According to the 2021 Retirement Confidence Survey, 64% planned on working to 65 or later, but only 28% actually did. This could be age discrimination or health or better retirement situation than anticipated but the bottom line is "I'm going to work forever!" isn't a realistic plan.
I "retired" at age 66, only to toil! developing a self-sufficient backwoods homestead.
At age 69, this work slowed down and I had my body checked out before deciding whether to take on work for pay thinning forest/brush on other people's land. My own land being a showcase of my work.
The bottom 2 discs in my back are almost gone, and my knees are almost bone-on-bone. I've done physical work all my life.
It is amazing how few symptoms I have. Physical work, physical therapy I do on myself, and healthy diet seem to be why. I rarely even need to take ibuprofen. But I have no idea how long this will last. Orthopedists say it could be a long time.
It is interesting to see people put their bodies thru hell and live longer and better than people who are careful. Remember Keith Richards is still alive.
I'm a millennial who isn't on track. Thank goodness I work a cushy, well paying (Now, at least... Did a bad startup mistake out of college and lost a lot of opportunity and fell short) and lightly loaded desk (engineering) job.
Age discrimination is everywhere. There are laws against it, but they are not enforced. This is why losing your job in your 50s is devastating, more so if your skills are not in demand and you have to retrain.
>This is why losing your job in your 50s is devastating, more so if your skills are not in demand and you have to retrain.
I put a ton of ego into finally getting my degree in my early 40's.....now that I'm in my mid 50's, I have to leave it off to get a job making less than half of what I had?
Luckily, I do have an angle I am working on right now. I built a platform that gives me a more comprehensive view of the US wind industry from an operational POV than literally anyone else has....I was an insider long enough to be certain of that....still need to monetize it.
Part of the problem is that I'm in Wyoming, goddamn I couldn't even get on at the Wal-Mart distribution center. No one here will touch me with a ten-foot pole, but our LLC laws are in the top 5 in the country.
The problem is, your skills really do slip in a lot of ways. They just do. Most 60 year olds aren’t as quick as a 30 year old, but their salaries are a lot higher. What’s discrimination and what’s laying people off who aren’t as good of producers anymore? It’s cold, but it’s one reason retirement age should be lower than it is.
It's not JUST that people slow down cognitively and physically as they approach 60. There's also the cost of health insurance. If your labor pool keeps having butt cancers and heart attacks you will be paying much more for that group coverage.
Absolutely. Businesses don’t run charities and as you cost more to employ than money you’re bringing in, your job is at risk. It’s not universal that everyone is this way by 60, many are not.
My coworker is having severe memory and production issues so I have to pick up all of her slack in our small office. Working into your 60s just isn’t fair for anyone.
I mean, it sucks, but part of why there is age discrimination is because boomers held on to their jobs so long that people are more focused on training up Gen Z than hiring experienced Gen X for fear of a knowledge collapse. They aren’t entirely wrong either, the lack of young people in the trades is concerning as a majority of the knowledge for some of them isn’t in a course or set of textbooks and has been taken for granted that it will just be passed from one generation to the next.
I think as the first generation to jump into the workforce with 401ks replacing Pensions and zero education about 401ks really handicapped us.
There are so many Xers running around with 10-20k in a 401k that with moderate contributions should be hitting 1mil by now.
Myself sitting with about 500k, being with the same company for 30 years + and working since 14… man. I should have not only invested more but earlier and never have lowered contributions because I “needed” a bigger check.
That extra 30.00 a check in the early days didn’t make a difference but today would probably be 250-300k more.
I’m at the tail end of Gen X and I feel like financial literacy with 401k’s and such only really started to take off about 20 years ago. That’s when you started to hear inklings of things about FIRE and real talk about things that are commonly taken for granted such as dollar cost average and low cost S&P ETF as a default. Millennials kind of lucked out concerning getting the info early in their careers if they seek it.
The reality though is that most people, of any generation, are kind of willfully ignorant about retirement savings. It feels too far off to worry about when you’re young and most people just don’t do delayed gratification well.
Every time I see other Millennials and Zoomers talk about this I do everything I can to gently convince them to look into FIRE and at least try to adopt some of its tenets… Many respond negatively. People don’t like being confronted with scary truths about the future, especially when it seems so far off.
If you’re 25 years old—just $100 spent today rather than invested will ultimately cost you at age 65 a grand total of ~$1,600 (real, or in other words “today’s” money)/~$9,000 (nominal, or in other words the actual additional dollar amount you’d have otherwise seen in your account at that age).
It made all the difference in the world. $30 back then
or $50 in today’s world is the Starbucks coffee thats gets people through the week. It’s the slop bowl they got on their solo date. It funded their local ice cream stop after their soul got sucked by corporate as a pick me up. They paid all their bills, and had $50 left over, just enough to take Sally Sue to see the Odyssey while living paycheck to paycheck.
I was super fortunate that my first big boy job had 6% matching. But at that point, at that age (21) I only saw it as less money in my check.
My son, that same age now and has had a job since he could work, now out of college, had set up his own IRA that he puts into and now his first job has a 401k at 3%.
He knows his goal is 100% to retire as soon as possible and his IRA and 401k and investments is the main vehicle for that.
Financial literacy is a personal choice. Not knowing about 401ks this far into one’s life is pretty inexcusable. Not being able to put into it, I can understand; but I’m not going to let Gen X get away with saying “I didn’t know about how it works!!!” when they turn around and insult my generation’s (mid-Millennial) work ethic and avocado toast, all while they bought their houses for a pittance.
My wife and I bought our first house for about 230k right before the bottom fell out of the real estate market. When our first kid was born and we needed to move about 8 years later it sold for about 230k. The only reason we pulled any money out of it was because we’d been paying extra on the mortgage every month because we had roommates. Went a little outside our budget on the next house, had to live with my parents for over a year with our 1 year old son while the house was built. (My parents have a 1 bathroom split level.) Finally got into the new home having blown past our budget, but we were helped by the year of saving with my folks. Now our home is worth twice what we paid for it, but we went through a lot to get there.
Yeah, and people don’t believe that. It isn’t easy now by any means, but they weren’t handing out homes in the 90s or early 2000s either. It was always tough, always out of reach for many. Aside from the whole housing crisis when it was easy to not be able to afford a home and also for some reason get a home. Horrible.
100% true and all the more reason we all should have been invested Day One. Because a Bull Run with 20k in the market isn’t as sweet as one with 300k in the market.
Bull Runs only help those in the game. And it wasn’t until my late 30s that I even knew the financial definition of Bull and Bear.. 😅
Generation X (those born between 1965 and 1980) is coming to retirement with a lot of economic uncertainty. 😬According to a Goldman Sachs survey, only 49% believe they are saving enough to retire, the lowest percentage of all generations.
The reason? The cost of living, labour insecurity and the need to do extra work to make ends meet. And although millennials and generation Z don’t have it easy either, generation X has less time to recover ground.
This is a huge part of it. In the UK they were being phased out just as many of us were coming into the job market or better paying jobs as careers progressed.
For many of us, it's a lottery of market conditions as we near retirement. Will annuity yields be good or awful? Flip a coin.
It makes the certainty of "just another year" of salary make economic sense. That's me right now. Desperately want to retire as I'm tired to the bone, but don't see how I can afford it with the pension pot lottery.
Early Gen-X here. When I started my career investment was difficult. Discount brokers were sparse, we had extremely high commissions to invest outside of terrible workplace 401k plans. Those plans all consisted of mutual funds that badly lagged the indexes, and had horrific front or back end loads. Financial literacy was difficult to come by, and most professional advice came with conflict of interest attached.
Right around Y2K that started changing with the arrival of discount brokerages and low commission trades. Just in time for the dotcom crash, followed by the GFC crash. Major career setbacks on top of market losses.
And even with that IMO the following generations will have it worse.
>The reason? The cost of living, labour insecurity and the need to do extra work to make ends meet.
Gen X here. Honestly I'm going to throw "not educated in how to handle the new reality" as the major factor.
Like my parents both have multiple pensions. They pull in about 200k a year between all of them + SS + other small retirement accounts they have. They are living comfortably, but it really took no planning by them because the bulk was just given to them because they worked.
I had to learn how to navigate 401ks on my own. I got lucky that some older lady (I wish I could remember her name and reach out to her to thank her) at my first job say pull me aside personally and say "put as much as you can into your 401k" and that I listened to her. I'll be comfortable when I retire, but it wasn't until I was working for 8 years or so until I started to really think about my finances and how to take advantage of things for retirement. And then had to really just learn it on my own.
By the time the bulk of millenials were entering the work force, the whole IRA/401k model was established and the common guidance was there. Gen X didn't get that. The advice coming from older people was mainly outdated for them.
everybody's experience is different, but I agree with UnableChard that advice about 401k's was sometimes very questionable in the earlier years. Some companies didn't match much, and new employees didn't think to compare. Some companies put their default investments into their own company stock instead of general growth funds. Roth investments weren't always available. Neither were retirement-date-funds.. Also before the 2010's, the default for new employees was to not invest in 401k... you had to actively sign up for it (which meanth a lot of young people didn't). Today, investments are enabled by default, and people would need to opt-out if desired.
Truth. As well, in the 2010s, at some companies a layoff before say three years meant the employer match somehow neatly reverted to the company coffers. That was quite a surprise.
I would be willing to bet that of that 49%, at least 50% of them are wrong. Believing in SS, Medicare, and stable inflation as measuring sticks for retirement capabilities is likely going to let a lot of people down.
I hate to think that my wife and i (50) are probably in a better situation than 70% of Americans our age and I am confident that we are very far behind.
It's not so much that I think I won't be able to retire as I simply don't know when I will be able to. It's hard to plan when you don't know how much you'll need. I look at the people who retired right before COVID and then got kicked in the nuts with inflation. I've long had a number in mind of what I need to retire but I feel like I might need 40-50% over that number.
And then on top of that, all we hear about is how Social Security is insolvent and will be reduced in the future. SS was never my primary retirement plan but I'd be lying if I said it wasn't a decent part of it.
Part of it is that Gen X is the grand experiment for the 401k-funded retirement, and Congress was making it up as they went. ETFs, Roth, and HSAs all originated mid-career for Gen Xers.
The wealthiest 10% of age 65+ hold 73% of that age cohort's wealth. The bottom 40% hold 4%.
(This is from the Federal Reserve's 2022 Survey of Consumer Finances.)
My Gen X coworkers finance fucking everything too. They refuse to save for a couple of years for something, there’s always a home equity line of credit or 401k loan or something they can tap into at that age and I know so many that have.
