Workers not saving enough for retirement (new rpt from non-profit)

[Rose Siding]

For many American workers, the road to retirement may be paved with good intentions -- but not enough savings.

While the share of workers who say they have money set aside for retirement ticked up slightly this year to 69 percent, most have saved very little, the Employee Benefits Research Institute reported yesterday.

The nonprofit research institute's annual gathering of data on pensions and other worker benefits noted that while the number of workers with retirement savings rose from 68 percent last year, more than half -- 52 percent -- of workers surveyed estimated their total savings and investments, excluding the value of their homes, at less than $25,000. Another 13 percent said the total was between $25,000 and $49,000.

Curiously, a majority of workers -- 65 percent -- who responded to the 15th annual survey said they were very or somewhat confident that they would have enough money to live comfortably in retirement.
....
But data EBRI collected from people who already are retired cast some doubt on that prescription. Among them, it found four out of 10 retired earlier than expected, usually driven by negative factors such as ill health or changes at their companies. It warned that many current workers "are likely to find themselves subject to similar health and workplace stresses when they reach retirement age."

http://www.post-gazette.com/pg/05096/483531.stm

[Mr.Green93]

1. How can anyone save

with wages so low costs so high?

[China_cat]

6. We found out the hard way

that you can have money set aside for retirement but a lengthy time out of work coupled with a medical emergency and no health insurance equals nothing left at all. If you're lucky that is. Few hit break even. Most end up in the red...waaaaaaaaaaaaay in the red.

[Delphinus]

7. I know I can't

Plus, I am not even sure I'll ever be able to retire. I have the feeling I'll be working for a very long time.

[0007]

29. I had my nest egg robbed by medical problems and a company

that went bankrupt. No one knows what twenty, thirty, fourty years will bring. Enjoy the day and hope for the best.

[whistle]

2. Workers are not making enough for saving anything....

[iamjoy]

5. You Got It Whistle!

If some one is living pay check to pay check and deeply in debt, how the flip are they supposed to save for retirement?

[Racenut20]

3. I think "privitization" will help, don't you ? It will

let you invest all that money you don't have to pay into ssa in Halliburton stock.

[lebkuchen]

22. Las Vegas would be better

Take all retirement funds and invest in "24 black."

[Mari333]

4. I guess it depends on what kind of lifestyle you want

when you retire. I dont need much, and the only person I have to take care of is myself and my dog, so I wont need a lot to retire on.
But how can people save when they are only making 9 dollars an hour? Im working 40 hours a week and living so cheap it squeaks. I dont want to end up in a cardboard box in 20 years.

[MercutioATC]

8. It brings up valid points, but it's designed to be sensational.

Presenting a dollar amount for retirement savings without disclosing average income or age of people surveyed is completely useless.

If 50-year-olds who make over $70k/yr were surveyed, it's an issue. If the survey was mostly 20-somethings making $30k/yr, it's not. It's just another BS article with no hard data behind it (or, at least, it doesn't disclose any).

[htuttle]

9. "Workers not saving enough for rent' should be the headline

Retirement? When you're living paycheck to paycheck, you can't think about 20 years from now...

[central scrutinizer]

30. better headline

"Workers making so little they have to chose between rent or food or health insurance"

[Megahurtz]

10. With ALL of this in mind,

(including in the previous posts before mine)......

Why is this dumbass STILL pushing "private accounts"???

Nobody can afford to save any money!!!

Is this guy on glue or something?

[UdoKier]

19. They know that.

It's the same with the lack of health care for half the country. As far as they're concerned, "the other half" can drop dead as soon as their most useful wage-slave days are past them.

[havocmom]

11. And all those people who made modest investments for their retirement

only to have CEOs play fast and loose until the nest eggs were worthless... I suppose they are to blame for their own trouble too?

Jeeze, workers actual buying power has been shrinking since the middle 60s! How the hell do they feed their families, keep a roof over their heads AND save a nest egg? And what is the point of having nest eggs when corporations just steal them?

Evidently, the American worker is not providing enough $$ for brokers, banks and corporations to steal.

Any chance the geniuses might realize a middle class with $$ is what makes the economy go? Tax cuts for the top 1% with bills sent to everyone else in the form of increased state and local taxes and huge deficits DO NOT MAKE FOR A HEALTHY ECONOMY!

[Daphne08]

26. Any chance the geniuses might realize a middle class with $$ is what makes

I'm wondering if they even care. Seriously. How many of these people have money and homes outside the country?

