This is the same demographic that overwhelmingly votes for Republicans. I am finding it very hard to empathize.
That said, perhaps this train wreck will serve as an object lesson for the next generation about creating and maintaining social safety nets.
I always empathize. At the end of the day it comes down to education and rural parts of this country are massively underserved when it comes to educational spending. I come from a rural community and it seems like everyone regardless of party lines knows the issues but it’s infuriating to see people vote against their self interest because they’ve been disincentivized to discuss things with their neighbors and come up with the best solutions for their community
There’s a good George Carlin talk on why this is https://m.youtube.com/watch?v=sNXHSMmaq_s
Except they won’t call it a social safety net, because Socialism is evil. They’ll call it something like “Returns from your tax investment” that masks the fact that the younger generation is paying for the older one to retire and make room for the younger generations promotions.
Maybe they’ll call it “Patriot Security” or some other bullshit term
“universal basic income”
Agreed, the boomers are finally suffering after all the cruelty they inflicted on us.
Let me find my champagne.
This isnt just boomers, it’s into Gen X too.
Boomers: 1946 to 1964: 59 - 77
Gen X: 1966 and 1980: 43 - 57
"Only 1 in 10 low-income workers between the ages of 51 and 64 had any funds put away for retirement "
I’m young genx, I hope we’re not that stupid, we should have learned something what with Boomers trying to scam us literally every fucking day of our lives.
But if they haven’t, whoops, another point to Darwin.
What gets me riled up is I work w/ a bunch of GenX and some don’t even contribute to the 401k that is matched 6% (aka FREE MONEY). I just don’t get it, my leave money on the table. Go low risk if your not sure…
Do you know if they have the economy to actually “loose” 6% of their salary?
It might be “free money” in their retirement fund but they still have to afford to actually add anything to it.
He owns 2 houses and a plane, plus gets disability from the military (I have no issue w/ tat but an additional revenue stream)
Ah yes, I see your point. They really seem to be able to make different choices with their economy.
Several 401k providers I had before going the self employment route offerred loans secured by the 401k blanace for home purchasing and other uses, and at the end of the day, if you end up in an emergency financial crunch can always cash out the 401k, counts as income that you pay on that years income tax plus 10% irs early withdrawal penalty (amounts may have changed since I last looked).
Assuming it’s a 1:1 match and is immediately vested they would technically still gain more money by contributing, immediately withdrawing all of it, and paying the associated taxes and fees.
So it’s definitely possible they’re leaving money on the table either way.
Interesting, didn’t know of that possibility. Is it also possible to withdraw just a part and save some “for free”?
I’m not from the US so the exact workings of your pension system is a bit beyond my expertise 😊
It’s not that…
Boomers legitimately never imagined they would get old, in their minds they’re all like Trump, stuck in their flush of youth, they are Al Bundy still celebrating his 4 touchdowns in one game on permanent loop.
And sadly, while they abused the fuck out of us, some of us caught that same disease.
I think those years make no sense. People born in 1965 are nothing…?
The lost year, I blame extraterrestrials!
Correct. Not people. They are literally nothing. They don’t deserve retirement, voting rights, or the legal right to work. When I see them 65ers, don’t say that outloud because some sensitive people get really upset, when I see them 65ers, I pretend they aren’t there.
Keep that GenX link back in 1977 where it belongs.
1978ish to 1987ish has it’s own corner referred to as Xennials. There was a technology and culture transition for my generation that was considerably different from Gen X and not quite as prefabricated as the Millennial generation.
This; born in 85, have much more in common with kids from 1975 than 1995, culture wise (land lines! pre Internet times!).
Many organizations are beginning to move away from generational studies as aside from the boomers who came about in unique circumstances they tend not to reveal anything unique about a given generation. Pew just announced they were doing this.
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I’m a Republican and this has nothing to do w/ parties. Some people are the grasshopper and some people are the ant. I’m an ant, I can retire right now at 50yo and it wouldnt be a an issue.
So they want to fritter their money away well thats their problem. I have been saving to retire since I was 19. And a diversified portfolio, gold, silver, guns, land, 401k, Roth, hard currency and a skill set that I can work into the 80’s if I chose to…
Bad choices shouldn’t be saddled on me.
