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
Who needs a paddle?
Most Milennials Are Up Shit’s Creek Without a BOAT.
I’m envisioning a box taxpayers can check on the 1040 to donate a dollar to the boomer fund…maybe checkers at the supermarket can ask people to donate their spare change?
Maybe a boomer religious leader can talk all of us into drinking poison kool-aid for the good of future generations. If, so, I plan to fake my death at that point and slip across the border.
Oh get real. Retirement was always a luxury. The Greatests and Silents got to have retirement, but only because they voted for a government-run pyramid scheme where they got to be the first ones in. The Boomers will break it, and for the rest of us it will be just like it was before, where you either worked until you dropped or saved for retirement yourself.
Most X’ers can’t afford to have kids and still save enough money for their own retirements, so they will have to choose one or the other.
Millennials will never be able to afford either one, and will count themselves lucky if they are even able to move out of their parents’ houses.
“…The only ones having an idyllic retirement are the bankers….”
And the unionists, at least the big government and quasi-government ones.
In Michigan nearly all “up north” vacation property is owned by the retired, or soon to be, unionists. Very few bankers in comparison.
The rest of us are being squeezed to pay for their retirements, which goes a long way to realizing why we have saved so little for our own.
Until the day I die is looking more real every year.
“Oh get real. Retirement was always a luxury. The Greatests and Silents got to have retirement, but only because they voted for a government-run pyramid scheme where they got to be the first ones in. The Boomers will break it, and for the rest of us it will be just like it was before, where you either worked until you dropped or saved for retirement yourself.”
PJ spits the truth. Retirement for the masses was always a pipe dream. The only people that will be able to retire in the future are those who can afford it (see: rich).
” will count themselves lucky if they are even able to move out of their parents’ houses.”
Most just make mommy and daddy co-sign on the mortgage for their FHA POS.
There is a term for young adults living in their parents house. It’s called extended family and it was the norm for thousands of years. Parents take care of their spawn until they become infirm, then their kids take care of them. This is the natural order and it is perfectly normal. What is unnatural is kids being kicked out of the house at 18 and their parents spending their last days in a nursing home. Prepare to return to the historic norm. It is actually, both practically and morally the superior social order.
after a few days you’ll figure out that corona is the schlitz of mexican beers. you discover find out that most mexican cities have the same hd, walmart, taco bell, macdonalds. you visit cozumel, cascadas de agua azul, veracruz, mazatlan, cancun…and you think, wtf? nonanonymous said mexicans were dirt poor.
Tulum is a place I could call home…no problem. Tankah Bay, preferably. It’s gated now, LOL..
Zara, most people procreate via intercourse, i think it was second grade i heard fish multiply by depositing their eggs in the water, their offspring are called spawn. then again, second grade was a long time ago.
I am curious as to why ” millions of boomers are doomed to cat food and oodles of noodles”. Don’t these people have families?
For a very long time the social contract followed was you take care of me when I am young and I take care of you when you are old. Remember prior to the government trying to be a family this was handled intergenerationally. People who did NOT have families were caught by a social service net normally funded by a religious organization.
Now with big money being made off the old and most of that being transferred by the government we are almost out of other peoples money. I plan on taking care of my parents and family if needed. I guess I must hope I raised my Eagle Scout kid to do the same.
Who am I kidding. The stroke or bigmac attack will kill me long before retirement.
my former son in law got deported from phoenix to nogales, we had to scramble to get him on a flight from hermosillo to cancun where his dad lives. he’s my cancun outpost for when i say hasta la vista to the land of the big box aka the big bx.
“There is a term for young adults living in their parents house. It’s called extended family and it was the norm for thousands of years.”
Right, which was why communities never got bigger than 200 or 300 people. You got so sick of those damn in-laws, it was time to leave and start a new tribe.
Thankfully, Simpson was able guarantee his retirement by a simple majority vote, but why is he being villified for simply suggesting govt spending must balance. Isnt federal spending what got us here in the first place.
Before i forget, welcome back Herr Stucky!
Then, these feckless hypocrites will demand others pay their way again – don’t got it?…..shut the fuck up and pay it – or else, and oh by the way – we need conscription to back up our petrodollar army that protects your hampster wheel from reality so……if you’ve got a couple of kids just send us one, your choice.
I like people, I hate the boomer generation.
The extended family concept is great in theory. One little problem. The children of Boomers were taught how to save by Boomers. As Stuck points out, they don’t have a paddle or a boat or a creek. Maybe they can all huddle together in a vacant McMansion foreclosure with no heat or running water.
