re: A quarter of Americans have no retirement savings. Zero.

I agree with this. I am 44 and will get nothing if they means test. But lets say they do this in 10 years, before I got to my retirement. They will still take out the 13% from my payroll taxes, and then still tell me I am not paying my fair share

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se old people vote.

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They also die and if we don’t repopulate to cover the deceased there could be quite a few bucks freed up.

I know I am coming into this thread late, but I’m going to add my two cents, if they didn’t say for retirement, that’s a choice they made, it may not have been a choice not to say they may have made other choices that put them in their predicament, but I made a choice to bust my butt for 36 years in sack away as much as I could, and work for an employer who had a good retirement plan and never switched jobs and toughed it out, I didn’t live recklessly, I had fun, but I managed my money. I also know that there are persons that have psychological issues that put them in a different predicament, but otherwise people make choices in those choices have ramifications either good or bad.

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To be fair, most of today's 65–74-year-olds spent much of their careers before 401(k)s became common.

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1978 is when the Tax Code was changed to allow 401(k) savings.

Hughes Aircraft set up the first one three weeks after the adoption but were extremely nervous about whether it was legal or not. The tale of the tape came the following year after their employees who had contributed to the company plan in Tax Year 1978 weren’t audit/penalized for their compliant contributions.

401(k) plans were slow to catch on; pensions were still available in many industries and blue collar folks didn’t really take a personal hand in investing. (Due, in some parts to not having extra money to invest or, if they did, there was still some institutional distrust of the stock market & brokerage firms held-over from the Great Depression).

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individuals are predominantly at fault,

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FIFY

Agreed.



Once 401k's started pensions started to dissappear.

I do know a lot of folks with military retirements and I assume that counts as a pension.

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I seriously doubt that.

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Here is a quote from the source:

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Around 56% of baby boomers have a traditional pension plan, making them the last generation with widespread access to defined-benefit pensions before employers largely shifted to defined-contribution models like 401(k)s.However, pension coverage varied significantly based on where they worked:Private Sector: The tail end of the boomer generation missed out on private pensions, with only about 6% of late-wave private-sector boomers having a pension plan.Public Sector: A significant portion of boomers with pensions worked for the government, military, or were highly unionized private-sector workers.Because pensions are increasingly rare for younger workers, the boomer demographic still relies heavily on these steady, monthly checks alongside Social Security and 401(k)s to fund their

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We can dispute the % all day long. I really don't care. It doesn't change the fact that article may be 100% factual in its statement it in that median retirement accounts for Boomers is $200K but it is misleading in that a significant portion of the Boomers have guaranteed pensions as part of their overall retirement plan.

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If fact the % of baby boomers with a pension is equal to the % of baby boomers that don't even have retirement accounts, both around 20-24%.

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If I'm understanding you correctly you can't make this assumption. Just because someone has a pension doesn't mean that they don't also have an IRA or some other form of savings.

The other fallacy of the article is that it doesn't take into any consideration of savings outside of a retirement account. For example a boomer plant "baw" working at refinery ABC likely accumulated a nice chunk of stock throughout his career. If this stock is held in a brokerage account and not a retirement account then he could be receiving a nice chunk of change each quarter as a dividends distribution that would essentially be retirement income that is not accounted for in the article.

In my opinion the article is click bait with the intent to stir up others and throw fuel on the generational warfare that is quickly becoming prevalent in our society.

It is an epidemic. One I fell trap to in my early adulthood. I have hammered to my children the practice of living below there means early in their adulthood

It is hell to reverse and for me took a stroke of lucky moves. Still shaking my head at not saving at all till my early thirties. Just now fully realizing the miracle of compounding.

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My mother (91) and MIL (early 80s) are in that exact position today. Both "retired" in their 60s, but had plenty of fuel in the tank, should kept on working.

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You work for 45 years and have enough money to coast the rest of your life and someone (who, as a potential heir, has a vested interest in you dying with the most possible assets) tells you that you “should” keep on working.

Hmmm…

If you mean that they retired and went home and sat on the couch for 14 hours a day watching TV, then you should state that they made poor lifestyle choices in their retirement.

That’s understandable.