1y ago

About 1 in 4 US adults 50 and older who aren't yet retired expect to never retire, AARP study finds

abcnews.go.com

About one-quarter of U.S. adults age 50 and older who are not yet retired say they expect to never retire and 70% are concerned about prices rising faster than their income, an AARP survey finds.

About 1 in 4 have no retirement savings, according to research released Wednesday by the organization that shows how a graying America is worrying more and more about how to make ends meet even as economists and policymakers say the U.S. economy has all but achieved a soft landing after two years of record inflation.

Everyday expenses and housing costs, including rent and mortgage payments, are the biggest reasons why people are unable to save for retirement.

85 comments

I won't be retiring. Not particularly good with money, plus a divorce, I'm 60, and have about 200K in retirement. It's my own fault, I could have been far smarter. Now was always far more important than then.
- It’s my own fault, I could have been far smarter.
  No. No it isn't. It's the country's fault for not giving you enough to retire on even though you didn't make the best financial decisions over the years. People should not be punished in their old age because they didn't follow all the right rules of capitalism (which keep changing anyway).
  It might be your fault that you're not as comfortable or as well-off as you would like to be, but it is not your fault that you can't retire.
  
  Remember that time they moved retirement to 67 in 2015?
  I don't because I was too busy working 50 hrs a week @$14-19$/hr paycheck to paycheck.
  And now I have fibromyalgia at 38 and hope I die at 50.
  Thanks America.
  
  It doesn't even matter if they did follow the right rules. Plenty of people did are still losing now because the rules have rapidly changed over the last 10-20 years, especially since the pandemic with inflation exploding out of control. Property taxes, insurance, medical costs, housing supplies, food are all skyrocketing. The SSA did up the Social Security payout slightly, but that doesn't help 401k/IRA/pension output one bit.
  It also points out another flaw in America. Why does every individual have to be a doctor, tax man, investor, banker? Rather than having people compartmentalized in skill-sets and enabling each other, we're expected to know 100% of how many jobs work. It's a waste of collective brain power, and I really believe it stifles creativity and innovation as we all try to just survive. Even with all this knowledge, if one is in the retirement phase when a 2020-2024 happens, one can't really go back in time to correct for that.
  
  Blaming anyone but yourself is the new hotness around here it seems. Not planning for the future is somehow now your fault but the fault of the country? Sounds a bit entitled to me
- I'm 60, and have about 200K in retirement
  Sadly, I think that puts you way ahead of most Americans.
  
  Your guess is a bit off, average 401k for a 60 year old is north of 400k.
  https://finance.yahoo.com/news/average-american-much-retirement-savings-141907331.html
I think that people don’t really understand what it means when they claim they have no plans to retire. My in-laws are always saying things like “I’ll work until I die” while they take out debt to go on vacations but they recently brought up that we should make sure to get an extra bedroom for them if/when we buy a house. The disconnect is infuriating.
- There are reason for them asking about an extra bedroom. And that is at some point, something will happen and they can no longer work at anything. For example, as much as I would still like to do something to do, I can no longer physically work. Even though I can still do things, ain't no one going to hire me to even be a greeter at Walmart.....
  Nor do people want to survive and die in a nursing home. It's not a good place to die. We recently went through this 4 years ago with my Wife's Father. Fortunately, we have/had the skills to care for someone at end of life. And we gave up our lives to do so. And he was able to die peacefully at home.
  Whether or not you choose to do something similar is completely up to you and your family.
Seems low.
- Doesn't mean they will, just that 3/4s think they will
  
  So you're saying a good 50% of Americans have no idea how they could possibly retire, they just think they will anyway.
I really think that some time should be given to personal finance in school curriculum.
When I went through, we learned to write a check and balance a checkbook. That was it.
- Yeah, schools should be teaching more about financial literacy, but it's impossible to teach kids about good habits for retirement 40+ years down the road when the laws that govern their retirement haven't been written yet.
  Heck, I'm old enough that my first job out of college actually had a pension plan. I never expected to work long enough there to take advantage of it, though. And I was correct -- even if I didn't leave when I did, the place eventually went bankrupt. Any advice they would have given me in high school about retirement savings would be obsolete now.
  The only advice that is eternal is to save money, and live below your means. That seems difficult these days, though, especially for young kids just starting out.
  