@JIMSKI – “I am curious as to why ” millions of boomers are doomed to cat food and oodles of noodles”. Don’t these people have families?
For a very long time the social contract followed was you take care of me when I am young and I take care of you when you are old.”
Boomers seek eternal youth, both in body (viagra, botox) and in mind (mine mine mine now now now).
As a group they have been pretty damned awful parents, and unfortunately my generation is pretty shit as well (Shit in, shit out).
Boomer children do not feel any responsibility for the parents who never had any responsibility for them.
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Yep, they are screwed. 72k will not go very far in retirement – it will add a smidgen to SS, if they do not blow it, for perhaps ten years. If SS holds up. A medical issue will wipe it out in a day or so, tho.
Glad I am not one of those medians Admin talks about. Sucks to be them.
Generation Debt Turns Out to be Baby Boomers
by Roman Shteyn
Published November 20, 2012 FOXBusiness
Baby boomers are the first generation in American history to be entering retirement saddled with debt, including unpaid balances on credit cards.
The financial crisis in 2008 that sent the economy into a recession crippled many baby boomers’ retirement accounts, forcing many to stay in the workforce or significantly alter their retirement lifestyle plans. Now, the oldest of the boomer generation are receiving Social Security checks alongside notices from bill collectors.
According to the report The Plastic Safety Net by public policy organization Demos, Millennial’s (those born after 1980) average credit card debt is $2,982. For those 65+, the average credit card debt is $9,283—and that amount could continue to rise as they age since they have fallen into the trap of financing their lives on credit cards.
Admin said: “One little problem. The children of Boomers were taught how to save by Boomers.”
True and it adds insult to injury. I am a Boomer and I watched in amazement when I was in my twenties and thirties my fellow Boomers had kids, bought new cars, bought BIG houses and everything else. We had similar incomes and I knew what I was able to save and thought they are nuts pissing their money away. Their kids lived the same way as they grew up.
I always drove used clunkers and lived in small cheap houses (you could back then and not be in a crime neighborhood). Lived below my means. Heck, I lived in a mobile home just prior to retiring and moving to my “forever” home I waited on for 40 years. I still drive a 1995 Ford 150 I bought used in 2000.
I have very little sympathy for them except those who have been unfortunate due to no fault of their own.
Where I believe I was lucky and they were not is I had a libertarian father who told me from the very beginning, Social Security would not be there for me and if I ever wanted to retire I should save at least 10% of my GROSS income. When I was 12 and wanted a new bike his reply was, “Get a Job!” At the time I hated him for it because all my friends had new bikes given to them. As I found out later, it was one of those “life lessons” he taught me that helped me be successful.
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.
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.
There’s a lot of money going out of Boomer bank accounts for the benefit of their kids and grandkids.
Maybe in the future they’ll remember the help their boomer parents gave them.
Maddie’s Mom
I think Generation X is the generation you are describing. The vast majority of Boomer parents are dead. It’s people in their 40’s who are stuck supporting Boomer parents that didn’t save and Millenials without jobs.
It’s not just millenials that have to foot the boomer bill. Everyone with a job is going to see taxes skyrocket to pay for boomers; SS and Medicare are a ponzi scheme, and more suckers are needed every year to cover broke boomers as they enter “retirement”.
With boomers, anything goes and nothing matters. They’ll continue to vote for free shit alongside the FSA until it all collapses. They will cause the collapse of Medicare due to hundreds of billions spent on their obesity and related catastrophic health problems. They don’t have enough to pay for their meds and healthcare without Medicare, and Medicare is today, right now, being cut. Boomers on 12 meds will somehow have to survive on 4. So sorry, you should have taken better care of your health.
AWD – I am sure that is true re credit cards. But the “crippled by financial crisis” is bullshit. Perhaps a lot of boomers were considering drawing down their home equity. But let us look at the numbers:
Median savings is $72k. Say they lost 50% (they didnt, but let’s say they did). That is $72 k. Say they lost $100k on their house (probably didn’t do that either). So 72+72+100 = $242k (really generous numbers – I expect on average they lost maybe $50k on average). That is still insufficient to what they needed. They were already crippled.
244k, not 242, before Admin tears me a new one.
TPC wrote:
“Boomers seek eternal youth, both in body (viagra, botox) and in mind (mine mine mine now now now).”
That’s hilarious!!!
I’m 53, have never had Botox, and don’t plan to, but my 28-yo daughter has, several times. I could give you many examples of things she (and her peers) spend their money on that I have never spent money on in my lifetime. And yet they wonder why they’re always “broke”. lmao
You may step down off your soap box now.