[Liberal Veteran]

12. That's because we are too busy spending our paychecks on luxuries...

...like health care, clothing, shelter, food, transportation...etc.

[Ms_Mary]

13. It's hard to save much of anything. nt

n

[One_Life_To_Give]

14. People lost alot of 401K value since 2000

Of course people don't have alot saved. Look what happened to them just a few years ago. They havn't had much time or much of an economy to recover.

[Ganja Ninja]

15. If you exclude homes then savings are not enough.

The problem is that that's the safest and best way to save in this country.

[TahitiNut]

17. I'd say a huge number of people are counting on home equity.

In the most expensive real estate markets (Silicon Valley, NYC, DC, etc.), the 30- and 40-somethings are parlaying home equity into progressively more expensive homes as their earnings increase. In a steadily-rising housing market, the more expensive the home the greater the equity leverage they get. The problem, of course, is what happens when the housing bubble busts. The bubble got extra life from the mid-90s one-time elimination of capital gains taxation (up to $250k) on the sale of a home, but that longevity is limited.

[Wright Patman]

18. A home has only recently

been thought of as an "investment."

Ask the people around Houston what kind of investment it turned out to be during the late 1980s.

Housing has usually been considered as part of one's cost of living.

[UdoKier]

16. Headline is incorrect.

It should read:

"Workers not earning enough to save for retirement

Due almost entirely to decades of stagnant wages brought on by 25 years of GOP cheap-labor policies and tax policies that favor only the super-rich, 69 percent have been unable to save for retirement."

[catzies]

20. But if they save more, they'll stop shopping! We can't have that!

American consumerism drives 2/3 of the economy! We're TOLD to keep shopping!

:crazy: Shop?/Save? WTF are we supposed to do???

[heidler1]

23. Interest paid on savings do not keep up with the drop in dollar buying

power. The incentive to spend is pushed by the ever weakening dollar. This whole scheme of a weak dollar by keeping interest low is unsustainable. This is a way of lowering wages underhandedly. The oil producing countries are not stupid. They don't want to trade their oil for our stinking inflated dollars so the dollar cost of oil keeps going up. Greenspan knows this, but Bush wants it this way so Greenspan won't do shit about it.

The main reason that Bush hates Social Security is because of the cost of living yearly adjustment that screw up his main scheme. The minimum wage laws need cost of living yearly adjustment too.

[spinbaby]

21. Older boomers are getting ready for retirement

When we started working in the 60's, we had private pensions and social security. Employers paid for all of our health insurance. Then they looted our pensions and told us we'd need to save money in 401ks. By then, of course, our early high-leverage saving years were already over. Then the stock market went south and many of us turned out to be invested in our company's stock which turned out to be worthless. Now they're telling us there's no money for social security. Meanwhile, we're paying more and more as our share of health insurance, assuming we're lucky enough to not be fired so they can hire a younger and cheaper employee.

Yeah, we're bitter.

[Ganja Ninja]

24. Yup we've been ripped off at every turn.

The safest investment is real estate. I'm supposed to have some pension money from the UAW coming to me in 15 or 20 years but I expect the UAW's fund to go bankrupt along with the rest of America by that time. My advise for anyone that wants to save or invest is to buy Florida land. Once the baby boomer's start to move down here prices are going to go up no matter what the rest of the American economy does.

[doodadem]

25. Bitter is hardly descriptive enough

My business went in the toilet a few years ago with the recession. It's just now starting to pull back out again, but last year was the worst year ever. With nowhere else to turn, we ended up pulling a huge chunk out of my husband's 401K just to keep paying the bills. They told us at the time, they were taking out all taxes, etc. before sending.
Well, just got the bad news from our accountant. They didn't take out all the penalties, so now we owe the IRS eight grand!
These people just keep backing regular folks who are just trying to get by into a corner, where you have no choices. You look at that, and then you look at things like the state of FL passing the bill yesterday where you can legally blow anybody away, and other states contemplating such legislation. People's stress levels are out of control. I predict a huge upswing in violent crime, domestic abuse, and suicides.

[74dodgedart]

27. How do you know what enough is ?

I'm 35...How can I know what I'm going to need 30 years from now ?

I know there are rules of thumb, but no one can really know. Thats one reason that Social Security is important, it helps alleviate some of the risk.

[Lydia Leftcoast]

28. Every time I start saving, something else happens:

medical bills, car repairs, teeth repairs, broken office equipment, worn-out furniture, you name it. (And I haven't bought new full-price furniture since 1986.)

[Anakin Skywalker]

31. Some People Don't Even

have enough to pay the rent! God damn it!