  My wife has a pension through her employer, it is going to be her last employer until retirement. Hey at least the golden handcuffs are golden.
- My oldest did have to take a personal finance class in high school (last year) and did cover things like retirement saving and different methods of. I think some places are trying.
  Edit: I, on the other hand, had your experience.
  
  Doesn't matter how many classes you take when there's multiple Financial collapses in your lifetime
- I think we need to bring back pensions. There is plenty of money around.
  
  I guess I am one of the lucky ones. I will be retiring next year with both a pension and social security. I work in county government and that was one of the perks.
  
  It depends on who is running them. A lot of them aren't being run well and the federal insurance to protect it is running out of money.
  
  Definitely not. While the current situation doesn’t work, neither did pensions. You had to work at one job your whole life, and then were subject to the business decisions of all the sociopathic CEOs throughout your career, as well as whether the corp even survived. I don’t think small companies even had an option. There were some people where this all came together but way too few.
  Current IRA and 401k plans have one HUGE benefit: the money is yours. It doesn’t matter whether you change jobs, work for big or small, or the corp goes out of business, the money is yours.
  I’m pretty sure more people have some retirement savings now than they did in the days of pensions. Let’s figure out how to turn that into most people having enough savings
- My high school had a mandatory senior class that taught things like budgeting, investing, filing (very simple) taxes, and balancing a check book. It also required you to do some form of community service. The investing portion was bad as it was basically stock picking with fun money.
  It’s hard to say how much the class impacted me as I don’t have a control, and I then proceeded through four years of college not really exercising those skills. I suspect it’s not a silver bullet, but still a positive inclusion in the curriculum.
  
  These days I'm sure we would see students saying they went SPY 0DTE YOLO because of WSB's popularity
- Managing your finances can only do so much when you barely bring in enough to cover rent.
  
  It definitely isn't the case that a quarter of the country can't afford to save anything though their whole working life.
- Definitely. I’m a branch manager and we’re putting together a financial training class for our employees because everyone is so bad at budgeting (like non existent to I don’t understand percentages … this is common core at work). School system has completely failed at this and many parents have as well.
- I’m not sure it will help in this scenario. This is more of an instant gratification thing. Whether someone has a bit extra or not, you’re asking them to do without, on the hope that it will be more useful in half a century. This is completely against human nature.
Only 1 in 4? 🤔 I've NEVER been under the illusion I would retire.
- Are you over 50?
  
  Yup!
I've got literal $0 for retirement and my bank account is in the red. It's not going to be too good when I'm old.
I would like to see a long term study on how people feel about it because I understand people in their 20s feel like it's hopeless but it would be nice to know how their opinion evolves as they move through their career.
- My late 20s saw the delcine in health of my grandparents who I lived with. Seeing how elder care goes Im more frightened now than ever before. I have more to my name than ever before but seeing how it took a loud fight from the whole family to get the care centers just to take basic care of an elder, knowing I don't have a spouse and dont plan on having kids, Im terrfied I'm going to die neglected unbathed in the corner of some place that may as well be a mental institution.
  The 'lonelines crisis' were seeing now is going to lead to many people who become disabled by aging have no family or other support structures to lean on and I wouldn't be surprised to see sick elderly people dying on the streets in mass in a few decades time.
  Tldr: once you're old enough to start forgetting things, no amount of money can protect you from neglect. You need family to go to bat for you and less and less people are making families. I didn't used to believe in human euthanasia but now Im praying its legal by the time I get that old.
I am hoping they have Carousel when I turn 70.
- Renew! Renew!
At 40 and with $8k in my retirement fund (cashed it out on a business venture right before COVID...live and learn) I'm anticipating to do this as well.
Ah, life.
- You’ve got time. Time is your biggest weapon. Start putting aside what you can and let time work for you
"...even as economists and policymakers say the U.S. economy has all but achieved a soft landing after two years of record inflation."
disconnected much?
- Perhaps the inflation is under control, but the constant price increases certainly aren't no matter what they say
  
