Traditionally, retiring entails leaving the workforce permanently. However, experts found that the very definition of retirement is also changing between generations.
About 41% of Gen Z and 44% of millennials — those who are currently between 27 and 42 years old — are significantly more likely to want to do some form of paid work during retirement.
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This increasing preference for a lifelong income, could perhaps make the act of “retiring” obsolete.
Although younger workers don’t intend to stop working, there is still an effort to beef up their retirement savings.
It’s ok! Don’t ever retire! Just work until you die, preferably not at work, where we’d have to deal with the removal of your corpse.
Maybe, just maybe, Gen-Z is not saving as much for the future because (1) they have less money to save due to inflation, and (2) they don’t foresee a viable future. These reasons can also explain the parenthood rate dropping lately.
Main reason I never had kids was I was screwed over by just about everything financially. Student loans, housing/“financial crisis”, medical system, deck stacked against self-employment, predatory credit cards. Great job, USA. Then the same cunts who did that bemoan low birth rates and cry about immigrants.
There are TOO MANY procedures/fees/tax/unsafe ways to lose everything you have or be in a position where you will never be able to live without constantly being demanded to provide more work/cash/time.
Agreed, life wasn’t this shakey in the past. Depression era: certainly, but it was caused by the same BS we are dealing with now. For example, it’s amazing that medical bills are a leading cause of bankruptcy and thus degradation of quality of life in the US, and there’s little will among politicians or citizens to do much about it. You could save up enough money to retire, even have good insurance, and then be screwed because you or any member of your family had a severe illness or accident, and lose everything.
Despite all that, things are overall better than previous generations. There is and always has been bad news. Life has always been a constant string of disasters, yet when you pause for a moment to reflect you realize that despite the bad news, overall it wasn’t that bad.
In many countries, yes. People in India and China for instance are on average more likely to not be in severe poverty and subsistence vs 40 years ago, though western-style modernization has caused it’s own problems. However most people are less well off in the US than we were in the 50s-90s. Reagan economics seems to have been ‘wait, why are we letting the middle class exist? We could just keep all their money’. Seriously though i was completely fucked over by what I mentioned and it’s only based on luck that I’m not homeless.
I saw a report that someone my age will need $3m to retire at 65. The average total income from 22-65 for people my age is around $1.4m. So I guess we never get to retire.
I saw a report that someone my age will need $3m to retire at 65. The average total income from 22-65 for people my age is around $1.4m. So I guess we never get to retire.
Compound interest might get you to that goal, maybe, if you start saving now.
The “start saving now” part is the bit that fucks most people.
When over half of Americans live paycheck-to-paycheck, saving is not even a possibility.
If inflation is as high as it currently is compared to the collected interest it does not matter how much compounding is done, the buying power of that savings will flatline. Add to this equation the need to eat and live now, the amount most put away is minimal and when something comes up even those meager savings are wiped out.
The math in most households is not working out. Debt is becoming peoples rainy day fund, people are unable to even pay their property taxes with the now insufficient government minimum pensions (and a lot of people don’t think these pensions will even be there when they are eligible). This leaves people selling things (reverse mortgage, downsizing, moving to lower COL areas, etc) taking on debt to live now and generally giving up.
If you put away $50 a week for 10 years you end up with (based on a generous average 2% rate) $28,554.34. This seems like a good amount but keep in mind that you put $26,000 into this. That $2554.24 does not beat the loss of buying power over 10 years. You need much closer or better returns vs inflation for this to work in your favour. I was once told that you would be better off buying some raw metal like lead, or copper as the return on simple materials at least keeps up with costs.
There is no magic number you need. $3m will get you some lifestyle. You could retire at 40 with only $300k if you want to live the lifestyle that means (move to very low cost of living area where you walk to groceries). And there is a good chance social security will continue to provide a minimal income once you reach whatever age.
Historically no young generation has saved a lot. It is when you get older you realize how much it matters.
People who grew up in the Great Depression did. Silent generation remembers that…