The huge problem with this anti-savings attitude is that the greatest gains are made on the money that’s invested earliest. For example, a dollar invested at a 9.6& rate of return will double in about 7 years. If someone 25 years old invests that dollar and retires at age 60, it will have doubled 5 times to $32.00 Thus, “pensions are for the young” because the really big returns on a long term fund only occur at the end of the holding period. IOW only the early investors make the really big bucks.
BTW the term, “pensions are for the young” is a direct quotation from a presenter at a forum on pension law that an employer sent me to when I was 27 years old. That old fart, probably in his 50’s at the time, said it at the beginning of his presentation, pulled out his charts and absolutely proved it. I sat here shocked, seeing how easy it actually was to provide for my retirement, and followed his advice ever since. Now I’m comfortably retired, in good part because I took that advice. Tragically, most Millennials probably have never even seen a presentation like that.
At age 29, when I was 8 years into my first salaried career job, my employer decided to convert their old pension plan into the new 401K style plans. The formula they used to seed our new plans took years of service into account, but was based mostly on age.
I got about 3 weeks pay in my account, while the guys in their 50's with 2 years of service were getting 50 or 60 weeks pay in theirs. I was pissed, and pretty much had to start from scratch at that point.