Net wealth dropped around 25% during the “financial crisis”. So the median could be assumed to have fallen from around $95k to 72k. The median price of a home seems to have dropped around $30k. So total loss to a median boomer would be around $50k, value of home inclusive.
The biggest jolt to retirees is the low interest rates to be made on their savings plus inflation. That is a real kick in the pants.
What would have happened to the economy if the Boomers had saved appropriately, starting in 1967 (first Boomers turn 21) instead of spending extravagantly and/or loading up on debt for their whole adult lives?
Gayle – savings = investment. Investment = growth, generally speaking. If there had been a few trillion more invested rather than consumed, I suspect GDP would be perhaps 50% higher than now, with manufacturing still being viable, better infrastructure, world-leading tech, etc. that is purely a guess. I could make it a guesstimate, but am too lazy, buy looking up total debt numbers, converting that to investment, and applying an estimated return on investment. Ie take total debt, divide by number of years to accumulate said debt, add say 5 or 7 percent return per year, and calculate the compounding returns. The number would be huge.
. . .just found out i am a boomer. i always thought a boomer was a nuclear ballistic missile submarine.
b.r.
The Japanese saved out the wazoo, and the demographics of a large aging population still ate them alive. Just sayin’.
beast rudolpho
All TBP terms, unless otherwise specified, are tied to the Generational Theory of Strauss and Howe, and all definitions should be from that context. Get with the program.
Welcome to the Boomer group. We need more Boomers here because we are always in danger of getting our butts kicked by GenXer’s who are, on the whole, a bunch of pissed-off, whiny little bastards who want to blame all their problems on us.
Eddie – the Japs have a debt problem you cannot believe. Not consumer debt like in the US, tho. Their savings are gone, they just do not quite grasp that fact yet.
@MM – “You may step down off your soap box now.”
I’m sure you are aware that those here at TBP are the exceptions to the rule?
I’m a successful millenial. You are a financially responsible Boomer. The admin is a white accountant from Philly.
Everyone here is in the minority, so get off your own high horse missy, and don’t take things so personally.
TPC says he is a successful millenial. A successful millenial is one with a job,any job. He has a good one, tho. But the definition still holds.
no matter, the events since 2000 are simply what could be titled “Chronicle of a Crash Foretold”. if things had worked according to plan, boomers could have withdrawn 401k balances to pay off debt. the mortgage was secure as long as it stayed at the original purchase price, instead, boomers got squeezed and manipulated into taking the easy way out by refinancing their homes, counting on what looked like endless house appreciation some even made a habit of rolling over debt by refinancing. we got played by people who read the boomer game plan and took advantage of it.
llpoh
I know Japan has a debt problem. I have no idea how their country even survives. But the Japanese people were always known to be great savers.
The point I was making was that the straw that is breaking the camel’s back both here and there is a demographic one, and that even if Americans were savers like the Japs, the investment and growth that generated would not be sufficient to put our fiscal house in order.
Maddie’s Mom says: “I’m 53, have never had Botox, and don’t plan to”
the good ones are always taken. we usually have to go south of the border to find a good mate. i make it a habit to complain to anyone who will listen, american born women of any race cannot cook, clean, save money, keep house, raise children, and if they work, it is only to go clubbing and getting drunk while hubby stays at home babysitting…why get married to any of these “losers”? ah yes, because they look awesome. but you’ll go broke supporting one.
dimon, you magnificent bastard, you read my book.
Eddie – if gdp were fifty percent higher, it would help a lot. Full employment, higher tax take without higher rates, etc. You can never discount the politicians blowing the lot – they always spend more than they take, of course. But it would be hugely better.
We need more Boomers here because we are always in danger of getting our butts kicked by GenXer’s who are, on the whole, a bunch of pissed-off, whiny little bastards who want to blame all their problems on us. -Eddie
True. Like the shit was any easier when I was their age. I didnt blame those before me.
Buck up and put your shoulder to the wheel.
Tanstaafl
Here is aa diddy taught me by the elders of my day.
Off your ass
On your feet
Outta the shade
Into the heat
You gotta work
if you wanna eat.
I know a fair number of people making $1-2 million a year who live in 25,000 sq ft houses, have a fleet of Mercedes, yada yada, who are 55 yo and LIVE PAYCHECK TO PAYCHECK. I kid you not.
Gonna be a bad time for a whole lotta folks and soon, so solly.
This lack of saving problem is even worse than you might think as whatever money you (think) you might have will be totally destroyed by the currency debasement and inflation soon to be unleashed by The Fed’s insane policies of the last decade.
Gee, I think $72K in 2014 just might get you a can of cat food.
That is, after you have already eaten your cat.