58 years old talking about retirement…. After they pay back their 401k loan and payoff their Polaris.
Meanwhile most millennials know the power of the market and act like they’re Charles fucking Schwab.
There really is a stark contrast between the two generations.
It’s an epidemic on Reddit. It’s like the one brainless hate that’s acceptable but that’s all it is is brainless hate and scapegoating. People are people.
I think it is people in their 50's of every generation. That's when you've likely hit your prime earning years + your kids are out of the house. You finally have money so now you want the toys you're been delaying. I'm not defending it or saying it is smart, but I also don't think it is unique to GenX.
Seems to be reflected in the newer generations. Once things become expensive enough you can't afford the capital expenditures you tend to have more loose cash.
The worst so far, if anecdotes from millennial coworkers are any judge. Several of them report parents who presume their kids will tend them into their dotage, however intensive and expensive that may be.
Born in 1975. 20+ year Career in the “retirement industry”. Worked for some of the big boys: Principal, Fidelity, others. Service and sales roles, but small markets.
I made fair money, but it didn’t keep up with the rising cost of life. I myself will never be able to retire fully, and that’s just fine. I love what I do for a living, now working on the advisory side of the industry.
I’d love to go back to a record keeper one day, to do what I do, but AI has all those jobs figured out. And I can’t justify the change without a significant bump in pay, to let me play some “catch up” now at age 51.
Like those golden handcuff homeowners, I’m just stuck where I am. Much of our entire economy is frozen in place, for now.
These are vibes numbers though … there are people out there with $3M in invested assets who don’t think they’re “on track.”
There has been some data suggesting there really are a lot of unprepared Xers. In fairness we’re the first generation who really relied on 401k’s. This was always a problematic approach for the lower half of the income distribution. But think about how much less information there was on how to manage this stuff for people starting out in the workforce in the 90’s.
What has not happened since pensions went away in the US is the creation of a set of retirement systems that work reliably for people across the income spectrum. Maybe millennials and Z are navigating this better than we did. But it’s still a bad system design and people in all age brackets are going to end up with problems when they get older.
Have seen estimates that only 35% are actually in a favorable position to retire. A significant percentage of identified 401k retirement accounts are ghosted. Meaning they were started and then abandoned.
Worse is that even within the percentages of people with actual money saved the amounts are far below adequate.
I mean some of us are fine. I could retire early. But the system can’t be designed for the lucky few …
It’s also worth saying and repeating that not only did paychecks not go up when pensions were converted to 401ks but rather we had the wage-productivity delamination. So Gen X in particular moving into work where they had coworkers in the frozen pension system - they were paid as second class citizens to a greater extent than when Z in particular entered the workforce and wages had eventually somewhat adjusted to the new reality.
Important points: Boomer Gen stayed in their jobs perhaps longer than they had expected. Didn’t really understand how to separate “wants vs needs”, didn’t save enough while younger.
Gen X got that education, but later, think late 1990’s. Less time to save, but that’s not even the worst of it….
….the worst is not even having access to pensions or rising wages. A decade of time was simply lost, 2008-2018.
I'm a millennial in the upper quartile of income and with a financially literate background. Per the calculations I'm somewhat behind on savings, but with aggressive saving I'm on track to catch up in probably the next 4-6 years. But all it would take is one catastrophe, and all of my hard work would be wiped out.
My father had a major health event in his mid 50's that created hundreds of thousands in medical debt even with health insurance and left him unable to work or care for himself. The same could easily and outside of my control happen to me. It's a precarious world we live in.
Here in Germany, we’ll have a zero legged stool (we don’t have good tax deference schemes for pensions, pensions are rare and social security is too expensive to be paid for by a shrinking workforce.
So you’ll be paying 60% in taxes and health insurance and retirement contributions, of which you’ll certainly get significantly less than today’s generation, while having to save for retirement with your after tax income. On which you also have to pay taxes for any gains you make, even if it is only for keeping up with inflation.
Whaaa? I am in the U.S. I always assumed that all of you guys in Western Europe basically were living in paradise in terms of like healthcare and retirement.
If you have no or little income, then what you get out of the system can be pretty good. You have a much better safety net if something bad happens. And also, if you are a retiree right now, then things are indeed pretty good.
But for future generations, all you have looking forward to is rising cost of living, housing that is completely unaffordable leaving you to rent for life, declining social services (waiting times for doctors and specialists increasing more and more/less being covered) while at the same times contributions are rising faster than ever. And as I mentioned, you cannot get by without privately saving money for retirement, but the only existing tax deference schemes are basically a scam politicians created to help their buddies in the banking/insurance industry (extremely high initial and recurring fees.
Also something like selling and buying a house when moving for example for work is completely impractical in Germany since you have fees and taxes of like 5-8% of the housing price to pay every time. So if you buy you have to be sure you stay long term, as every time you move you have to pay a year's worth of net income in taxes and fees.
No, I agree with you. Please do not confuse my comment as gaslighting people for not “choosing” the right employer.
Pensions are closed off, have been for years, for most of us. We are already seeing a large percentage recent retirees who have one, having originated only due to military or government employment in the past.
Private industry pensions got eroded at the same time as organized labor lost its teeth.
More like a one legged stool. My generation ain’t getting any social security. My entire retirement strategy is built on my 401k and putting 18-20% of each paycheck into it.
Not true at all. What is true is that unless the government does something to shore up the fund, benefits may have to be reduced after some point between 2030-2035. Estimates are 75-80% of current. That’s not a great situation, to be sure. But Social Security is not going away. Please resist the hyper fear mongering.
They will cut it. And they will likely have to reduce payments again in the future before I retire. Most likely looking similar to the cuts made under Reagan to buy it another 30 years. Smart retirement planning given such uncertainty entails assuming you won’t get any support. It’s a massive risk to bank your future retirement on the poor fiscal responsibility of the federal government.
Also, social security SHOULD die. It’s poorly managed and cannot deal with sizable demographic swings as a result. Nor do we have effective statesmen to fix the situation. Plus the earnings cap on it is ridiculous. It’s too flat and needs to be much more progressive in rate levels.
Social Security is poorly FUNDED. Unearned income (rent, capital gains, dividends, interest, and other more convoluted sources) is not taxed AT ALL to fund it. Nearly all of this income goes to the wealthiest 10%
Add to that a flat tax on wage/salary income, plus the cap, and you have an absolutely regressive tax structure funding Social Security.
I haven’t studied it enough to offer solutions. I would need more empirical data and econometric analysis to feel confident any solutions. I can recognize at face value the consequences to the macro economic system if you tax unearned income.
You’ve gone from arguing Social Security will disappear entirely to arguing benefits will be reduced. Those are very different things.
And frankly, abolishing Social Security is a terrible policy idea that’s politically dead on arrival. Neither party is seriously advocating it.
The real problem is that everyone in Congress knows the system needs reform, and nobody wants to own the political consequences. The longer we wait, the narrower our options become and the more painful the eventual adjustments will be.
That’s probably my biggest criticism of Congress today. Plenty of progressive and populist shouting, but precious little political courage to tackle genuinely difficult problems. Whoever finally forces meaningful reform through will probably pay for it with their political career.
I’d like to see someone with enough political capital and conviction to make the hard choices now, while we still have options, rather than waiting until the arithmetic effectively makes those choices for us.
Good on you. What you’re doing is attempting to secure your own future through your savings habits, and we should all applaud you for that.
I assume you’re not worried with children or excessive student loan debt? Is that fair, or am I dead wrong?
No matter: ignore those who may chime in to tell YOU to IGNORE the fact that Americas finances as a whole, are a wreck. Unsustainable. Rampaged to support a generation of large size, now fully in their “dependency” years.
I think I’m about the same. 34, 200k net worth. No savings though… all my assets are in the 401k and equity in my mortgage. I was hoping to break $1M by 40 but don’t think ima hit that goal anymore
I'm in my late 50s. It looks like my social security payout will be about $25k a year if it isn't cut. Nobody can live on that. I have money put aside but a lot of people don't, especially blue collar and service workers.
Around $50k but I'm also using part of my nest egg to pay for health care because I have an expensive chronic disease. So my expenses are such that I couldn't afford them just on my wage alone.
I live in Canada so my condolences for your health care burden. I guess my line of thinking goes like this . In Canada a third fir taxes a third for housing a third fir every thing else . I only live on a third of what I make now . So when I retire if my housing is paid and my taxes go down . I could live on that amount
Not everyone has housing that is paid for. I've never been able to afford to buy a house. I work in a profession where your prime earning years are in your late 30s and 40s. The great recession took that from me.
Your right about housing. Not everyone can afford it . However I will challenge you on using the word house when I would say home . Home can mean to me condo or shared housing
This has been a carefully cultivated right wing talking point since at least the 80s. In the US wages are the lowest share of the national income since 1929. This is driven by the growing wealth disparity and the fact that the wealthy make most of their income from the stock market. Adding a modest social security tax on capital gains or wealth would rectify this.
Productivity has soared since the 1930s. You don't need nearly as many workers to support a retiree now.
I live comfortably on $1093 a month (after Medicare Part B is taken out).
I am also developing a debt-free self-sufficient homestead, which provides free wood heat in winter, more and more of my food for free, and free water from a spring. I also have no other debt to service.
40% of retirees rely on Social Security for at least 90% of their income, and most don't have the resilient situation I do.
> trump accounts and other early life investing solutions are probably a step in the right direction
Or, you know, an actual social safety net that doesn't require investing money many people don't have, or doesn't tank you're retirement plans if the entire economy and key government policies are hijacked by a set of techbroligarchs driving it over a cliff like buffalo to the slaughter.
you're showing financial illiteracy by that statement just fyi.
1: when you're getting closer and closer to retirement you transition to passive income. you start doing this 10 years before you retire Only an absolute moron would not do this. You have to be so stupid not to do this it begs the question should have you the right to manage anything or just be a ward of the state. if we adopted superannuation we'd just force people to do the transition then even episodes like 2008/9 arent a problem at all.
2: For a social safety net or government retirement you need to tax people anyways. Superannuation is essentially a tax. So the whole "investing money many people don't have," means if you cant force them to invest you also cant tax them either issue.
As the saying goes, ad hominem attacks are the last refuge of the incompetent. If we strip away the personal insults, there are a few fundamental flaws in your argument:
Confusing a glide path with "passive income"
What you are describing isn't "transitioning to passive income"—it is a portfolio glide path toward capital preservation, bonds, and cash equivalents.
