Retirement Savings Crisis

The watchword this week is Retirement Planning. The click started with a blog that I received from
Squared Away, an online retirement planning tool produced by the Center for Retirement Research at Boston College, alerting readers that the National Council on Aging (NCOA) had redesigned its website and featured information on reverse mortgages. The significance of a reverse mortgage is that you need more cash to fund your retirement years or pay for an unexpected crisis. Later in the day, I was scanning Yahoo news and stumbled across a Chicago Tribune article proclaiming that the dreams of living well in retirement are dimming for Americans.

With that said, I began digging deeper, and if you are a baby boomer, especially one who has watched their mothers and fathers retire comfortably and are not Trump-like wealthy, please take out a handkerchief because you are probably not saving enough money to do the same. And not helping matters are roller-coaster stock and real estate prices, rickety 401k plans that have replaced the tried-and-true defined pension system, a shaky job market, skyrocketing health care and tuition costs, stagnant incomes, and a social security system which could go broke in 20 years.

Add up the numbers and it’s conceivable that many baby boomers will spend their later years experiencing the desperation and uncertainty of poverty and near-poverty unless they postpone retirement for as long as possible, figure out ways to get by with less, and/or find more creative housing solutions. There is also the possibility that private business and government will work together to find a solution. But don't hold your breath...it could come down to the centuries-old dilemma of who needs the most help: the young, the elderly, or everyone in between.