I hear you, but what if, and hear me out here, human beings deserve the basics of living even if they, say, lost all their money due to medical debt, education debt, credit card debt, natural disasters, and/or just plain shit luck?
I don’t think anyone is saying that the average person looking to retire is planning on throwing millions of tax dollars around, they literally just want to live a decent quality of life. If you had to rely on something like the government when you couldn’t work any more, wouldn’t you want the same kindness?
I bet he hates student loan forgiveness for the same reason. I paid and didn’t get it for free, why should anyone else?
And in those cases I can find exception. (not for CC or educational debt, you bought the ticket. Take the ride)
But if you willfully squandered your money and/or didnt sign up for the basic 401k at work then I have no pity. I’m an engineer, I found out the other day my coworker the same age as me has just signed up for a 401k. He left 6% on the table for more than 2 decades, fuck bailing that guy out.
I’m all for a decent quality of living, just not on my back because you didnt do anything to deserve it.
No but like that’s the point - the basic human decency thing means that it’s basic, inherent and needs no qualifiers. Even people you disagree with are still people who have inner lives all their own. They don’t deserve to starve and die just because they didn’t play some arbitrary money game we decided was important however many centuries ago the right way.
If you think simply working your whole life isn’t enough to deserve a comfortable retirement, you’re a despicaple sack of shit
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Yep, you definitely sound like a Republican. Lack of empathy… check!
It’s okay, his dear saint Peter will be sending him someplace hot after a quick chat at the pearly gates. His money and land won’t matter then.
For bad life choices, yup. I would love to be a youtuber but the chances of success are so small.
“I wasn’t able to follow my dreams, so no one should.” Wow.
Delusion, you can do it on your free time but you can’t expect me to pay for it.
I have a hobby so I shouldn’t get to retire? Oh, fuck off. People like you made this country to worthlesd shithole it is today. I genuinely hope you lose everything.
I think that he ment studying photography at college/university and trying to make a living of it. I still feel that any should die from poverty no matter their life choices.
Good choices only goes so far. How many planed for a war in Ukraine on the back of years of pandemic for instance? People in a good situation right now tend to not realise how large part luck had to do with it.
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Have you ever heard of the just world fallacy?
You seem to have made some good choices but you don’t seem to understand how much luck has to do with the outcome.
It doesn’t take very much to wipe out savings or destroy a plan, especially before you got any funds to handle the unexpected and even more so in the US and it’s low de-comodification.
Get hit by a car by no fault of your own, rack up a high medical bill and be fired due to not being able to work. It’s not that an outlandish scenario and one that most can’t plan for or have money in reserve for.
And that’s of course even harder for someone growing up in a poor household and working minimal wage jobs.
It was no luck, I made well informed decisions and sacrifice a lot making those decisions. I have lived all over the US for a step up. Sacrificed the comfort of friends and family to get that leg up. They don’t hand it to you, you have to claw it away from them.
I agree one bad event can wipe you out, I’m not against those social safety nets. I was once for a brief time on unemployment on a snafu w/ a contract.
I have issue if you willfully run a CC debt or live on student loans and I should have to bail those people out. Cancer, I’m in we can help, you spent 180k on a shit degree it took you 6 years to get, nope. But gucci on a CC, nope.
And I grew up on welfare when my dad left and refused to pay child support (oh the 80’s no enforcement). I’m well familiar of the taste of government cheese and Army PX peanut butter.
It absolutely was luck. You didn’t get hit by a car driven by a driver with no insurance. You didn’t get a rare form of cancer which your own insurance won’t cover. You didn’t get suddenly laid off and have to move because there are no other prospects in your area with good enough pay. All of that is luck, not skill. All of it can wipe someone out financially.
Driver w/ no insurance. Bury them under the jail.
I am very sorry about the cancer, thats something I can’t comment on as I have no idea whats that like to deal with.
As for the move well I don’t have enough info on the where to where and I wouldnt cause pssible doxxing. reddit was the worst of that.
“I don’t know what it’s like to deal with cancer, but it definitely isn’t luck that I succeeded without getting cancer and ruining my finances.”
Sure, pal.