While de-risking a decade before retirement is standard practice to mitigate sequence-of-returns risk, claiming that systemic crashes like 2008 "aren't a problem at all" ignores market realities:
Fixed income and cash carry severe inflation and interest rate risk (as demonstrated in 2022 when equities and bonds dropped simultaneously).
Prolonged bear markets, wage stagnation, and unexpected early retirement due to layoffs or health crises frequently disrupt neat 10-year timelines.
A flawed equivalence between private investment mandates and public safety nets
Equating a mandatory defined-contribution scheme to a general tax fundamentally misunderstands progressive taxation and redistribution:
A public safety net (like Social Security or a universal pension) is funded through a progressive tax structure where higher earners and corporate revenues cross-subsidize low-income workers.
Mandating that low-income individuals divert a fixed percentage of their already insufficient wages into private market accounts does not solve their immediate liquidity crisis. For someone living paycheck-to-paycheck, taking 10% of their paycheck directly threatens their ability to afford food and housing today. A safety net exists precisely to protect those who do not have surplus capital to lock away for decades.
Compulsory defined-contribution systems like Australia's superannuation certainly have merits, but treating them as an infallible replacement for a public safety net misses the core economic problem of income inequality and systemic market risk.
Just from yours, I know you're wrong. Yay for both of us, we both get to be right and the other wrong. Except I actually countered your statements, and you can't counter the one I provided and instead keep retreating to ad hominem. Keep up the good work!
One factor is that GenX started out thinking they'd have the same benefits of work, affordability, and opportunity as their parents, perhaps even better, and they were taken away bit by bit without warning. If you didn't get married/kids/house by your mid 20's goooood fucking luck to you.
example:
I can hardly wait to start contributing to my defined benefit pension
.. Oh now they're defined contribution?
.. oh now it's an RRSP match?
.. pension lol pension you entitled fuck
At least this generation started out knowing the situation... that's cold comfort though.
I'm Gen X born in 1970. I grew up exceptionally poor and homeless for periods of my childhood, and came up through significant abuse. I got started very late in life, graduated college in my mid 30s after clawing and scratching just to get that far. I look much younger than my age, which has helped me quite a bit so far, but I'm so far behind the curve. I know I'm never going to retire. I already have it planned out how I'm going to exit quietly and gracefully from this life when the time comes, and I've made sure that my family is set up well with what they all need from what I have in my 401(k) and other savings. Nowhere near enough to retire on, but enough to set them up comfortably to start their lives.
I strongly suspect, anecdotally that there are quite a few other Gen X folks out there with the same mindset. We've been fucked since Reagan, and a lot of us like myself even more so. It is what it is.
I wonder if more people are thinking like this regardless of finances. As we become less religious and euthanasia becomes more available, I can see people who are like “grandma lived to be 110, didn’t realize where she was for the last 20 years, went to a different doctor 9 times a week, was a huge burden on everyone and seemed miserable all the time”.
Same wavelength. I vividly recall the decline of my parents, their suffering in their final years and especially final months. That was not life. That's not how I wish to be remembered if I'm remembered at all. And that "huge burden" part hits harder, another thing I saw with so many fellow Gen-X re-arranging their lives and sacrificing to be more available as end of life caretakers. How miserable that made everyone. I don't want that for my kids just so I can watch another year or two of Fox at max volume.
I’m a millennial and feel similarly, although I also don’t have a family to provide for. I know I will probably never be able to retire. At this point I’m barely able to even plan for it, so I might as well just enjoy life now while I’m younger and then peace out when I get old.
I didn't start contributing to retirement until I was 42 years old because I never had a good enough job or enough money to contribute until that age. Plus I was poor and never learned about financial matters until I realized it was important -- in my 40s. Thankfully, I got myself a good education and worked for good companies starting in my 40s, which allowed me to start and accelerate my retirement. I found myself a good financial advisor and I am doing pretty good for myself... I think. But i wish I had started much sooner.
i made $13.50 an hour with a bachelor's degree until 6 years ago. now i make $20 an hour and half my monthy pay goes to rent. retirement is not gonna be an option for me.
That's the worst part about today's corporate philosophy. You're making only $2 more an hour than I did 35 years ago! Somehow, the rich convinced people that they were paying fair wages. But they were stealing wages all along so they could pay themselves more and report higher and higher profits. People today are fckd.
Terrified Gen-xer here. Yeah, not sure how I will afford retirement, considering how costly it is. My Mom is in a memory care facility that costs $10k per month! Still, financial considerations aside, I’m not sure I want to retire to just do nothing either. I’ve watched my parents’ cognitive state rapidly decline because they left the work force and never replaced the mental challenge of work with something else. I think as people live longer, quality of life, as well as economics will need to be better addressed.
Having to financially help with the living expenses of my parents who just assumed they’d “die young” like their parents, while assisting kids who can’t find decent paying full-time jobs with benefits while their inexpensive one bed apartment is $2,000 a month isn’t helping my retirement outlook.
This is all based on self reporting and feelings. It’s possible that Gen X is just more pessimistic than millennials which anecdotally is the case in my experience.
Gen Xer here. I started my current job at 27 years old and have been there 25 years now. Sometime after I'd been there a few years my CO worker told me to come over to his desk and he showed me his deferred comp which was worth around 300k. That day I went to HR and did the paperwork and started doing around 9% of my salary. At times I had to lower my contribution due to having kids and being down to one salary. Mine is now worth roughly the same as his was. On top of that I have a pension which will be somewhere between 65-70% of my salary. I can retire in about 10 years but I'll probably do 15 more because I bought my house late had children when I was older. Despite that I'm still worried about retirement. I don't know how people with nothing saved will be able to survive down the road.
If you had a job that offered 401ks and you actually took the advice then you're probably okay.... If you didn't, you're going to die in your job.
I was lucky to have a boss when I was young that told me to open the 401k and put enough in to get matching funds... And I'm not in too bad shape 30 years later.
I also learned the lessons about marriage and family from my parents.... As in not do what they did.
We had a work happy hour a few weeks ago and a bunch of us geezers surrounded the entry-level employees and were preaching 401k's. My advice is always don't let perfect be the enemy of good. If you're on the fence, just do enough to get the company match. Put it in an S&P 500 fund and forget about it.
I was fortunate to be introduced to retirement planning early in my career, and made a clean transition from a pension job to 401k. Even with adequate savings, the uncertainty of health insurance makes retirement nerve wracking. I feel for those who didn’t have exposure and interest in retirement self-management. Retiring with a downsized social security and Medicare is going to suck.
I’ve had five course corrections when it comes to my “earnings” over the last 40 years. Things like saving up to change careers or go back to school, move across the country.
Each change was the right decision at that time - but each time it depleted my savings and often it put me into debt
Show my 40s I took a much more stable job that doesn’t pay very well but I was earning enough to have a savings and I was going to do the forced equity thing because I finally had enough savings and job stability to look at houses
And then housing prices in my city started exploding. I made offers on five different houses over five years and each time I lost. And now houses in my city are three times the price of what they were when I was originally looking in 2015. I have no way to catch up. And since everything else has gone up and price, including my rent, (and my cost-of-living raise is not keeping pace), I don’t have anything nearly enough left at the end of two weeks to come close to the forced equity. I don’t even have enough to keep contributing to my savings plan except for the one that work takes out of my paycheck.
Hopefully, they’ll still have Walmart greeter 20 years from from now because I’ll need to keep working
I’m a younger X. I don’t really identify with the older ones , but my advice to anyone starting out . Avoid 30-50 dollars of stupid spending a week and invest it into a nice balanced fund . And do that every week and you’re going to have a million dollars at retirement just from that .
One brown bag lunch. One less take out dinner . Avoid the latte monster.
Slow and steady - PUT THE MONEY INTO THE ACCOUNT WEEKLY, make it a Roth IRA so you can’t touch it.
Starting early is more important than making more money later
If you start at 18 (assuming a 7% return), you’d have between 475k and 815k at 65 with 30-50 a week. I agree that most should be doing this, but the reality is that it still won’t be enough by itself to fully retire on for the vast majority. Especially since we will see more people hitting retirement age not being homeowners. Hell, some might not even have a mortgage until their 50s, 60s, or ever.
Never said it wasn’t. Just didn’t want someone to see “put 30-50 dollars away a week and you’ll be a millionaire at retirement” and not understand it’s actually closer to half/three quarters of that and you have to start when you legally become an adult without missing a week until 65.
At the end of the day, put away what you can but keep your expectations rooted in reality.
People have very different expectations on retirement as well. Some are happy with being able to live a modest life and continue to pay their bills, whilst others are planning to travel the world, go on cruises etc as a never ending holiday
Born in 1972. Learned a little about personal finance at 19. Decided I was going to be a millionaire one day by consistently investing from every single paycheck or bonus I made. I started around $25/week when I was making like $5/hr.
I never let off the gas and 35 years later that consistency has paid off. Compounding interest is truly the 8th wonder of the world. It can be done you just have to start young and pay yourself first.
I have been able to do a decent amount of catching up in my 50's. Also being married to someone who was doing the same helps. We were both divorced in our mid to late 30's and lost a lot until we found each other and worked on our futures together.
But, don’t pay for your aging parents to be in nice long term memory care facility at the expense of your own retirement…and certainly not at the expense of your children’s college funds.
Yes, state funded care facilities are horrible. But, if you have to make that choice, I’m sure your mom and dad will understand.
They’ve had 15 years of the biggest bull market in history. I don’t see how this is possible unless they simply didn’t prioritize investing for retirement
Gaslighting the conversation and ignoring the rapidly increasing cost of living isn’t helping this larger dialogue.
Most of America can’t max out savings. Most of America doesn’t have a pension benefit to fall back on. Most of America was unprepared for years now of torrid inflation, like we haven’t seen in 2 generations or more.
I’m 41 and I’ve never made more than $80k/year. Much less when I was younger. I’ve been investing for retirement since I was 18 and have a little over $300k. I work with a guy in his 50s who barely has 100k in retirement and has made good money for a while. Lack of retirement savings is often a choice.
I would say in a lot of cases, you’re spot on. But, there are plenty of extenuating circumstances. A marriage that heads south, leaving the workforce temporarily to take care of aging parents, being laid off in your 40s and being unable to secure a similar position, medical debt from a chronic condition, etc.
There are a host of circumstances that can financially cripple otherwise responsible and prudent people. That simultaneously existed with the reality Gen X simply had an obscene amount of opportunity and long stretches of economic prosperity that are largely absent to younger millennials and Gen Z.