  Prices only drop of deflation.
  Economists only mean prices have increased less this last year for the selection of things they looked at.
  They say deflation is terrible, but there are still Japanese in Japan. (Japan has had decades of deflation.)
I've got retirement funds scattered across a half-dozen different companies and honestly I have no idea how to find it. Probably doesn't amount to more than $150k anyway. Could be half that - I really have no way of knowing. I was planning on never retiring, but the job market says otherwise. I might already be retired. Six weeks into my job search with 25 years of experience and not even an interview much less an offer. It hasn't been this bad since 2010.
- That money is yours no matter how far it is scattered. Try to get in contact with those companies and check in on the accounts. You are allowed to move those funds into a single rollover IRA account with no tax hit if they send the check to the Rollover IRA provider directly.
  You might be surprised at what you have. You might remember putting in $150k but it's possible it has grown quite a bit since then.
  
  You might be surprised at what you have. You might remember putting in $150k but it’s possible it has grown quite a bit since then.
  It's also possible something dumb might have happened, like it ending up in a cash-equivalent sweep account or something, which only makes it more urgent that he get it all rolled over into an IRA that's set up and paid attention to properly.
- Wow, you sound pretty nonchalant about losing $150K!
  
  I mean it's somewhere. I don't know what companies hold it but I'm sure there are records somewhere. I probably have to dig through emails up to a decade back - assuming I used personal emails instead of work emails. It really doesn't matter for another nearly twenty years. I'm sure it'll turn up.
  I sort of have to not think about it to avoid obsessing over it. I'm sure I'm not the first person to not know what institutions hold their 401Ks. There a system for figuring it out.
Well I’ll retire (sorta). I’ll just get another job making 50% what I was making and earning 75% of my original salary through retirement. I’ll work till I’m dead but at least I’ll make more money for a bit … until inflation eats it.
- My dad did this for a while. Had a nice white collar job my entire childhood. He loved boating and owned one for 40+ years. A year or so after he retired from that he got a part time job as a cashier at a marine supply store. He loved the interactions with other boaters. He did that for probably 10 years before retiring fully.
  
  I'm in MI and I'm pretty sure half the staff of any hardware store are retired Big 3 engineers. I've talked with them before, and most of them are more than comfortable financially, but just like having a routine, getting out of the house, and the employee discounts.
That's probably low.
I have had conversations with evangelicals who believe retiring is morally wrong, based entirely on this one passage:
For even when we were with you, we gave you this command: Anyone unwilling to work should not eat. 2 Thessalonians 3:10
I can't begin to wrap my head around this.
I'm 40 and I will work until the day I die.
I just hope that will be in my 60's rather than my 80's...
- Same but I think I’ll die the day after my mum does.
  That way I only need to survive as long as she does.
Same here in EU TBH
- Yep that's my experience too. That said, we were a bunch of hedonistic arseholes in the 90s so it's no surprise we're irresponsible 😅
Yeah, I took some years off to raise my kids, went to college while they were little, and overall I think it paid off but not to the point I plan to retire on purpose. Always saved what I could because employer matched, but some years that was $50 a month. Now finally at mid 50s with a husband who actually works (but had the same trajectory as a functionally single parent then actually single parent). We are sorta raking it in now but paying off the past still.
It's not a terrible feeling, honestly, if doing again I might actually have chosen more years on the front end with the little kids, rather than time off when old. When I'm old, why not work? I have more time each year as some of the kids move out, once they are all grown maybe I will have enough time to work without feeling so rushed.
Of course the problem with this is that most people don't choose to retire, it's forced on them. Even as a clear minded fit and in shape 50 something I am one medical event or layoff away from "retirement", right? That is what sucks.
We all be on that cruise

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