. . .just found out i am a boomer. i always thought a boomer was a nuclear ballistic missile submarine. -Beodolf
Well, there was also the Boomer Sooners that waited on the borders of Oklahoma and then ran for free government land.
But a Boomer to the Strauss & Howe theorists, aqui, means anyone born between about 1945 and 1960.
The Census Beauru says it was 1964. Admin disagrees while I agree [just cause it causes his blood pressure to rise =]
With boomers, anything goes and nothing matters. They’ll continue to vote for free shit alongside the FSA until it all collapses. -AWD
What is a peaceful anarchist to do? Isnt this what you smart-o-verts want?
Jeebus on a pogo stick,
Hope – I know a few of those types. They prove a fool and his money are soon parted. If they lived in a modest house for five years, the could then pay cash for their dream home, and save half a million or so per year. Instead they pay their incomes out in interest, and blow the balance on cars, vacations, etc.
I am taking my first luxury holiday later this year. Until now I have always travelled below my means.
Deferred gratification pays dividends. Be an ant not a grasshopper, is always good advice.
Admin,
Hubby and I are Boomers. Our siblings and many of our neighbors are Boomers.
They are helping adult children who are in their 30s and 40s.
My hubby’s brother, who is 60, has been helping support his college-educated daughter and SIL and their SIX! children for over 12 YEARS!!! I kid you not.
I am most definitely speaking of Boomers helping THEIR children.
Maybe Sooner Boomers do it differently ;).
TPC,
Nothing was taken personally. It was just anecdotal. I’m sure many more women my age could say the same.
Whenever I heard the term Boomer Sooner I am always reminded of this classic moment:
Where the hell is Colma and SAH?
I’m pretty sure I’ll be in a better financial position than my kids for the duration of my working career and beyond. I expect to help them financially until I take the dirt nap. There will, of course, be strings attached. hehehe.
Boomer wisdom given to us by the older generations, and I quote (please note that none of these people were Boomers, they just gave us our anthems):
Suppose that we are wise enough to learn and know – and yet not wise enough to control our learning and knowledge, so that we use it to destroy ourselves? Even if that is so, knowledge remains better than ignorance.
— Isaac Asimov
All suffering is caused by being in the wrong place. If you’re unhappy where you are, MOVE.
— Timothy Leary
Life is what happens while you are busy making other plans.
——John Lennon
Life is uncertain. Eat dessert first.
—- Ernestine Ulmer
Youngsters are going to get fucked good and hard by Obamacare (that protect geezers and boomers) in addition to paying huge SS and Medicare taxes:
Will 20- and 30-Somethings Be Hardest Hit by Obamacare?
Lately, young adults like Raymond have had even more to worry about: There’s been a lot of talk about how health insurance premiums for people in their 20s, 30s, and early 40s may rise—what’s being called “sticker shock”—even higher when the Affordable Care Act (ACA) health insurance exchanges kick in in January.
The U.S. Department of Health and Human Services (HHS) recently finalized a rule that limits how much health insurance companies can charge many older people, but there are no such protections for younger people. In fact, insurance companies have claimed that a decision to limit rate increases on older people could push them to set premium rates for younger people very high. Responding to the HHS’ final rule, Karen Ignagni, head of America’s Health Insurance Plans, the largest health insurance trade association, issued a release saying that “the new restrictions on age rating will result in an overnight increase in healthcare costs for people in their 20s, 30s, and early 40s.”
Insurance companies claim that rate limits on older people mean they must charge younger people much more.
Ignagni added that the HHS decision “increases the likelihood that younger, healthier people [will] forgo purchasing insurance until they are sick or injured. When this happens, costs go up for everyone, young and old.” Ignagni said people in their 20s and 30s could see insurance premiums jump 29 percent and 19 percent, respectively
Treemagnet said; “I hate the boomer generation”
Its a theory you know.
~~~~
Youngsters are going to get fucked good and hard by Obamacare (that protect geezers and boomers) in addition to paying huge SS and Medicare taxes: -AWD
And what generation hasnt seen health insurance costs double every eight to ten years?
I dont get government subsidized insurance, or medicaid or medicare. I found a non-profit service. Do you know what a standard blood test costs that checks the function of your kidneys, pancrea actually cost using the same service many doctors use? 47 bucks. When I go to an actual doctor they raise it to two or three hundred. And so insurance folks do the same.
I can get a test to check Warfarin [coumadin] levels for about 17 bucks while the doctor/hospital/insurance charges 150+
The boomers are not the cause of healthcare or insurance being so expensive. It is the nature of the health insurance/care beast that wants to hold you hostage by life itself.
It is amoral.