Posted on 05/31/2020 7:10:02 AM PDT by where's_the_Outrage?
By and large, Americans of all ages believe they are building healthy nest eggs that will support them through a long retirement.
In fact, 60% of all workers say they are piling up savings adequate to last through their golden years, according to the 20th annual Transamerica Retirement Survey of Workers.
But the actual numbers suggest something different.
The median-sized nest egg for baby boomers is a relatively paltry $144,000, according to the Transamerica Center for Retirement Studies. The median is defined as approximately the midpoint of the range in a given category.
(Excerpt) Read more at msn.com ...
I learned how to save in the military with an E3/4 pay a newborn and a stay at home wife who took care of him. My last year in the shipyard in Portland Oregon I’d collect cans on the ship for the 5 cent deposit money. Afterward I worked 2 jobs for 22 years with the same stay at home mom caring for the 4 kids. I retired at 46 and have been retired for 18 years. We always lived frugal and way below our means. My assets have actually grown because I still live the same way. I’ve never had debt always paid cash. I have 2 houses of which one I am rehabbing to sell after all this crap calms down, and 16 acres of separate woodlands down the road. My family says I should collect SS early but fact is at this time I don’t need it. I will file at 65 when I sign up for medicare only for the medicare plan to be paid by SS and they’ll send me the balance of which will go into more savings.
This is just an advert to take more of your money charging fees for investment advice.
Everybody knows what to do, most don’t do it. And most never will.
“Do you think that people with flush 401ks are going to keep them in 15 or 20 years?”
I think that if the Dems manage to seize control, they will go after 401Ks, IRAs and the like. Too much money there to ignore, belonging to people whom they can demonize for just having it. Living within your means and saving up for 30-40 years no longer means you were prudent. It means you were lucky. That luck has to be “shared”, and the Dems will make it happen.
I began preparing very early in life for retirement. I retired two months after my 54th birthday. I feel very fortunate.
The millennials are a real problem. The public schools and colleges have thoroughly indoctrinated them.
Every once in a while I go to reddit to read what the kids are saying in their local city posts. They hate Trump and everything he does. They’ll support anyone who will eliminate their student debt.
This certainly rang true with me. At age 65, I had it planned that a life ins. policy would pay off the mortgage & it did. Our only real savings was acquired between the time of starting to draw social security & the time I actually retired so it wasn’t much. Am able to pay the bills(mostly) now with S.S. & save a little. Getting by OK (no taxes) & living simply.
Half the boomers are already at retirement age. Some are more than 10 years into retirement. Someone who has been retired a decade is probably going to have less in their retirement account than they did a decade ago. (Or, given the created Wuhan Flu crisis, significantly less than they did 6 months ago).
Good point about the student loans.
Every time I’m forced to listen to these ignorant planks, I can’t help but harken back to Kruschev:
—Withouf firing a shot.
You must have invested very conservatively. More like 20%...
Yes. But if one is worried you can still save the money somewhere. The problem is most people won’t save and will find excuses not to.
Me too!
This is why I am taking EXTRA care of my health. Exercise and eating only whole food, plant based.
If I can’t have the wealth, at least I have my health!!!
:)
That is a legitimate concern. What is likely to stop it is that the big international bankers (who back the democrats) use that money to fund their agenda. Goldman Sachs, Blackrock, JPMorgan, Citi, Barclays, Jefferies etc. own (ok, rent) too many politicians.
It looks like BlackRock alone controls over $7 Trillion dollars. That's a little less than the GDP of Germany and Japan combined.
Why..you might ask?
Poor returns...on MY money. And those "ships" turn slowly.
And I don't want "someone"...directing MY money.
Started long time ago..investing myself. A world of difference....
If you don’t have any debt, it is a lot easier to live beneath your means.
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Yes, and you can save more without having the burden of all those high interest debt service costs. More money in your pocket instead of theirs.
Early on I realized its better to have people paying you than you paying them. I’m not saying that all debt is bad but a lot of it is unnecessary and can be insidiously harmful to your financial health.
And equally important is living below your means. I could not agree with you more on that.
You have to start early and live under your means all the way. ‘Under your means’ just means not doing the wasteful things most people do.
I retired at 60, 11 years ago. My net worth has increased since I retired, even with the latest whack. No one will educate you how to do this, you have to educate yourself.
Become debt free (did that at age 47)
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Absolutely! I can guarantee you retirement will cost more than you think. There will always be unexpected expenses. Its not necessarily due to a lack of financial discipline; its more a case of a natural human tendency to underestimate things and a variety of events that “conspire” against you.
Sooner or later, we all must spend less than we earn. The sooner you figure that out, the better. I was 30 before it dawned on me.
I have a date now: Dec 31, 2022. I’ll be 63 and a half. Might work longer, if I feel like it. But, doubtful.
First, our retirement funds were cut in half by the stock market dive in the fall of 2008. He said don't worry, the market would come back and we could regain most of what we lost. But that required us to keep working and not retire. Then his backup retirement plan for us, equities in six rental houses was destroyed when the housing market crashed after the stock market did. Most of the equities in our houses disappeared.
But life is not a dress rehearsal for the real thing so we plowed ahead with our own plan. We were ready to retire and get out of the fast lane, big city and move to a more rural area in the country. We didn't want to wait. So we did what our guts told us to do instead of what our "investment" advisor advised us to do. Both of his plans (the mutual funds in the stock market and the equities in the rental houses) had gone south and now he was telling us we couldn't retire until we started over again. Seemed to us that we couldn't do any worse than his failed advice.
So against that advice, we took our remaining funds out of the market and paid cash for some land and an old house. We had to demolish the old house first but we finally built a new house in its place on 30 acres in rural Florida. We drilled a new deep water well, and installed a new septic system. We had a place to live free and clear.
Then we sold off the rental houses in Arizona one by one and used the money to start a beef cattle operation on our property in Florida. Over time, we bought two tractors and trailers and other equipment to run the farm with. We built fences, ran water lines for stock tanks, built three barns, a cattle management set up with corrals, holding pens, a loading dock and a squeeze chute. This was all done to get an agricultural exemption on the land to cut our property taxes to the county way down.
Now ten years later, we have a new home, a cattle operation of 30 head of Angus beef cows, an orchard full of fruit trees and a big garden to grow vegetables in. We even have a couple of layer chickens for fresh eggs.
We live comfortably on our Social Security income and a small retirement check. We both get our medical care from the VA in the city 35 miles away. We are debt free and even do well enough selling calves at auction each year to add to what remains of our retirement savings account which is no longer in the stock market by the way.
If we had taken our "expert's" investment/retirement advice, we would still be working trying to get a big enough nest egg to last us until we died. Instead we have been retired for ten years and enjoying our farm in the country. Good thing too, because due to unforeseen circumstances, we have had to adopt our 3 year old granddaughter and are raising her as our own.
The important thing to remember is that the "experts" in what you should do with your life or how much money you'll need to retire on, don't really know what's best for you any more than you do yourself. Trust your own judgment and live your dream before you run out of time. We don't live forever.
On a sad note, our investment guy never did get to retire himself. He died of a heart attack in his office about 5 years ago. His wife is doing just fine though.
Besides, a reverse mortgage can provide some old folks with income to live on.
Pay for kids college.
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But don’t overpay for it. Its not worth it IMO.
While education is important there are a lot of other factors that determine success in life.
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