Half of Older Americans Have Nothing in Retirement Savings

https://www.bloomberg.com/news/articles/2019-03-26/almost-half-of-older-americans-have-zero-in-retirement-savings

by sahin • 7 years ago

16 27 7 years ago

bloomberg.com

nabla92• 7 years ago

Does America has Social Security where the elderly get something?

cimmanom2• 7 years ago

Yes. But how much you get depends on how much you paid in during your working years, as well as what age you retire at.

nabla92• 7 years ago

I think that's pension.

What I mean is when person don't have eugh pension to live with, do they beg on the street corner?

dev_north_east• 7 years ago

So... what are they going to do?

thiago_fm• 7 years ago

It is clear to me that 2020 or later there will be a more socialist America, whether the Americans like it or not. And that could be good for America.

cimmanom2• 7 years ago

It could be good for America, but I’m skeptical it’s going to happen. Certainly not within 24 months.

wildmindwriting2• 7 years ago

It is clear to me that 2020 or later there will be a more socialist America, whether the Americans like it or not. And that could be good for America.

I'm not entirely sure. We (I'm American) have an attitude of what befalls a person is because of the decisions they made. We have a very "pull yourself up by your bootstraps" and anything that costs one person money to help another is a non-starter. Look at the Affordable Care Act right now. America is an individualistic society.

krapp2• 7 years ago

We have a very "pull yourself up by your bootstraps" and anything that costs one person money to help another is a non-starter.

And yet there seems to be actual political risk and difficulty to simply repealing the ACA in its entirety without a replacement... because as bad as the ACA is in practice, in theory many Americans want it, or something like it, and do not in fact want healthcare to be left entirely to the free market.

The attitude and outlook you describe certainly exists, but don't conflate the ideology of a single political party to the status of general American culture. We're not all libertarian minarchists and cowboys.

And for such an "individualistic" society, we sure do have a lot of socialism already, such as food stamps, school lunches (hell, public schools themselves) federal student loans, Medicare, Medicaid and Social Security, the GI bill, farm subsidies, public libraries, etc.

I don't think it's as unlikely as you do. The system is starting to fail for a lot of people. We've already seen the regressive populist shift, in response, and a progressive socialist shift is inevitable. Trump won but don't discount how popular Bernie Sanders actually was.

mnm12• 7 years ago

Totally agree. Unfortunately, most Americans are too stupid to see that even the phrase is ironic, referring to something that's literally impossible to do, just like the act it refers to in real life is for most Americans.

barneygumble7423• 7 years ago

It already is to a certain aspect. Medicare and social security can be considered "socialism." Which is why there's a certain group that wants to do away with it entirely.

pardonmyfrench2• 7 years ago

Socialism isn’t the problem, it’s decency. If you look at corporations, we’ve had a very strong socialistic corporate culture for some time. People who make almost nothing are the least capable of avoiding taxes that do exist, even if they are lessened. Large corporate entities on the other hand, are often given negative tax bills for reasons I can not begin to fathom.

RickJWagner• 7 years ago

There is a strong need for financial education.

There is a small minority of Americans who won't have any retirement savings due to catastrophic illness, or a lifetime of inability to get a good paying job, or some other factor. But this number should be very small. Everybody else should be able to accumlate money for retirement.

To save for retirement takes discipline and means forgoing things today to save for tomorrow. The benefits of saving for retirement must be indelibly impressed into people's minds for this to happen.

barneygumble7423• 7 years ago

Is it really more education or a lack of impulse control to go out and buy the latest greatest phone every two years?!

qpotlpus• 7 years ago

Do you have a family Barney? I find the run rate costs of raising a family are astounding even with a very healthy two incomes. It doesn’t shock me that most households barely scrape by at the end of the month without any reserves to save.

pardonmyfrench2• 7 years ago

There’s a stronger need for CEOs to stop acting like mafia members and demanding 500 times what a standard employee earns. If you fleece the poorest, naturally you’re going to have people with no savings. CEOs will naturally pat themselves on the back and say “I deserve this”, but do their employees deserve to be living on the streets post retirement? It seems like people are no longer anything but a commodity to be used until broken and then discarded.

jonheller• 7 years ago

It was and still is shocking to me that this isn't taught in school.

throwawaystale• 7 years ago

I don't think that small minority is as small as you might think. Life is full of uninsurable disasters.

The "good" news is that there are only a few years of retirement you really want to hang around for anyway (as opposed to a slow miserable death of dementia and other diseases). Seven years, for example. (67 to 75)

When I run out of money, I'm out.

Half of Older Americans Have Nothing in Retirement Savings

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