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Classic Republican with zero empathy or ability to understand anyone else’s life experience outside of their own privilege. Slaves benefited from being owned, right? STFU.
100% this. The astounding lack of empathy here is sad.
The lack of empathy AND the concept of the zero sum game. They all think someone has to lose for someone else to gain. I don’t think their brains have the ability to appreciate the concept of a rising tide lifts all boats. That just goes in the shit bucket of “socialism”.
Lots of people of people have called you out on how much luck you’ve had on not getting majorly sick or anything else that might have stopped you from making money.
But you’re also very privileged, or more accurately are in a position that you can’t expect from everyone, because you were free to move cities for your career. Some people just don’t have that comfort. They rely on family or friends to make them through the day. They might have kids, they might need the mental support, whatever.
Even if they could theoretically make it without the financial, practical, or emotional support, you can’t expect people to give that up just for their career.
I’m from Europe and lived in a country with a much higher pay than my home country. After 2 years I moved back because I just was not happy without being close to my family and friends. I would have been much better off financially if I stayed there, even if just for a few years longer, but it was just not a sacrifice I was willing to make.
Hard to take anything you say seriously as your party considers my vote and the constitution worthless. Seriously, anyone still in the Republican Party today can go fuck themselves.
Wut?
It is now very clear that Jan 6 was an attempt to discard my vote and 90 million other Democratic votes to instill an illegitimate president. Anyone still remaining a Republican must find this treasonous behavior acceptable. Why would I ever respect the opinion of someone who feels their singular opinion is more important than anyone else, including the Constitution?
We’re not saddling bad choices on anyone. We waste so many tax dollars on corporate bailouts while allowing corporations massive tax breaks and we still don’t have the money to provide food and shelter to the vulnerable of our society? Somehow we never have money for helping individuals, but the second a corporation needs anything the money is magically there. We’re the wealthiest country on Earth by a fucking mile and we somehow cannot afford to not let people die in the street because they got dealt a fucked up hand in life, or had unavoidable medical debt, or didn’t have anyone to teach them finances because our education system sure as fuck didnt. Letting people die in poverty isn’t the morally right just because they didn’t have the opportunities or luck you did.
Do you have any idea how many people have 0 debt or kids and still can’t even afford to save for retirement because wages are ass and living is expensive, let alone at 19? I grew up surrounded by poverty, and I’ve seen first hand how inescapable it is. I’m extremely lucky in that I had my family to support me through college and allow me to make more money than I can even fathom at 23.
I’m making all the right choices currently. I’m maxing out retirement, saving for my future, and paying 35% of my income in taxes to the government to just give to a few billionaires so they can become richer instead of helping those who actually need it. Just because I’ve got mine doesn’t mean I’m gonna say fuck you to everyone else. I want to help people who are less fortunate, not pull the ladder up behind me.
Our country is a fucking joke for the poor and vulnerable of our society, and we should be doing so much better, but we aren’t because some dickwad needs another billion dollars.
Well lets start by cutting of funding to Ukraine, Israel, and every other country. Close all the foreign military bases and we could realistically take care of all these people in need. Won’t happen but its a nice thought…
Let the world take care of itself, I’m sick and tired of us (The USA) being the “World Police”
And fuck the bailouts, that pisses me off more than anything. Let them fail.
Foreign aid is less than 1% of the US budget.
What difference would that make?
Does that include the opportunity cost when the world goes to hell if we don’t invest in that foreign aid? We’re not always good investors in the future, stability, and human rights of the world but I have to believe our foreign aid is a net positive (and we really need to be doing a lot more of it, especially in forward looking areas like renewable energy)
Does that include the costs of our foreign bases outside the US?
You said foreign aid first. You even mentioned specific countries. Or did you forget that?
Everything becomes a moving target, adjusted to fit his political chicanery.
Stop whining over helping your fellow human beings … because the hell you were able to set yourself up financially without any help from anyone at anytime in your life.
Look at this guy pretending to believe that most people aren’t paid too little to save for retirement in the first place.
Things have changed considerably since you were 19.
I’m younger than you but not by a lot. When I was 19 I moved in to a 1 bedroom apartment for (inflation adjusted) $700/month. That exact same apartment now rents for $1445/month.
