MOST BOOMERS ARE UP SH*T’S CREEK WITHOUT A PADDLE

The average retirement balance of all workers is $77,000. The median is much lower, as the highly paid employees have large balances. This is pitiful enough, but looking at the balances for 55 to 64 year olds is frightening. The chart below captures a future of cat food and Oodles of Noodles for millions of Boomers. No wonder they will never vote to reduce entitlements. There really is no excuse for this pitiful level of savings at their age. A 60 year old was born in 1953. They turned 27 years old in 1980 at the outset of a 20 year bull market. Anyone who contributed regularly to a 401k from 1980 until today should have hundreds of thousands accumulated. Instead you have 60% of all 55 to 64 year olds with less than $72,000 of retirement savings.

These people have a life expectancy of 20 years and many will only get $15,000 to $20,000 per year from Social Security, with increases that will be less than the true inflation rate. Meanwhile, their real estate taxes, food costs, energy costs, and health care costs go up by 5% per year or more. They can earn about $600 of interest per year on a $120,000 retirement account balance. They can’t expect more than 3% real annual stock market gains over the next ten years, with a couple of plunges mixed in for good measure.

I hope Boomers weren’t counting on the idyllic retirement they see on those Wall Street banker commercials. The only ones having an idyllic retirement are the bankers.

 

MY CAT SEEMS TO LIKE IT. MAYBE BOOMERS WILL LIKE IT TOO

 

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Gayle
Gayle

Kill Bill

I beg to differ. It is IMmoral.

Pirate Jo
Pirate Jo

Maddie’s Mom, I love you and your dog Maddie.

But. I just have to say something about this. (And there are other comments in this thread too, along the same line!) You say:

“Another piece of the Boomer conundrum is that many (I suspect) are currently or have at some point provided financial support of some kind to their ADULT children. I really cannot think of any Boomers I know that haven’t.”

And then among the “financial support” listed, include:

I’m talking everything from
providing a place to live and
paying their utilities while
helping raise their grandchildren (for as many as 12 years and still counting in one instance), to paying for divorces,
private school for grandchildren,
rent,
paying off student loans,
real estate purchases, and
other examples too numerous to mention.

So.

Damn.

Well, this will get me some thumbs down, but I gotta say it. If you are going to be a SHITTY PARENT, and TOTALLY FAIL in the task of raising competent, rational, self-sustaining adults who make wise decisions and who are going to EVER be in any way capable of making any fucking difference when it comes to “remembering the help their Boomer parents gave them,” well, fuck! WHAT help?

What, someone’s DNA is just so fucking special that they need to download more of it on the planet, and then fail to take care of themselves and their kid, and then double-fail at teaching their kid to take care of himself? And that’s supposed to make me feel SORRY for them?

Dear God, it makes me want to go back in time and put birth control in the fucking water. How totally stupid. Tell me something I didn’t already know. A bunch of dimwits, who couldn’t find their asses with both hands, and who should never have reproduced in the first place, created a bunch more of the same, and it’s a big damn burden on everyone. Oh, but it’s not just the Boomers who suck, their kids suck, too! Well no shit!

anotherjuan
anotherjuan

i got 2 thumbs down possibly for expressing a neanderthal point of view concerning women, i tried not to make it about women, it could also mean a gay partner. someone has to be the homemaker otherwise i would have to ask, has the feminist movement doomed us to fast food and a solitary existence? i am speaking reality, i did not say what if? it’s the truth. this site is full of peope who rave at the merest hint of hipocracy. having a lot of debt then turning to uncle sam for support is one pet grind at TBP. well it’s also hipocritical to decry the sorry state of national health and not point out that no one cooks at home and if they do, the cooking is done by people who don’t know how to cook or don’t try.
as for looking outside of the u.s. for a woman who can cook and keep house, i’ve seen it done. it’s not for nothing that guess who sang, american woman stay away from me

Kill Bill
Kill Bill

Touche Gayle B= ]

Maddie's Mom
Maddie's Mom

@PJ,

Nope. Don’t feel sorry for them. I don’t.

I was really just making an observation.

It will be very “interesting” to see how it all plays out.

Anonymous
Anonymous

Hello, excuseme is this the same website I read all the time that tells me that the whole system is a powderkeg of mind numbing debt that will blow up in our faces. Dear Admin please consult your own Baloney Curve. 401K’s are what a time bomb waiting to implode? I am inclined to cash it in with full federal tax penalty, before the Baloney Curve makes it’s final deep penetration.

dd
dd

The thumbs down buttons are making thumbs up….

IndenturedServant

beast rudolfo says:

“. . .just found out i am a boomer. i always thought a boomer was a nuclear ballistic missile submarine.”

Around here, a NBMS is the GOOD kind of boomer! The other kind, not so much.
I_S

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