Late Gen X retired at 50. Blame everyone else you didn’t save anything though. Saw my generation buy more house than they could afford. Cars and trucks they couldn’t afford. Rack up CC debt. Sign up for variable rate mortgages all kinds of stupid financial decisions.
Born in 75. Track to retire at 55 with MM in bank and no debt. Was raised to not count on the system to support me and had to do it myself. I do not equate SS into my plans and never have which helped me save and invest more
Was on track before COVID and our federal government's failed response. Will probably regain footing before I get there, barring any unforeseen, once-in-a-generation economic events. 😬
These surveys are tough because Gen X also doesn’t really trust social security to be there for them and doesn’t count on it. Many are likely better off than they think. They were certainly homeowners at the right time and are old enough to have had substantial 401k balances during the longest bull market in history.
Sentiment isn’t always reality. Gen X tends to be pessimistic.
I do think the newer auto saving in 401k laws Congress passed is amazing for the younger generations. But it also helped Gen X somewhat.
Why do you think it’s amazing? It won’t amount to enough on it’s own. Social Security was amazing. Pensions were amazing. Collectively pulling the wool over our eyes and undermining both so the wealthy can get wealthier is amazing. Anyone thinking this is actually helpful is amazing.
$100 a month from 20 to 67 is over a million at retirement. Auto savings was a really good idea. Better idea would be to lock it away until retirement age instead of people being able to take it out every few years to pay off their credit cards like happens now.
The only part of 401k’s that aren’t massively better is the fact that they aren’t idiot proof.
If you put as much as you would have been forced to put in a pension in a 401k, you’re way better off, and it doesn’t disappear when you die. Social security doesn’t pay nearly as much in retirement as you’d get investing the money in a 401k. Your pension also relied on you working for the same agency or company your whole career, and the agency or company not going bankrupt.
Honestly, I'm looking at either a heart attack or cancer in the next 10 years, so I'm not going to have a retirement anyway. Not being morbid, just realistic.
Nope, it's straight to Heaven for ol' Mick Dundee. Or the closest convenient parallel dimension.
The rules were clear. The knowledge was out there. I was born in 79 and am a multi millionaire. I didn’t make huge amounts from my job, I just paid myself first. For decades. As was clearly communicated in every retirement planning communication I ever read. They were basically right. All you had to do was what they suggest. That’s it.
But Gen X wanted to keep up with the Jones’s. They deserved, by birth, a better life than boomers. They were entitled, owed, and unwilling to educate themselves, listen, or take personal responsibility.
Sure that’s not 100% of the people here. But it is more than 1/2.
Well they're also the most conservative generation by voting block in history so they kind of brought it upon themselves. Tighten up those laces and back to work.
wyocrz | 15 hours ago
We Gen-X'rs often talk about how we are going to work forever, be working into our 70's or whatever.
Somehow, some way, we didn't take age discrimination into account.
DetroitsGoingToWin | 15 hours ago
Health too
PappyBlueRibs | 14 hours ago
According to the 2021 Retirement Confidence Survey, 64% planned on working to 65 or later, but only 28% actually did. This could be age discrimination or health or better retirement situation than anticipated but the bottom line is "I'm going to work forever!" isn't a realistic plan.
Livid_Village4044 | 13 hours ago
I "retired" at age 66, only to toil! developing a self-sufficient backwoods homestead.
At age 69, this work slowed down and I had my body checked out before deciding whether to take on work for pay thinning forest/brush on other people's land. My own land being a showcase of my work.
The bottom 2 discs in my back are almost gone, and my knees are almost bone-on-bone. I've done physical work all my life.
It is amazing how few symptoms I have. Physical work, physical therapy I do on myself, and healthy diet seem to be why. I rarely even need to take ibuprofen. But I have no idea how long this will last. Orthopedists say it could be a long time.
blindollie | 12 hours ago
That's amazing guy Really well done
Livid_Village4044 | 11 hours ago
My thanks.
ontrack | 10 hours ago
It is interesting to see people put their bodies thru hell and live longer and better than people who are careful. Remember Keith Richards is still alive.
Substantial-Elk4531 | 52 minutes ago
Maybe take vitamin D and K2 for bone health if you're not getting as much sun anymore
supercali45 | 14 hours ago
Americans still voting against their own interests
DetroitsGoingToWin | 13 hours ago
Yep, big election upcoming we’ll fuck ourselves again.
214ObstructedReverie | 15 hours ago
I'm a millennial who isn't on track. Thank goodness I work a cushy, well paying (Now, at least... Did a bad startup mistake out of college and lost a lot of opportunity and fell short) and lightly loaded desk (engineering) job.
CanaKitty | 14 hours ago
Until AI comes for it in a few years…
214ObstructedReverie | 13 hours ago
I think I'll be fine. I work in semiconductors now.
swoonz101 | 3 hours ago
I think you’re going to be just fine friend
Livid_Village4044 | 13 hours ago
Age discrimination is everywhere. There are laws against it, but they are not enforced. This is why losing your job in your 50s is devastating, more so if your skills are not in demand and you have to retrain.
wyocrz | 13 hours ago
>This is why losing your job in your 50s is devastating, more so if your skills are not in demand and you have to retrain.
I put a ton of ego into finally getting my degree in my early 40's.....now that I'm in my mid 50's, I have to leave it off to get a job making less than half of what I had?
Luckily, I do have an angle I am working on right now. I built a platform that gives me a more comprehensive view of the US wind industry from an operational POV than literally anyone else has....I was an insider long enough to be certain of that....still need to monetize it.
Part of the problem is that I'm in Wyoming, goddamn I couldn't even get on at the Wal-Mart distribution center. No one here will touch me with a ten-foot pole, but our LLC laws are in the top 5 in the country.
BrightAd306 | 12 hours ago
The problem is, your skills really do slip in a lot of ways. They just do. Most 60 year olds aren’t as quick as a 30 year old, but their salaries are a lot higher. What’s discrimination and what’s laying people off who aren’t as good of producers anymore? It’s cold, but it’s one reason retirement age should be lower than it is.
HystericalSail | 5 hours ago
It's not JUST that people slow down cognitively and physically as they approach 60. There's also the cost of health insurance. If your labor pool keeps having butt cancers and heart attacks you will be paying much more for that group coverage.
BrightAd306 | 3 hours ago
Absolutely. Businesses don’t run charities and as you cost more to employ than money you’re bringing in, your job is at risk. It’s not universal that everyone is this way by 60, many are not.
Yoroyo | 53 minutes ago
My coworker is having severe memory and production issues so I have to pick up all of her slack in our small office. Working into your 60s just isn’t fair for anyone.
Previous_Cattle_5545 | 2 hours ago
I'm a 58 year old IT guy. I drive a truck now.
targz254 | 15 hours ago
Yes, it is unwise to assume you will be able to keep your same pay/job until you choose to retire.
In many cases it isn’t even age discrimination. There are just younger people willing to work harder for less.
republicans_are_nuts | 15 hours ago
They're not going to be working, they will just be living in their cars.
FlankTheGrain2913 | 10 hours ago
…in the form of Boomers not wanting to retire and being passed over by their Gen Z/Alpha children.
Ishmael_1974 | an hour ago
I mean, it sucks, but part of why there is age discrimination is because boomers held on to their jobs so long that people are more focused on training up Gen Z than hiring experienced Gen X for fear of a knowledge collapse. They aren’t entirely wrong either, the lack of young people in the trades is concerning as a majority of the knowledge for some of them isn’t in a course or set of textbooks and has been taken for granted that it will just be passed from one generation to the next.
ClassicMidwest | 14 hours ago
I think as the first generation to jump into the workforce with 401ks replacing Pensions and zero education about 401ks really handicapped us.
There are so many Xers running around with 10-20k in a 401k that with moderate contributions should be hitting 1mil by now.
Myself sitting with about 500k, being with the same company for 30 years + and working since 14… man. I should have not only invested more but earlier and never have lowered contributions because I “needed” a bigger check.
That extra 30.00 a check in the early days didn’t make a difference but today would probably be 250-300k more.
coldlightofday | 13 hours ago
I’m at the tail end of Gen X and I feel like financial literacy with 401k’s and such only really started to take off about 20 years ago. That’s when you started to hear inklings of things about FIRE and real talk about things that are commonly taken for granted such as dollar cost average and low cost S&P ETF as a default. Millennials kind of lucked out concerning getting the info early in their careers if they seek it.
The reality though is that most people, of any generation, are kind of willfully ignorant about retirement savings. It feels too far off to worry about when you’re young and most people just don’t do delayed gratification well.
KRandMG | 10 hours ago
Every time I see other Millennials and Zoomers talk about this I do everything I can to gently convince them to look into FIRE and at least try to adopt some of its tenets… Many respond negatively. People don’t like being confronted with scary truths about the future, especially when it seems so far off.
If you’re 25 years old—just $100 spent today rather than invested will ultimately cost you at age 65 a grand total of ~$1,600 (real, or in other words “today’s” money)/~$9,000 (nominal, or in other words the actual additional dollar amount you’d have otherwise seen in your account at that age).
The power of compound interest is insane.
ClassicMidwest | 8 hours ago
🙏
SalehHulud | 13 hours ago
Yeah and 401k contributions are also pretax so the hit on paychecks is generally pretty negligible after you make a certain amount
Preme2 | 12 hours ago
It made all the difference in the world. $30 back then
or $50 in today’s world is the Starbucks coffee thats gets people through the week. It’s the slop bowl they got on their solo date. It funded their local ice cream stop after their soul got sucked by corporate as a pick me up. They paid all their bills, and had $50 left over, just enough to take Sally Sue to see the Odyssey while living paycheck to paycheck.
DellGriffith | 37 minutes ago
Oof this hit close to home
CowboyNeale | 2 hours ago
I have literally never had a job that offered 401k matching.
My first job had a pension, but that corporation self destructed in 1995.
ClassicMidwest | an hour ago
I was super fortunate that my first big boy job had 6% matching. But at that point, at that age (21) I only saw it as less money in my check.
My son, that same age now and has had a job since he could work, now out of college, had set up his own IRA that he puts into and now his first job has a 401k at 3%.
He knows his goal is 100% to retire as soon as possible and his IRA and 401k and investments is the main vehicle for that.
bus_buddies | 11 minutes ago
What was that corporation?