A couple of years later I bought 1 acre of land and put an 1800 sq foot home on it for (inflation adjusted) $275k. That exact same house was sold in 2021 for $433k.
I’m choosing housing here because it’s easy, but I could just as easily pick college, general cost of living, etc…
My point being that you (and I) were set up a lot better to save for the future than the 19 year olds of today.
[Edit] guess I went on a bit of a sidetrack. I’m not sure you were even talking about today’s 19 year olds…
Damn, nothing more Republican than listing “guns” as an investment
guns
Is that a collectibles portion of your portfolio or just for some end times defensive murderin so you dont have to share your survivalist beans?
95% collection, lots of WWI WWII rifles and pistols
Ever read A Christmas Carol by any chance?
Ghilarducci said. “What is surprising is that all the effort of the government and the changes we had in the last 40 years has not helped middle-income workers.”
I dont find that surprising at all
I’m deeply curious what “effort” they are talking about. The article was quite clear that the US just have continued, and improved upon, its long standing tradition of “fuck you I got mine”.
- Moving over the responsibility for pensions on the individual.
- Increasing the wage gap, and I bet when they say high earners that value is skewed but and low number of very high earners.
- Tax rules that only help the ones who already are rich.
While we generally lost value in the switch from pensions to 401k/IRA, there’s a huge benefit to ownership.
— A pension is owned by your employer. If something happens to them, your pension may be gone. You don’t get anything if you leave a company before you’re vested, and then you start a vesting period over with nothing
— 401k/IRA is owned by you. You take it with you when you change companies. They can’t weasel out of it because the money is yours immediately. You keep your money regardless of whether you spend your career at one employer or many
It is a false take. More people are helped than before. Sure pensions are down, but 401k plans are far more common.
That’s a stunning reversal for millions of households during a 12-year period that included economic growth and huge stock gains following the end of the Great Recession.
Wow, it’s almost as if most people don’t get any gains from the stock market booming… /s
For most people a strong stock market only mean, in best case, that they don’t lose their jobs. It doesn’t have any real positive effect on their wages. When it goes well for companies we’re told to not ask for too high salary due to inflation. In hard times were told not to ask for too much to save our jobs.
The only time we get an increase in salaries is when there’s either a lack of skilled workers or when we create an artificial lack of skilled workers through unions and strikes.
by design. NOW GET BACK TO WORK!
My portfolio has yet to recover from 2021.
Some of my family members are going through this right now, with one being 74 and not having a penny saved. He still works manual labor jobs at the moment, but I doubt it can continue for much longer due to his health declining. But his situation has more to do with the fact he spent and spent throughout his life with the idea that his children were going to take care of him in his elder years.
This in turn didn’t work out because his children don’t want to take care of him. It would put such a big financial burden on them they wouldn’t be able to take care of their own families.
Its requiring the app to read the article
A growing number of Americans face the prospect of retiring without a penny in savings.
Only 1 in 10 low-income workers between the ages of 51 and 64 had any funds put away for retirement in 2019, compared with 1 in 5 in 2007 prior to the Great Recession, according to a recent analysis by the U.S. Government Accountability Office. Those workers have median earnings of about $19,000 annually, noted the study, which examined data from the Federal Reserve’s Survey of Consumer Finances and other sources.
That’s a stunning reversal for millions of households during a 12-year period that included economic growth and huge stock gains following the end of the Great Recession. And while poor workers lost ground, high-income Americans — who earn about $282,000 per year — enjoyed a surge in their median retirement assets, which almost doubled to $605,000 during the same period, the GAO found.
The widening retirement gap among Americans is similar even when examining a longer time period, said Teresa Ghilarducci, a noted retirement expert and professor of economics at The New School for Social Research in New York. She’s working on new research that examines older workers’ retirement assets going back to 1992, when 401(k) plans, known as defined contribution plans, were replacing traditional pensions, or defined benefit plans, as Americans’ primary retirement vehicle.
Only the top 10% of older workers by income have increased their retirement assets since 1992, while the bottom 90% “got no significant increase,” she told CBS MoneyWatch.
