Are you going to reimburse your parents for the money they spent on your education?
I paid every penny - for my undergrad and masters. Paid off my student loans early so I could get saving. But, yes, this is unrealistic and can't possibly be done. OK, off to the car dealership to see about a new car!!!
What's mind boggling is that people call this arrogant. When in reality what this is is a person who didn't want to get caught not having enough money for retirement so I saved and invested, working two jobs to be sure that i will have enough. I'm sorry if that upsets you.
And, who knows - some day I may loose it all. But I'm not going to go about whining about it (certainly the man in the article wasn't). I'd do what I always do - get back up and keep going at it. I've had tenants who don't bother paying the rent because their cell phone bill is hundreds of dollars a month when I didn't even own a cell phone. Yes, plenty of people would rather live like Kings and Queens and not put some money away. And, yes, there are a very few tragedy cases where there are exceptions.
Did you -- or will you -- pay for your kids' college?
But, you need to realize it is more than a few people who are in trouble with retirement, through no fault of their own. Those examples I gave constitute a pretty large number of people.
We are one of those groups. We went through three layoffs in seven years, all while my husband wa in his late 40's and early 50's. He has a good job now, but in the process we exhausted our savings paying for living expenses and our daughter's education. We never claimed unemployment.
So, here we are, trying frantically to save the amount we lost. We have one unreliable pension, from the first company that laid him off. We have no savings, because we lived on them while he was looking for work.
I don't expect any help from the government other than whatever pittance Social Security gives us, but you might spare a thought to those who have had hard times.