CNN: "Retirement Scare"

[tinktink]

It seems to be true from what I seen in the world today , people simply don't save like their grandmothers and great grandmothers did.

[UnknownXV]

Even at a decent pay level, $25,000 is essentially 1,000 hours worth of work that you did, but put aside the reward for all of that labor. That's a lot. For retirement, it's no where near enough, but let's not lose perspective. To an established business owner, 25k is nothing. To a worker, even middle class, that's no small feat to save. Especially if you dislike your job, or got a paycut, or lost hours, etc.. I'm 22, but I've had to sacrifice for a bit over a year to stock away 6k, by living in a crappy place with roommates, never going out, and barely eating at home.

Coupling that with an increase to prices all over the place and I can see it being close to that number. Of course I'd take it with a grain of salt. I'm sure they included a lot of people under 30 in their calculations.

[jIM_Ohio]

Statistics are used in journalism to scare people...

like 70% of people will end up in a nursing home, 1 of 3 will have cancer or whatever...

Most people will not hit 100k-200k in savings until the kids are grown, out of the house, and savings becomes a focus from ages 55-70.

We also know from the IRS that 75% of tax payers make under 40k per year, this implies that SS will replace most of their income at retirement anyway.

[UnknownXV]

Yep. We talked about that a while back. Even in this study, 60% had less than 25K saved. 30% had less than $1,000 saved. So 1 in every 3 people has less than $1,000 to their name. It is pretty scary. I don't care how old you are or how much you earn - you should have savings. My daughter is 16 and has a lot more than $1,000 in savings. There's no excuse for a gainfully employed adult not to have it.

To be fair here, $1,000 to us is nothing... but to someone working minimum wage? It's different. To someone who can't rely on their parents, isn't expecting inheritance, etc... it really is a different ball game entirely. It's doable, but very hard for some.

Sometimes people don't want to sacrifice luxuries. But sometimes, there really is nothing left to cut besides essential food.