do these people plan to work forever?

I mentioned in a recent Money Board post how I can’t not stress about unknowns as they relate to retirement saving. This is another big worry of mine. What’s going to happen to the value of retirement accounts of those of us who save responsibly?

There are many parts of the US where one can live off social security and medicare. Medicaid too, if need be.

No, it isn't an especially comfortable life but it can be done.

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The median savings of a baby boomer is just $127,000.

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I thought it would be lower, honestly.

Ignoring the last 5 months of the market, I have caught up on savings in the last 15 years. I was behind in my younger years, and didn't understand the value of invested money.

I still always shy away from retirement threads on here, because most are still saying you need $3-4M to retire, and even with my efforts I'm not going to be close to that, and I'm hoping to retire late 50's.

And with the way money works with regards to inflation the savings gap seems to be on the wrong track.

For example... let’s assume living expenses per month run about $8,000 for the average retiree. That number will jump to $16,000 around 2050 (inflation adjusted).

The gap between the cost of living and savings base is worsening and what is going to make up that gap?

It’s going to be a second generation of adults taking care of parents and children. It’s going to be Americans working later in life. It means the wealth gap is on track to increase. SSI surely isn’t the solution.

As poorly as pension funds were managed, they forced flows to help support retirees and those plans are long gone.

We need a massive culture shift & Personal Finance needs to be taught in grade schools, nationwide. Not only do savers need to do more, the average American doesn’t think past the next paycheck and is unprepared, and it needs to be emphasized at an early age.

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It will be interesting the impact on the future workforce

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What is going to happen is that there will be an outcry that it’s not fair, these poor people have to work in their golden years, those evil corporations didn’t give enough in wages to even give them the option to save, and that 401ks are a failed experiment, and we need to have a drastically expanded SS supported by increased taxes.


Dems will dovetail the SS solvency issues with this, and will push to add needs based calculations so that there is no tax cap, but you’ll get significant diminishing returns after a certain (probably low for mid classers) amount of replacement income.


Brace yourselves for bullshite.

Hasn't been mentioned yet, but boomers lived in a world before Roth IRA's and Traditional IRA's and 401k's existed. They got pensions. And SS.

So, if you poll a boomer and they say they don't have much retirement savings, that doesn't mean they don't have $8000 a month coming in from pensions and SS.

My grandfather had four pensions plus SS when he died. At the age of 91 when he died, he had retired from four careers, all of which paid pensions.

Having "saved" money more than a couple grand wasn't normal for previous generations.