Retirement Crisis Coming : Millions Haven't Prepared

Retirement nightmare becomes reality for millions closing in on the good life - or maybe not. As the saying goes, kinda,  'if you live fast, lover hard, you will die young', but that not likely for the most of us, so the hard facts are so many among us will live a long time but unfortunately so many among us never took the future seriously.

For those that took the easy way out and didn't plan for the after years, after work years, spent most everything they earned for immediate gratification, the future will be one of hand to mouth survival as what the government has promised to provide for you is a fantasy of politicians looking for votes. Sociality Security is a joke - it can't begin to provide for what you will need to cover just expenses let along discretionary spending.

 The reality is our government, our country is broke, we have no money other then what others will loan us or we print out of thin air. We are 18 $trillion in debt!

So to all those that are about to retire or thinking abut retirement, I sincerely hope you took upon yourself when you were first starting out to prepare for the years where you will be the boss, and have to take full responsibility for what ever happens to you in your new life. Blaming other for your failures will be a thing of the past.

Looming Retirement Crisis
Source: Brett Arends, "Our Next Big Crisis Will Be a Retirement Crisis," MarketWatch, March 3, 2014.
March 11, 2014

The United States could be facing a retirement crisis similar to the housing market crisis, says MarketWatch.

Anyone can look at the state of retirement today -- tens of millions of baby boomers retiring combined with increasing longevity, too little savings and a threadbare public safety net -- and see that it is in trouble, yet Americans seem intent on ignoring it and hoping for the best.

Three new reports paint a frightening picture for the future.

• An analysis by Natixis, a money management firm, looked at a broad array of factors (from economic factors to health care) and found that the United States ranked 19th in the world for retirees, behind most other leading developed nations.
• The Boston College Center for Retirement Research updated its "National Retirement Risk Index," which seeks to assess how many people can expect to be financially comfortable in retirement. Half of the United States, according to the index, risks being unable to maintain their current standards of living in retirement.
• The Employee Benefits Research Institute (EBRI) recently found that 43 percent of baby boomers and those in Generation X are at risk of running out of money in retirement. For those in the poorest 25 percent, that figure rises to 83 percent. Moreover, EBRI used the most positive financial scenarios to calculate these figures. And an earlier survey by the institute found that 66 percent of American workers had saved less than $50,000 for retirement, while 28 percent had saved less than $1,000.

Natixis CEO John Hailer said of the issue, "Individuals need to be concerned about their own retirement needs, and not just be dependent on government and corporations." He noted that a full 89 percent of those surveyed told Natixis researchers that they were on track to reach their retirement goals, despite the fact that 54 percent of them did not even have a retirement plan, and 45 percent could not even articulate what those retirement goals might be.