)

I am glad too, because my husband only got 3 & 1/2 years of retirement before he died.. I am thankful he at least had some leisure time.

I have had two jobs in my 37 years that actually offered a 401k and I didn't make enough to contribute. Luckily for me once my wife becomes ordained she will get a pension but how much it will be we are not sure. I have a master's degree in management with a bachelor's in advertising, public relations, and graphic design. Not sure what to do at this point. Just hoping that I can work til I die in my 80s/90s or who knows what.

and telling people that everyone would retire as a millionaire, that was a lie.

And it was Reagan who relaxed the rules and allowed companies to steal from employees' retirement funds by allowing companies to simply not put any money into the funds.

And with 40 years of essentially stagnant wages, this was the only logical outcome.

I'm a Teamster in Florida, but this local does not participate in the Teamsters Pension Fund. My company offers a 401(k) but the Mutual Funds offered suck, for the most part. I contribute to my own IRA when I can, but I've resigned myself to the fact that I'll have to work till I drop dead.

I first joined the Teamsters in Michigan and was a member of Local 299, Detroit, Jimmy Hoffa's old local, and we had the pension fund there, but I left before I was vested in any way.

So...not all unions have access to a pension fund.

Here's an actual budget of mine from January of 2013:

"My budget from 2013:

"Income

$1119 SSDI
+$16 SNAP
---------
$1135 Total

Expenses

$75 Phone & Internet
$33 Natural gas for heating, hot water and cooking
$39 Electricity
$88 Property taxes and homeowners insurance
$25 Garbage pickup
$48 Water & sewer
$150 Payment on hospital bill
$8 Netflix
$120 Food, personal hygiene
$16 Dog food
$90 Cigarettes
$34 Dog's medications
$5 My medication
$100 Miscellaneous, clothing
-----
$831 total expenses

$1135
-$831
------
$304 available for discretionary spending "

Since the time I posted the above, I quit smoking in spring of 2013, I dropped SNAP, SSDI has increased to $1158 a month, the hospital bill was paid off long ago, my dog had to be put down and I have Hulu now instead of Netflix and the cost is $11.99."

https://www.democraticunderground.com/100211542785

My SSDI has increased now to $1192 a month and my VA pension is $140 a month.

get rid of all 401ks and put it into SS for everyone. That way we will all be able to retire with dignity. 401ks are really for the rich.

I am not rich and spent 35 years contributing to it.

Now is it ok to stop the corrupt 401k Wall Street pension scam?

You can’t have any money in it, right? You are saving for YOUR retirement? What about all those people who don’t have the money to retire? You need to pay your fair share and turn that money over to the government. You can trust them with that money to take care of everyone. You know they won’t spend that money somewhere else, and you know they would never cut the benefits they provide.

luckily for me, my peak income was quite good for a while, so my SS is pretty livable.

But I vote Democrat just to be sure.

And the biggest cost of all is housing. It used to be housing could cost between 25-30% of income. It's now up to 60% for many.

I live paycheck paycheck. I am lucky I can afford my Medical Cannabis.

on their bad assumption that ss will be enough to live on. That 42% with no savings? The vast majority are living paycheck to paycheck, they are too poor to save anything. They will have to get by on their ss stipend, they have no choice.

Plus for the past 30 years, the media has continually talked about how "insolvent" SS was so I doubt that many thought it would be enough to live off of and most likely figured it wouldn't even be available by the time they retired.