EchoFieldHorizon | 14 hours ago
Financial literacy is a personal choice. Not knowing about 401ks this far into one’s life is pretty inexcusable. Not being able to put into it, I can understand; but I’m not going to let Gen X get away with saying “I didn’t know about how it works!!!” when they turn around and insult my generation’s (mid-Millennial) work ethic and avocado toast, all while they bought their houses for a pittance.
ClassicMidwest | 13 hours ago
Whoa, slow down man.
We barely had internet as adults. And the internet we did have didn’t even have this information to any extent.
We were educated by our parents, or not educated by them. We were educated by the jobs, or not educated by them.
Now there are countless calculators, methods, processes, 30 different ways to make money outside of work etc.
Today there is zero excuse because you can learn literally everything anywhere, let alone AI coaching you every step of the way.
My first house was 230k. And that was 24 years ago. What fantasy land in your head thinks we were buying homes for a pittance?
Actually my first house was a condo because my wife and I, dual income making 28k each couldn’t afford a single family home in 2000.
But now it’s single college grads right after graduation complaining they can’t afford a house.
Hell, who could at 21-22? That was never the expectation. I had a roommate almost my whole life beige marriage.
Perspective are wildly skewed.
tmcuthbert | 13 hours ago
My wife and I bought our first house for about 230k right before the bottom fell out of the real estate market. When our first kid was born and we needed to move about 8 years later it sold for about 230k. The only reason we pulled any money out of it was because we’d been paying extra on the mortgage every month because we had roommates. Went a little outside our budget on the next house, had to live with my parents for over a year with our 1 year old son while the house was built. (My parents have a 1 bathroom split level.) Finally got into the new home having blown past our budget, but we were helped by the year of saving with my folks. Now our home is worth twice what we paid for it, but we went through a lot to get there.
ClassicMidwest | 8 hours ago
Yeah, and people don’t believe that. It isn’t easy now by any means, but they weren’t handing out homes in the 90s or early 2000s either. It was always tough, always out of reach for many. Aside from the whole housing crisis when it was easy to not be able to afford a home and also for some reason get a home. Horrible.
EchoFieldHorizon | 12 hours ago
Those calculators have existed on the internet for 25 years and have been easily accessible for 20.
ClassicMidwest | 11 hours ago
Needed em in the 90s.. how old do you think GenX is? 😅
EchoFieldHorizon | 11 hours ago
Old enough to have been through the longest bull run in history in the later part of their careers.
ClassicMidwest | 9 hours ago
100% true and all the more reason we all should have been invested Day One. Because a Bull Run with 20k in the market isn’t as sweet as one with 300k in the market.
Bull Runs only help those in the game. And it wasn’t until my late 30s that I even knew the financial definition of Bull and Bear.. 😅
KoRaZee | 8 hours ago
Yeah sure, take all that energy and tell the millennials that they knew student loan debt would crush them
[OP] Sufficient_Fuel5269 | 15 hours ago
Generation X (those born between 1965 and 1980) is coming to retirement with a lot of economic uncertainty. 😬According to a Goldman Sachs survey, only 49% believe they are saving enough to retire, the lowest percentage of all generations.
The reason? The cost of living, labour insecurity and the need to do extra work to make ends meet. And although millennials and generation Z don’t have it easy either, generation X has less time to recover ground.
_tolm_ | 15 hours ago
I think they’re also the first generation - en masse - to not have a chance of a “final salary” pension scheme.
Modokon | 14 hours ago
This is a huge part of it. In the UK they were being phased out just as many of us were coming into the job market or better paying jobs as careers progressed.
For many of us, it's a lottery of market conditions as we near retirement. Will annuity yields be good or awful? Flip a coin.
It makes the certainty of "just another year" of salary make economic sense. That's me right now. Desperately want to retire as I'm tired to the bone, but don't see how I can afford it with the pension pot lottery.
HystericalSail | 5 hours ago
Early Gen-X here. When I started my career investment was difficult. Discount brokers were sparse, we had extremely high commissions to invest outside of terrible workplace 401k plans. Those plans all consisted of mutual funds that badly lagged the indexes, and had horrific front or back end loads. Financial literacy was difficult to come by, and most professional advice came with conflict of interest attached.
Right around Y2K that started changing with the arrival of discount brokerages and low commission trades. Just in time for the dotcom crash, followed by the GFC crash. Major career setbacks on top of market losses.
And even with that IMO the following generations will have it worse.
UnableChard2613 | 14 hours ago
>The reason? The cost of living, labour insecurity and the need to do extra work to make ends meet.
Gen X here. Honestly I'm going to throw "not educated in how to handle the new reality" as the major factor.
Like my parents both have multiple pensions. They pull in about 200k a year between all of them + SS + other small retirement accounts they have. They are living comfortably, but it really took no planning by them because the bulk was just given to them because they worked.
I had to learn how to navigate 401ks on my own. I got lucky that some older lady (I wish I could remember her name and reach out to her to thank her) at my first job say pull me aside personally and say "put as much as you can into your 401k" and that I listened to her. I'll be comfortable when I retire, but it wasn't until I was working for 8 years or so until I started to really think about my finances and how to take advantage of things for retirement. And then had to really just learn it on my own.
By the time the bulk of millenials were entering the work force, the whole IRA/401k model was established and the common guidance was there. Gen X didn't get that. The advice coming from older people was mainly outdated for them.
CrackingToastGromet | 7 hours ago
A few economic crashes to the 401k hasn’t helped either.
That 2008 crash was horrendous, my 401k lost over half its value.
Expert_Garlic_2258 | an hour ago
and if you didn't sell, you got it all back and more. and the opportunity to buy stocks at reduced prices
ArtVandelay32 | 46 minutes ago
Your 401k only lost half its value if you pulled it out then.
cocksherpa2 | 10 hours ago
Of course we did. Wtf are you talking about. The percentage of 401k match has been a prominent benefit cited at every job offer since the early 90s
Conscious-Lunch-5733 | 9 hours ago
everybody's experience is different, but I agree with UnableChard that advice about 401k's was sometimes very questionable in the earlier years. Some companies didn't match much, and new employees didn't think to compare. Some companies put their default investments into their own company stock instead of general growth funds. Roth investments weren't always available. Neither were retirement-date-funds.. Also before the 2010's, the default for new employees was to not invest in 401k... you had to actively sign up for it (which meanth a lot of young people didn't). Today, investments are enabled by default, and people would need to opt-out if desired.
hahalua808 | an hour ago
Truth. As well, in the 2010s, at some companies a layoff before say three years meant the employer match somehow neatly reverted to the company coffers. That was quite a surprise.
TheSpanxxx | 14 hours ago
I would be willing to bet that of that 49%, at least 50% of them are wrong. Believing in SS, Medicare, and stable inflation as measuring sticks for retirement capabilities is likely going to let a lot of people down.
I hate to think that my wife and i (50) are probably in a better situation than 70% of Americans our age and I am confident that we are very far behind.
KRandMG | 11 hours ago
Yep—a large portion of that 49% is going to end up not where they expected they would…
Anyone—regardless of age—would do well to look into the FIRE movement and try to apply some of that wisdom, even if you don’t go all-in.
che-che-chester | 10 hours ago
It's not so much that I think I won't be able to retire as I simply don't know when I will be able to. It's hard to plan when you don't know how much you'll need. I look at the people who retired right before COVID and then got kicked in the nuts with inflation. I've long had a number in mind of what I need to retire but I feel like I might need 40-50% over that number.
And then on top of that, all we hear about is how Social Security is insolvent and will be reduced in the future. SS was never my primary retirement plan but I'd be lying if I said it wasn't a decent part of it.
feverish | 7 hours ago
Part of it is that Gen X is the grand experiment for the 401k-funded retirement, and Congress was making it up as they went. ETFs, Roth, and HSAs all originated mid-career for Gen Xers.
boeings_door_plug | 15 hours ago
From observation, they seem to place "keeping up with the Joneses" as a higher priority than other generations too.
Boats, RVs, man caves, and other expensive toys aren't going to take care of you when you're 70, but they seems to act like those things will.
foulpudding | 14 hours ago
Anecdotes will anecdote.
GreyBoyTigger | 15 hours ago
Yeah, this is exclusive to GenXers. No other generation has people who who are bad with money
coldlightofday | 13 hours ago
Support your assertion. Seems to me all generations have people concerned with keeping up with the joneses and immediate gratification.
Greedy_Lobster | 14 hours ago
put on your glasses, thats boomers with all the toys and new trucks. paid for by pensions better than most wages today
Livid_Village4044 | 13 hours ago
The wealthiest 10% of age 65+ hold 73% of that age cohort's wealth. The bottom 40% hold 4%. (This is from the Federal Reserve's 2022 Survey of Consumer Finances.)
___forMVP | 14 hours ago
My Gen X coworkers finance fucking everything too. They refuse to save for a couple of years for something, there’s always a home equity line of credit or 401k loan or something they can tap into at that age and I know so many that have.
58 years old talking about retirement…. After they pay back their 401k loan and payoff their Polaris.
Meanwhile most millennials know the power of the market and act like they’re Charles fucking Schwab.
There really is a stark contrast between the two generations.
EchoFieldHorizon | 14 hours ago
Why do we keep pitting “generations” against each other like this? It’s the most meaningless thing when talking about such a huge group of people.
___forMVP | 14 hours ago
Im not pitting anyone against anyone. Having criticism for a trend I notice isn’t trying to pit generations against each other lol
Don’t be so dramatic.
coldlightofday | 13 hours ago
It’s an epidemic on Reddit. It’s like the one brainless hate that’s acceptable but that’s all it is is brainless hate and scapegoating. People are people.
IHaveFourKidneys | 3 hours ago
“Most millennials” aren’t in the market, in my experience.
che-che-chester | 10 hours ago
I think it is people in their 50's of every generation. That's when you've likely hit your prime earning years + your kids are out of the house. You finally have money so now you want the toys you're been delaying. I'm not defending it or saying it is smart, but I also don't think it is unique to GenX.
some_where_else | 15 hours ago
Or, they want to enjoy their toys while they are still young enough to do so
modix | 14 hours ago
Seems to be reflected in the newer generations. Once things become expensive enough you can't afford the capital expenditures you tend to have more loose cash.
Purple-Food-9829 | 14 hours ago
Believe ?
Etrigone | 15 hours ago
The worst so far, if anecdotes from millennial coworkers are any judge. Several of them report parents who presume their kids will tend them into their dotage, however intensive and expensive that may be.
Fine-Zombie-911 | 4 hours ago
Do millennials even have kids?