“What is depressing about [the GAO’s] work and my own work is that we’re looking at people right about to retire,” she said. “They’ve lived their whole lives, their working careers, under this new system of voluntary defined contribution plans, a decrease in defined benefit plans and a decrease in Social Security benefits — and this is the result.”
More Americans are likely to enter their senior years living in poverty because of these trends, Ghilarducci predicted. She noted that financial hardship is already rising among senior citizens, who were the only age group to see an increase in poverty rates in the most recent U.S. Census data.
Benefits go to the top
The decline in retirement readiness among millions of low-income Americans comes down to a few factors, including widening income inequality and a tax system that provides more savings benefits to the rich, according to the GAO and Ghilarducci.
Retirement savings “come from earnings,” Ghilarducci noted. “They don’t come from inheritances, they don’t come from gifts — they come mainly from earnings, so when you have an earnings growth gap you’re going to have a retirement asset accumulation gap.”
From 1970 to 2018, median income for top-earning households rose 64%, while low- and middle-income people saw their earnings increased 43% and 49%, respectively, over the same time period, according to Pew Research Center. As a result, wealthier Americans now bring in almost half of the nation’s aggregate income, up from 29% in 1970; at the same time, middle- and lower-income households have seen their slice of the pie diminish.
Many low-wage workers lack access to employer-sponsored retirement plans like 401(k)s, and pensions have almost disappeared from private industry, with only 15% of private-sector employees having access to them, according to the Labor Department.
The tax system also rewards higher-income employees for saving for retirement thanks to benefits such as tax-deductible retirement contributions, while low-income workers don’t receive the same incentives, the GAO noted. The top-earning households receive about 60% of the tax benefits from retirement accounts, while the lowest-income Americans get 5%, according to the agency.
“A high income worker can get up to $7,000 in savings on their taxes from having saved the maximum, and low-income workers who save the maximum get nothing,” Ghilarducci noted.
Middle-class also going backward
The middle-class isn’t doing much better than low-income workers, the GAO report also found. While the share of middle-income households with retirement accounts didn’t change much from 2007 to 2019 — hovering at about 60% — the median account balance for this group has sunk from $86,800 in 2007 to $64,300 in 2019, according to the analysis.
“[W]ealthy households have nine times more saved than the average middle-class household, and just 10% of the lowest-income families have anything saved at all,” Senator Sheldon Whitehouse, a Democrat from Rhode Island who with Senator Bernie Sanders of Vermont commissioned the GAO report, said in a statement about the research.
Workers between 50 and 64 could face another retirement crunch in a decade, with the Social Security’s trust fund reserves slated to be depleted in 2033. If that occurs, retirees will see their Social Security payments cut by about by about 25% — a reduction that would cause hardship for many, but especially among those households that haven’t been able to save on their own for retirement.
The GAO’s findings underscore the need to shore up Social Security and make changes to the retirement system to more Americans save, Whitehouse and Sanders said in their statement.
“Retirement has always been fragile for low-income workers,” Ghilarducci said. “What is surprising is that all the effort of the government and the changes we had in the last 40 years has not helped middle-income workers.”
I found out last year my parents have no pension or savings. They are both over 60. It really stressed me out but my siblings seemed to have no issues. I was so glad that my mum pulled me aside a month later to tell me she had secrets saving stashed for them but it’s bizarre that up until then I heard no complaints from anyone else in my family.
The GAO’s findings underscore the need to shore up Social Security and make changes to the retirement system to more Americans save, Whitehouse and Sanders said in their statement.
That could be one interpretation.
Alternately, we could raise the Medicare entitlement age by… 5, maybe 10 years, only for those not already enrolled (but hey, we can go retroactive too, why not). After 10 years we can revert the age back down.
I suspect the problem (the incredibly unhealthy problem that requires everyone else to take care of their needs because they’re special and were at woodstock and you weren’t) would take care of itself.
I mean, if there’s one thing Boomers hate more than anything, it’s socialized medicine, so we’re doing them a favor, really.
People are spending more than they should. Phones are not supposed to be changed every year, not even every 5 years! People are really crazy
After your first sentence I thought you were going to talk about groceries, housing, transportation, and healthcare being more expensive than ever
Well, they are, it is not one or the other.
