Retirement
Am I announcing my retirement? I wish. No, I watched the PBS Frontline show on Retirement streamed it from their web site and it was scary. It was especially scary for me--someone who didn't start saving for retirement until ten years ago and will supposedly retire in ten to twelve years.
The most important point the show made was that 401Ks work well if you save 15% of your salary for thirty years, you make a mid-middle to upper-middle class income and you invest the money in a mostly intelligent way. Everyone else will come up short at retirement and basically work until they die so they can maintain a middle class life style and pay for health insurance and medications.
That means that a large percentage of the baby boomer generation will never retire. There'll be grey haired people driving the buses and making capacinos (that's what I'm applying for) and otherwise holding onto jobs that younger people need. Oh and we'll be pissed that we're stuck working like that.
Some states are actually opening pensions back up because they see 401Ks aren't working for their employees but company pensions are disappearing because 401Ks are cheap for the company. My company just closed off the pension to new employees so they only get the 401K. I have both but my confidence in a pension plan that doesn't have new employees joining it is pretty low. Maybe I'll get a lump sum payment at some point.
I also have a very small pension from Not Big Blue. That'll be enough to pay my bus fare to the coffee shop where I work. The odds of that pension surviving are about the same as the odds that the Greenland ice sheet willincrease in size next year.
What about Social Security? I trust that the politicians of both parties will work together to destory Social Security before even I can get anything out of it, probably spending the money in a controversial war against you fill this in. When Social Security fails the number of poor elderly people will be staggering but they are the easiest segment of the population to ignore so it won't be a problem for the policitians, just the children of those poor people. Sorry kids.
If you're rich or inherit money I suppose you don't care about this but everyone else better pay attention. Make a plan to save money, stay as debt free as you can, save a lot in your 401K or Roth IRAs.
Oh yeah, you also need to hope the brilliant people that make our laws don't change the retirement laws again and make it even harder to retire.
The most important point the show made was that 401Ks work well if you save 15% of your salary for thirty years, you make a mid-middle to upper-middle class income and you invest the money in a mostly intelligent way. Everyone else will come up short at retirement and basically work until they die so they can maintain a middle class life style and pay for health insurance and medications.
That means that a large percentage of the baby boomer generation will never retire. There'll be grey haired people driving the buses and making capacinos (that's what I'm applying for) and otherwise holding onto jobs that younger people need. Oh and we'll be pissed that we're stuck working like that.
Some states are actually opening pensions back up because they see 401Ks aren't working for their employees but company pensions are disappearing because 401Ks are cheap for the company. My company just closed off the pension to new employees so they only get the 401K. I have both but my confidence in a pension plan that doesn't have new employees joining it is pretty low. Maybe I'll get a lump sum payment at some point.
I also have a very small pension from Not Big Blue. That'll be enough to pay my bus fare to the coffee shop where I work. The odds of that pension surviving are about the same as the odds that the Greenland ice sheet willincrease in size next year.
What about Social Security? I trust that the politicians of both parties will work together to destory Social Security before even I can get anything out of it, probably spending the money in a controversial war against you fill this in. When Social Security fails the number of poor elderly people will be staggering but they are the easiest segment of the population to ignore so it won't be a problem for the policitians, just the children of those poor people. Sorry kids.
If you're rich or inherit money I suppose you don't care about this but everyone else better pay attention. Make a plan to save money, stay as debt free as you can, save a lot in your 401K or Roth IRAs.
Oh yeah, you also need to hope the brilliant people that make our laws don't change the retirement laws again and make it even harder to retire.
posted by changingagain at 11:12 PM
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