082426grateful | 15 hours ago
Born in 1975. 20+ year Career in the “retirement industry”. Worked for some of the big boys: Principal, Fidelity, others. Service and sales roles, but small markets.
I made fair money, but it didn’t keep up with the rising cost of life. I myself will never be able to retire fully, and that’s just fine. I love what I do for a living, now working on the advisory side of the industry.
I’d love to go back to a record keeper one day, to do what I do, but AI has all those jobs figured out. And I can’t justify the change without a significant bump in pay, to let me play some “catch up” now at age 51.
Like those golden handcuff homeowners, I’m just stuck where I am. Much of our entire economy is frozen in place, for now.
themiracy | 15 hours ago
These are vibes numbers though … there are people out there with $3M in invested assets who don’t think they’re “on track.”
There has been some data suggesting there really are a lot of unprepared Xers. In fairness we’re the first generation who really relied on 401k’s. This was always a problematic approach for the lower half of the income distribution. But think about how much less information there was on how to manage this stuff for people starting out in the workforce in the 90’s.
What has not happened since pensions went away in the US is the creation of a set of retirement systems that work reliably for people across the income spectrum. Maybe millennials and Z are navigating this better than we did. But it’s still a bad system design and people in all age brackets are going to end up with problems when they get older.
5minArgument | 15 hours ago
Have seen estimates that only 35% are actually in a favorable position to retire. A significant percentage of identified 401k retirement accounts are ghosted. Meaning they were started and then abandoned.
Worse is that even within the percentages of people with actual money saved the amounts are far below adequate.
themiracy | 15 hours ago
I mean some of us are fine. I could retire early. But the system can’t be designed for the lucky few …
It’s also worth saying and repeating that not only did paychecks not go up when pensions were converted to 401ks but rather we had the wage-productivity delamination. So Gen X in particular moving into work where they had coworkers in the frozen pension system - they were paid as second class citizens to a greater extent than when Z in particular entered the workforce and wages had eventually somewhat adjusted to the new reality.
082426grateful | 14 hours ago
Important points: Boomer Gen stayed in their jobs perhaps longer than they had expected. Didn’t really understand how to separate “wants vs needs”, didn’t save enough while younger.
Gen X got that education, but later, think late 1990’s. Less time to save, but that’s not even the worst of it….
….the worst is not even having access to pensions or rising wages. A decade of time was simply lost, 2008-2018.
Elestra_ | 13 hours ago
> A significant percentage of identified 401k retirement accounts are ghosted. Meaning they were started and then abandoned.
This could be the result of people job hopping and not rolling in their old plan to the new plan.
Bonch_and_Clyde | 14 hours ago
I'm a millennial in the upper quartile of income and with a financially literate background. Per the calculations I'm somewhat behind on savings, but with aggressive saving I'm on track to catch up in probably the next 4-6 years. But all it would take is one catastrophe, and all of my hard work would be wiped out.
My father had a major health event in his mid 50's that created hundreds of thousands in medical debt even with health insurance and left him unable to work or care for himself. The same could easily and outside of my control happen to me. It's a precarious world we live in.
082426grateful | 15 hours ago
Retirement was always described as a three legged stool:
Pension
401k/IRA savings
social security.
So, those of you who don’t have a pension because of where and how you’ve worked in your life, think about what happens to a 2 legged stool….
samandiriel | 15 hours ago
Especially when one of those two legs is suddenly 30% shorter then what you were promised.
CanaKitty | 14 hours ago
As a millennial, pretty sure the stool will be one legged for me by the time I retire (if I’m ever even able to)
Taonyl | 14 hours ago
Here in Germany, we’ll have a zero legged stool (we don’t have good tax deference schemes for pensions, pensions are rare and social security is too expensive to be paid for by a shrinking workforce.
So you’ll be paying 60% in taxes and health insurance and retirement contributions, of which you’ll certainly get significantly less than today’s generation, while having to save for retirement with your after tax income. On which you also have to pay taxes for any gains you make, even if it is only for keeping up with inflation.
CanaKitty | 14 hours ago
Whaaa? I am in the U.S. I always assumed that all of you guys in Western Europe basically were living in paradise in terms of like healthcare and retirement.
Taonyl | 7 hours ago
If you have no or little income, then what you get out of the system can be pretty good. You have a much better safety net if something bad happens. And also, if you are a retiree right now, then things are indeed pretty good.
But for future generations, all you have looking forward to is rising cost of living, housing that is completely unaffordable leaving you to rent for life, declining social services (waiting times for doctors and specialists increasing more and more/less being covered) while at the same times contributions are rising faster than ever. And as I mentioned, you cannot get by without privately saving money for retirement, but the only existing tax deference schemes are basically a scam politicians created to help their buddies in the banking/insurance industry (extremely high initial and recurring fees.
Also something like selling and buying a house when moving for example for work is completely impractical in Germany since you have fees and taxes of like 5-8% of the housing price to pay every time. So if you buy you have to be sure you stay long term, as every time you move you have to pay a year's worth of net income in taxes and fees.
Any-Tennis4658 | 15 hours ago
Not having a pension isn't a choice. There are like three companies that offer pensions. Total. Lol.
082426grateful | 14 hours ago
No, I agree with you. Please do not confuse my comment as gaslighting people for not “choosing” the right employer.
Pensions are closed off, have been for years, for most of us. We are already seeing a large percentage recent retirees who have one, having originated only due to military or government employment in the past.
Private industry pensions got eroded at the same time as organized labor lost its teeth.
Ok-Eggplant-3823 | 14 hours ago
The third leg was rammed up my butt by the boomers.
kuan_51 | 15 hours ago
More like a one legged stool. My generation ain’t getting any social security. My entire retirement strategy is built on my 401k and putting 18-20% of each paycheck into it.
tribriguy | 15 hours ago
Not true at all. What is true is that unless the government does something to shore up the fund, benefits may have to be reduced after some point between 2030-2035. Estimates are 75-80% of current. That’s not a great situation, to be sure. But Social Security is not going away. Please resist the hyper fear mongering.
kuan_51 | 14 hours ago
They will cut it. And they will likely have to reduce payments again in the future before I retire. Most likely looking similar to the cuts made under Reagan to buy it another 30 years. Smart retirement planning given such uncertainty entails assuming you won’t get any support. It’s a massive risk to bank your future retirement on the poor fiscal responsibility of the federal government.
Also, social security SHOULD die. It’s poorly managed and cannot deal with sizable demographic swings as a result. Nor do we have effective statesmen to fix the situation. Plus the earnings cap on it is ridiculous. It’s too flat and needs to be much more progressive in rate levels.
Livid_Village4044 | 13 hours ago
Social Security is poorly FUNDED. Unearned income (rent, capital gains, dividends, interest, and other more convoluted sources) is not taxed AT ALL to fund it. Nearly all of this income goes to the wealthiest 10%
Add to that a flat tax on wage/salary income, plus the cap, and you have an absolutely regressive tax structure funding Social Security.
kuan_51 | 13 hours ago
Taxing unearned income is such a bad and naive idea. So many issues with that approach and also not necessary to fix the system if trying to fund it.
Livid_Village4044 | 13 hours ago
You say nothing as to why, or what should be done instead to fund it.
kuan_51 | 13 hours ago
I haven’t studied it enough to offer solutions. I would need more empirical data and econometric analysis to feel confident any solutions. I can recognize at face value the consequences to the macro economic system if you tax unearned income.
Livid_Village4044 | 12 hours ago
The macroeconomic consequences of any significant tax increase on the wealthy will be a capital strike.
People need to understand the social war that will be required to reverse the ever deepening slide into oligarchy/economic slavery.
2% of the public say Social Security spending should be cut a lot, another 3% say cut a little (Economist/YouGov poll, March 27-30, 2026).
tribriguy | 37 minutes ago
You’ve gone from arguing Social Security will disappear entirely to arguing benefits will be reduced. Those are very different things.
And frankly, abolishing Social Security is a terrible policy idea that’s politically dead on arrival. Neither party is seriously advocating it.
The real problem is that everyone in Congress knows the system needs reform, and nobody wants to own the political consequences. The longer we wait, the narrower our options become and the more painful the eventual adjustments will be.
That’s probably my biggest criticism of Congress today. Plenty of progressive and populist shouting, but precious little political courage to tackle genuinely difficult problems. Whoever finally forces meaningful reform through will probably pay for it with their political career.
I’d like to see someone with enough political capital and conviction to make the hard choices now, while we still have options, rather than waiting until the arithmetic effectively makes those choices for us.
zwizzardz | 14 hours ago
I’m gonna get all my money I put in, one way or another.
LonelyPermit2306 | 14 hours ago
You are not. There's simply not enough people to pay for it.
AlternativeNorth6613 | 14 hours ago
Nope. Not enough kids.
082426grateful | 14 hours ago
Good on you. What you’re doing is attempting to secure your own future through your savings habits, and we should all applaud you for that.
I assume you’re not worried with children or excessive student loan debt? Is that fair, or am I dead wrong?
No matter: ignore those who may chime in to tell YOU to IGNORE the fact that Americas finances as a whole, are a wreck. Unsustainable. Rampaged to support a generation of large size, now fully in their “dependency” years.
AllTearGasNoBreaks | 14 hours ago
Not the other guy, but yes only counting on my own savings. Im 42. Only have about $500K in retirement, another $80K mostly liquid savings.
Married, no kids, no other debt aside from a 2.875% mortgage. We'll see how it goes.
082426grateful | 14 hours ago
Here’s the ticket to your continued success in savings and long term planning: no kids, likely no spouse either. Seriously.
Source: married man, for 20+ years, two daughters🪦☠️.
kuan_51 | 13 hours ago
I think I’m about the same. 34, 200k net worth. No savings though… all my assets are in the 401k and equity in my mortgage. I was hoping to break $1M by 40 but don’t think ima hit that goal anymore
stlc8tr | 11 hours ago
According to that survey, 66% of Gen Z feel like they're on track for retirement? Sure doesn't seem that way if Reddit is to be believed! 😂
AlternativeNorth6613 | 15 hours ago
there is social security. the reality is, with social security massively underfunded, we could not increase public retirement support easily.
trump accounts and other early life investing solutions are probably a step in the right direction
Somnifor | 15 hours ago
I'm in my late 50s. It looks like my social security payout will be about $25k a year if it isn't cut. Nobody can live on that. I have money put aside but a lot of people don't, especially blue collar and service workers.
