re: 1 in 3 Americans have less than $5,000 saved for retirement

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some are artists or musicians or photographers living paycheck to paycheck until they can get steady income.

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This is the problem. They’ll never get to that point because people invariably grow their expenses with their income. They’ll never admit that, but as soon as they get that next raise, suddenly something that was once a want magicall becomes a need.

If you don’t make saving a priority from jump, you’ll never do it.

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If you don’t make saving a priority from jump, you’ll never do it.

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I'll go further. If you don't make saving, particularly for retirement, your #1 priority, it will never happen.

You have to pay yourself first. Too many folks expecting to win the lottery or get social security.

Even if you get social security, you're going to be broke as a joke.

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You cannot have season tickets to LSU, the Saints, go to concerts and the beach all the time while saving.

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why not?

I work in the investment business. Its really startling how few have decent savings

I couldn't really tell what population that 1 in 3 was referencing? If it is referencing all Americans including children, then there is part of your answer.

I have been in a position where it was very difficult to save money. A wife, 2 kids and less than 12K per year gross while in school. I could not save any money and we had 1 older used car, hand me down everything, didn't drink or party and never took vacations.

It can be hard to save if you live near the poverty line. 33% of households make less than 35K per year. Many have no real handle on money management to start with and have very little discretionary cash to save.

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I work in the investment business. Its really startling how few have decent savings

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Same. And I will readily admit that I am behind on where I’d like to be because I didn’t do what I needed to when I started working, but I am in a hell of a lot better shape than 80% of the people I work with who are 20 years older than me

i got my savings to $30k and then decided around age 30 to take a huge gamble and open up my own shop

i kept the level of savings (a little increase) but concentrated on paying down my higher interest student loans even with a major downturn in revenue 2 years ago when i decided to take my firm in a new direction

so i'm not where i want to be (and certainly not where i could be) but once i get my firm rolling at a steady level i'm going to concentrate on retirement (probably looking at some solid index funds)

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they also are refusing to retire at the expected age of retirement, pushing wages downward for all successive generations (by denying upward mobility)

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I think this is likely a bit overly-simplistic and may be ignoroing the actual value (micro, for the employer, and macro, for the overall economy) to having such people employed.

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i mean, how old are the people they are asking?

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"The 2018 Planning & Progress Study was conducted by Harris Poll on behalf of Northwestern Mutual and included 2,003 American adults aged 18 or older in the general population (and an oversample of 601 interviews with U.S. Millennials age 18-34 which have been combined with the general population of those 18-34 when featuring this age group separately from the general population) who participated in an online survey between March 7 and March 19, 2018. Results were weighted to Census targets for education, age/gender, race/ethnicity, region and household income. Propensity score weighting was also used to adjust for respondents' propensity to be online. No estimates of theoretical sampling error can be calculated; a full methodology is available."