I have enough to last 8 months after working 45 years and having a heart attack and having to spend my life savings on medical bills.
Regular Americans are struggling to survive in a nightmare dystopia. News and weather at 11.
Not surprising that a lot of boomers got left behind. The American system is designed to grind everyone to zero with overwhelming debt to keep everyone working at nonliving wages.
Making sure income can’t match debts is a form of wage slavery. Company towns with mines back in the day. This current “economy” is that bullshit on steroids.
Marketing and the media are also to blame. We're constantly bombarded by advertising and people telling us that what we have isn't enough. We're so status conscious and aware if how much is out there that they have us chasing dreams straight into massive debt.
I'm in my 50s with no savings. It isn't lifestyle or marketing driven though. I just have had very few years where we had any extra. Also three teenagers and the price of food is killing me, cost of cars too. It's just surviving that's gutting me.
For some fucked up reason SS tax is only up to something like $165k income. So a textbook regressive tax. Ridiculous. Don't put a limit on it. There. The shit is funded until climate change creates starvation and mass human migrations of such size that there is a break down the social structure.
That's because DEMOCRATS keep trying to SAVE Social Security! Why can't we just GIVE that money to BILLIONAIRES instead like REPUBLICANS want to do?
Sounds like they should cut back on those $5 Metamucils, and make their own fiber at home.
I put money into my 401k for decades only to find out I had enough to cover two months of rent. Shits fucked.
Were you putting in a nickel per paycheck? The market has killed it over the last 30 years, even with a relatively low contribution, if you contributed consistently for 30 years you should have way more than that
Did you fuck up and leave it all in the cash-equivalent fund instead of actually investing it?
I don't even know what that is, man. I worked, I didn't play with stocks.
yikes.
I'm Only 30 but I have no plans for retirement savings. How can I when half my paycheck goes to a roof over my head and a quarter goes to taxes and another quarter goes to food, clothes, and other necessities?
By the time I'm fifty it will probably be 60% to a roof, 30% to taxes and 10% to food and clothes.
It's time for a revolution because it looks like most of the population's in the same boat. The war between the super rich and everyone else has been fought and we lost. They're leaving us with two options: revolution or die starving on the streets.
I'm GenX, been working since I was a teenager. And since I was a teen I always figured I'd have to work until I die. It still seems that way today.
This is exactly why state pensions are the norm in Europe, and I think many other places around the world.
Here in Portugal, your taxes accumulate pension credit similar to social security in the US, but when you retire you receive around 80% of your highest salary over your career, instead of a few hundred dollars or whatever from American social security.
I mean, social security will help you get enough medicine as long as only take 1/4 of the prescribed amount and there's lots of fancy cat food out there...you can eat like a rich person's pet for only $2-$3 a can!
On the bright side, between the too-poor-to-retire elderly and kids, we think we can fill all the open jobs created by covid deaths without having to let any immigrants in.
On an unrelated note, we're on track to invent the "trillionaire" within the next decade. If that's not innovation, I don't know what is.
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