Purple-Food-9829 | 14 hours ago
Much do you make now
Somnifor | 14 hours ago
Around $50k but I'm also using part of my nest egg to pay for health care because I have an expensive chronic disease. So my expenses are such that I couldn't afford them just on my wage alone.
Purple-Food-9829 | 14 hours ago
I live in Canada so my condolences for your health care burden. I guess my line of thinking goes like this . In Canada a third fir taxes a third for housing a third fir every thing else . I only live on a third of what I make now . So when I retire if my housing is paid and my taxes go down . I could live on that amount
Somnifor | 14 hours ago
Not everyone has housing that is paid for. I've never been able to afford to buy a house. I work in a profession where your prime earning years are in your late 30s and 40s. The great recession took that from me.
Purple-Food-9829 | 14 hours ago
Your right about housing. Not everyone can afford it . However I will challenge you on using the word house when I would say home . Home can mean to me condo or shared housing
Purple-Food-9829 | 14 hours ago
Sorry to hear about your financial situation
AlternativeNorth6613 | 14 hours ago
Well the alternative is large tax increases on the workers. There are too many old people/retirees in western countries.
Somnifor | 13 hours ago
This has been a carefully cultivated right wing talking point since at least the 80s. In the US wages are the lowest share of the national income since 1929. This is driven by the growing wealth disparity and the fact that the wealthy make most of their income from the stock market. Adding a modest social security tax on capital gains or wealth would rectify this.
Productivity has soared since the 1930s. You don't need nearly as many workers to support a retiree now.
Livid_Village4044 | 13 hours ago
I live comfortably on $1093 a month (after Medicare Part B is taken out).
I am also developing a debt-free self-sufficient homestead, which provides free wood heat in winter, more and more of my food for free, and free water from a spring. I also have no other debt to service.
40% of retirees rely on Social Security for at least 90% of their income, and most don't have the resilient situation I do.
samandiriel | 15 hours ago
> trump accounts and other early life investing solutions are probably a step in the right direction
Or, you know, an actual social safety net that doesn't require investing money many people don't have, or doesn't tank you're retirement plans if the entire economy and key government policies are hijacked by a set of techbroligarchs driving it over a cliff like buffalo to the slaughter.
1988rx7T2 | 15 hours ago
We do have a social safety net. It’s underfunded , just like in places like France.
AlternativeNorth6613 | 14 hours ago
It's not underfunded, it's that it can't be funded without increasing payroll taxes quite. abit
1988rx7T2 | 14 hours ago
Interesting definition of not under funded
Livid_Village4044 | 13 hours ago
No, tax unearned income (see my reply above). It is not currently taxed AT ALL to fund Social Security.
Willing_Activity_855 | 12 hours ago
you're showing financial illiteracy by that statement just fyi.
1: when you're getting closer and closer to retirement you transition to passive income. you start doing this 10 years before you retire Only an absolute moron would not do this. You have to be so stupid not to do this it begs the question should have you the right to manage anything or just be a ward of the state. if we adopted superannuation we'd just force people to do the transition then even episodes like 2008/9 arent a problem at all.
2: For a social safety net or government retirement you need to tax people anyways. Superannuation is essentially a tax. So the whole "investing money many people don't have," means if you cant force them to invest you also cant tax them either issue.
samandiriel | 10 hours ago
As the saying goes, ad hominem attacks are the last refuge of the incompetent. If we strip away the personal insults, there are a few fundamental flaws in your argument:
Confusing a glide path with "passive income" What you are describing isn't "transitioning to passive income"—it is a portfolio glide path toward capital preservation, bonds, and cash equivalents.
While de-risking a decade before retirement is standard practice to mitigate sequence-of-returns risk, claiming that systemic crashes like 2008 "aren't a problem at all" ignores market realities:
Fixed income and cash carry severe inflation and interest rate risk (as demonstrated in 2022 when equities and bonds dropped simultaneously).
Prolonged bear markets, wage stagnation, and unexpected early retirement due to layoffs or health crises frequently disrupt neat 10-year timelines.
A flawed equivalence between private investment mandates and public safety nets Equating a mandatory defined-contribution scheme to a general tax fundamentally misunderstands progressive taxation and redistribution:
A public safety net (like Social Security or a universal pension) is funded through a progressive tax structure where higher earners and corporate revenues cross-subsidize low-income workers.
Mandating that low-income individuals divert a fixed percentage of their already insufficient wages into private market accounts does not solve their immediate liquidity crisis. For someone living paycheck-to-paycheck, taking 10% of their paycheck directly threatens their ability to afford food and housing today. A safety net exists precisely to protect those who do not have surplus capital to lock away for decades.
Compulsory defined-contribution systems like Australia's superannuation certainly have merits, but treating them as an infallible replacement for a public safety net misses the core economic problem of income inequality and systemic market risk.
Willing_Activity_855 | 9 hours ago
You know using an LLM to respond isn't helping your case.
They have fingerprints now
samandiriel | 9 hours ago
Your comment wasn't worth crafting a custom reply. And llm generated or not its still accurate, as I gave it a decent prompt.
You have an over inflated opinion of both your personal finance knowledge and how social safety nets work.
Feel free to rebut, if you can, and good luck!
Willing_Activity_855 | 6 hours ago
>doesn't require investing money many people don't have, or doesn't tank you're retirement plans if the entire economy
Just from this statement I know my understanding of finance is greater than yours
samandiriel | 59 minutes ago
Just from yours, I know you're wrong. Yay for both of us, we both get to be right and the other wrong. Except I actually countered your statements, and you can't counter the one I provided and instead keep retreating to ad hominem. Keep up the good work!
FancyEmployee8672 | 11 hours ago
Trump Accounts is a ruse to undermine support for social security.
vivalabongwater | 12 hours ago
One factor is that GenX started out thinking they'd have the same benefits of work, affordability, and opportunity as their parents, perhaps even better, and they were taken away bit by bit without warning. If you didn't get married/kids/house by your mid 20's goooood fucking luck to you.
example:
I can hardly wait to start contributing to my defined benefit pension
.. Oh now they're defined contribution?
.. oh now it's an RRSP match?
.. pension lol pension you entitled fuck
At least this generation started out knowing the situation... that's cold comfort though.
Mountain-Alarm-477 | 15 hours ago
46, 100K in debt, zero savings or retirement, job is being automated. My business has struggled since Covid and I’m bleeding out.
I wake up every day in a low-grade panic attack and deeply ashamed of myself.
No_Power1121 | 15 hours ago
I'm Gen X born in 1970. I grew up exceptionally poor and homeless for periods of my childhood, and came up through significant abuse. I got started very late in life, graduated college in my mid 30s after clawing and scratching just to get that far. I look much younger than my age, which has helped me quite a bit so far, but I'm so far behind the curve. I know I'm never going to retire. I already have it planned out how I'm going to exit quietly and gracefully from this life when the time comes, and I've made sure that my family is set up well with what they all need from what I have in my 401(k) and other savings. Nowhere near enough to retire on, but enough to set them up comfortably to start their lives.
I strongly suspect, anecdotally that there are quite a few other Gen X folks out there with the same mindset. We've been fucked since Reagan, and a lot of us like myself even more so. It is what it is.
Consistent-Fig7484 | 14 hours ago
I wonder if more people are thinking like this regardless of finances. As we become less religious and euthanasia becomes more available, I can see people who are like “grandma lived to be 110, didn’t realize where she was for the last 20 years, went to a different doctor 9 times a week, was a huge burden on everyone and seemed miserable all the time”.
min_mus | 12 hours ago
> I wonder if more people are thinking like this regardless of finances.
I know I do. I would rather my husband and kid get my money than a private equity-owned nursing home.
HystericalSail | 5 hours ago
Same wavelength. I vividly recall the decline of my parents, their suffering in their final years and especially final months. That was not life. That's not how I wish to be remembered if I'm remembered at all. And that "huge burden" part hits harder, another thing I saw with so many fellow Gen-X re-arranging their lives and sacrificing to be more available as end of life caretakers. How miserable that made everyone. I don't want that for my kids just so I can watch another year or two of Fox at max volume.
MrDerpGently | 15 hours ago
That all sounds very familiar, yeah.
tres-vip | 12 hours ago
>I strongly suspect, anecdotally that there are quite a few other Gen X folks out there with the same mindset.
Yeah, I'm one of them, though I am younger than you ('79). I do not want to grow old and poor in this country. Not a good quality of life at all.
CanaKitty | 14 hours ago
I’m a millennial and feel similarly, although I also don’t have a family to provide for. I know I will probably never be able to retire. At this point I’m barely able to even plan for it, so I might as well just enjoy life now while I’m younger and then peace out when I get old.
LaLa_LaSportiva | 10 hours ago
What's on track?
I didn't start contributing to retirement until I was 42 years old because I never had a good enough job or enough money to contribute until that age. Plus I was poor and never learned about financial matters until I realized it was important -- in my 40s. Thankfully, I got myself a good education and worked for good companies starting in my 40s, which allowed me to start and accelerate my retirement. I found myself a good financial advisor and I am doing pretty good for myself... I think. But i wish I had started much sooner.
Lower_Arugula5346 | 10 hours ago
i made $13.50 an hour with a bachelor's degree until 6 years ago. now i make $20 an hour and half my monthy pay goes to rent. retirement is not gonna be an option for me.
LaLa_LaSportiva | 9 hours ago
That's the worst part about today's corporate philosophy. You're making only $2 more an hour than I did 35 years ago! Somehow, the rich convinced people that they were paying fair wages. But they were stealing wages all along so they could pay themselves more and report higher and higher profits. People today are fckd.
wyzapped | 14 hours ago
Terrified Gen-xer here. Yeah, not sure how I will afford retirement, considering how costly it is. My Mom is in a memory care facility that costs $10k per month! Still, financial considerations aside, I’m not sure I want to retire to just do nothing either. I’ve watched my parents’ cognitive state rapidly decline because they left the work force and never replaced the mental challenge of work with something else. I think as people live longer, quality of life, as well as economics will need to be better addressed.
Shinroukuro | 15 hours ago
Having to financially help with the living expenses of my parents who just assumed they’d “die young” like their parents, while assisting kids who can’t find decent paying full-time jobs with benefits while their inexpensive one bed apartment is $2,000 a month isn’t helping my retirement outlook.
clfl123 | 4 hours ago
This
VeryStab1eGenius | 15 hours ago
This is all based on self reporting and feelings. It’s possible that Gen X is just more pessimistic than millennials which anecdotally is the case in my experience.
misterxboxnj | 13 hours ago
Gen Xer here. I started my current job at 27 years old and have been there 25 years now. Sometime after I'd been there a few years my CO worker told me to come over to his desk and he showed me his deferred comp which was worth around 300k. That day I went to HR and did the paperwork and started doing around 9% of my salary. At times I had to lower my contribution due to having kids and being down to one salary. Mine is now worth roughly the same as his was. On top of that I have a pension which will be somewhere between 65-70% of my salary. I can retire in about 10 years but I'll probably do 15 more because I bought my house late had children when I was older. Despite that I'm still worried about retirement. I don't know how people with nothing saved will be able to survive down the road.
adamwho | 14 hours ago
If you had a job that offered 401ks and you actually took the advice then you're probably okay.... If you didn't, you're going to die in your job.
I was lucky to have a boss when I was young that told me to open the 401k and put enough in to get matching funds... And I'm not in too bad shape 30 years later.
I also learned the lessons about marriage and family from my parents.... As in not do what they did.
che-che-chester | 10 hours ago
We had a work happy hour a few weeks ago and a bunch of us geezers surrounded the entry-level employees and were preaching 401k's. My advice is always don't let perfect be the enemy of good. If you're on the fence, just do enough to get the company match. Put it in an S&P 500 fund and forget about it.
weristjonsnow | 4 hours ago
I wish any of my jobs for 15 years had 401 plans...
FancyEmployee8672 | 11 hours ago
if I don’t retire by 55 I’m going to die on the job.
danthelibrarian | 15 hours ago
I was fortunate to be introduced to retirement planning early in my career, and made a clean transition from a pension job to 401k. Even with adequate savings, the uncertainty of health insurance makes retirement nerve wracking. I feel for those who didn’t have exposure and interest in retirement self-management. Retiring with a downsized social security and Medicare is going to suck.
Oxjrnine | 6 hours ago
I’m one of those people who’s gonna be screwed
I’ve had five course corrections when it comes to my “earnings” over the last 40 years. Things like saving up to change careers or go back to school, move across the country.
Each change was the right decision at that time - but each time it depleted my savings and often it put me into debt
Show my 40s I took a much more stable job that doesn’t pay very well but I was earning enough to have a savings and I was going to do the forced equity thing because I finally had enough savings and job stability to look at houses
And then housing prices in my city started exploding. I made offers on five different houses over five years and each time I lost. And now houses in my city are three times the price of what they were when I was originally looking in 2015. I have no way to catch up. And since everything else has gone up and price, including my rent, (and my cost-of-living raise is not keeping pace), I don’t have anything nearly enough left at the end of two weeks to come close to the forced equity. I don’t even have enough to keep contributing to my savings plan except for the one that work takes out of my paycheck.
Hopefully, they’ll still have Walmart greeter 20 years from from now because I’ll need to keep working
IKillZombies4Cash | 15 hours ago
I’m a younger X. I don’t really identify with the older ones , but my advice to anyone starting out . Avoid 30-50 dollars of stupid spending a week and invest it into a nice balanced fund . And do that every week and you’re going to have a million dollars at retirement just from that .
One brown bag lunch. One less take out dinner . Avoid the latte monster.
Slow and steady - PUT THE MONEY INTO THE ACCOUNT WEEKLY, make it a Roth IRA so you can’t touch it.
Starting early is more important than making more money later
oldbeancam | 15 hours ago
If you start at 18 (assuming a 7% return), you’d have between 475k and 815k at 65 with 30-50 a week. I agree that most should be doing this, but the reality is that it still won’t be enough by itself to fully retire on for the vast majority. Especially since we will see more people hitting retirement age not being homeowners. Hell, some might not even have a mortgage until their 50s, 60s, or ever.
Purple-Food-9829 | 14 hours ago
Better to put something away then not even try
oldbeancam | 14 hours ago
Never said it wasn’t. Just didn’t want someone to see “put 30-50 dollars away a week and you’ll be a millionaire at retirement” and not understand it’s actually closer to half/three quarters of that and you have to start when you legally become an adult without missing a week until 65.
At the end of the day, put away what you can but keep your expectations rooted in reality.
Purple-Food-9829 | 14 hours ago
This
skronens | 14 hours ago
People have very different expectations on retirement as well. Some are happy with being able to live a modest life and continue to pay their bills, whilst others are planning to travel the world, go on cruises etc as a never ending holiday
Shield_Maiden831 | 12 hours ago
That's because billionaires have squandered all of societal wealth while they continue to divide us along generational, cultural, or random lines.
Ill-Consideration892 | 11 hours ago
Born in 1972. Learned a little about personal finance at 19. Decided I was going to be a millionaire one day by consistently investing from every single paycheck or bonus I made. I started around $25/week when I was making like $5/hr.
I never let off the gas and 35 years later that consistency has paid off. Compounding interest is truly the 8th wonder of the world. It can be done you just have to start young and pay yourself first.
ThisIsAbuse | 10 hours ago
I have been able to do a decent amount of catching up in my 50's. Also being married to someone who was doing the same helps. We were both divorced in our mid to late 30's and lost a lot until we found each other and worked on our futures together.
GrizzlyAdam12 | 15 hours ago
Different people have different priorities.
But, don’t pay for your aging parents to be in nice long term memory care facility at the expense of your own retirement…and certainly not at the expense of your children’s college funds.
Yes, state funded care facilities are horrible. But, if you have to make that choice, I’m sure your mom and dad will understand.
DHthrow85 | 15 hours ago
They’ve had 15 years of the biggest bull market in history. I don’t see how this is possible unless they simply didn’t prioritize investing for retirement
082426grateful | 15 hours ago
Gaslighting the conversation and ignoring the rapidly increasing cost of living isn’t helping this larger dialogue.
Most of America can’t max out savings. Most of America doesn’t have a pension benefit to fall back on. Most of America was unprepared for years now of torrid inflation, like we haven’t seen in 2 generations or more.
DHthrow85 | 15 hours ago
I’m 41 and I’ve never made more than $80k/year. Much less when I was younger. I’ve been investing for retirement since I was 18 and have a little over $300k. I work with a guy in his 50s who barely has 100k in retirement and has made good money for a while. Lack of retirement savings is often a choice.
Medium_Owl_4119 | 14 hours ago
I would say in a lot of cases, you’re spot on. But, there are plenty of extenuating circumstances. A marriage that heads south, leaving the workforce temporarily to take care of aging parents, being laid off in your 40s and being unable to secure a similar position, medical debt from a chronic condition, etc.
There are a host of circumstances that can financially cripple otherwise responsible and prudent people. That simultaneously existed with the reality Gen X simply had an obscene amount of opportunity and long stretches of economic prosperity that are largely absent to younger millennials and Gen Z.
CanaKitty | 14 hours ago
I barely have anything left to invest after paying for stuff like rent and health insurance.
LostMyKarmaElSegundo | 14 hours ago
Maybe because I hit the soft paywall, I didn't find where the article defines "on track" for retirement. What metric are they using?
I recently read that, despite conventional wisdom that you need $1M at 65 for retirement, less than 5% of Americans achieve that.
Mammoth_Site_2060 | 3 hours ago
Late Gen X retired at 50. Blame everyone else you didn’t save anything though. Saw my generation buy more house than they could afford. Cars and trucks they couldn’t afford. Rack up CC debt. Sign up for variable rate mortgages all kinds of stupid financial decisions.
Josepth_Blowsepth | 52 minutes ago
Born in 75. Track to retire at 55 with MM in bank and no debt. Was raised to not count on the system to support me and had to do it myself. I do not equate SS into my plans and never have which helped me save and invest more
austinbarrow | 14 hours ago
Was on track before COVID and our federal government's failed response. Will probably regain footing before I get there, barring any unforeseen, once-in-a-generation economic events. 😬
BrightAd306 | 12 hours ago
These surveys are tough because Gen X also doesn’t really trust social security to be there for them and doesn’t count on it. Many are likely better off than they think. They were certainly homeowners at the right time and are old enough to have had substantial 401k balances during the longest bull market in history.
Sentiment isn’t always reality. Gen X tends to be pessimistic.
I do think the newer auto saving in 401k laws Congress passed is amazing for the younger generations. But it also helped Gen X somewhat.
FancyEmployee8672 | 11 hours ago
Why do you think it’s amazing? It won’t amount to enough on it’s own. Social Security was amazing. Pensions were amazing. Collectively pulling the wool over our eyes and undermining both so the wealthy can get wealthier is amazing. Anyone thinking this is actually helpful is amazing.
BrightAd306 | 10 hours ago
$100 a month from 20 to 67 is over a million at retirement. Auto savings was a really good idea. Better idea would be to lock it away until retirement age instead of people being able to take it out every few years to pay off their credit cards like happens now.
The only part of 401k’s that aren’t massively better is the fact that they aren’t idiot proof.
If you put as much as you would have been forced to put in a pension in a 401k, you’re way better off, and it doesn’t disappear when you die. Social security doesn’t pay nearly as much in retirement as you’d get investing the money in a 401k. Your pension also relied on you working for the same agency or company your whole career, and the agency or company not going bankrupt.
HarlanCedeno | 11 hours ago
>I do think the newer auto saving in 401k laws Congress passed is amazing for the younger generations
I was with you until that line. Very curious what you think is "amazing".
BrightAd306 | 10 hours ago
They’ll have thousands of dollars they wouldn’t otherwise have because it’s an opt out instead of opt in. It was a brilliant idea.
$100 a month from 20 to 67 is over a million dollars at retirement. Most will have far more put in than $100 a month.
scottishzombie | 8 hours ago
Honestly, I'm looking at either a heart attack or cancer in the next 10 years, so I'm not going to have a retirement anyway. Not being morbid, just realistic.
Nope, it's straight to Heaven for ol' Mick Dundee. Or the closest convenient parallel dimension.
Delicious-Plastic-44 | 7 hours ago
The rules were clear. The knowledge was out there. I was born in 79 and am a multi millionaire. I didn’t make huge amounts from my job, I just paid myself first. For decades. As was clearly communicated in every retirement planning communication I ever read. They were basically right. All you had to do was what they suggest. That’s it.
But Gen X wanted to keep up with the Jones’s. They deserved, by birth, a better life than boomers. They were entitled, owed, and unwilling to educate themselves, listen, or take personal responsibility.
Sure that’s not 100% of the people here. But it is more than 1/2.
irespondwithmyface | 6 hours ago
Well they're also the most conservative generation by voting block in history so they kind of brought it upon themselves. Tighten up those laces and back to work.