12 ms·

A preview of the U.S. without pensions

• stevenwoo 9y ago
  I got blocked by the paywall, but the same article is here: https://www.mercurynews.com/2017/12/23/i-hope-i-can-quit-working-in-a-few-years-a-preview-of-the-us-without-pensions/ https://www.mercurynews.com/2017/12/23/i-hope-i-can-quit-wor...
  • dang 9y ago
    OK, we've changed to that from https://www.washingtonpost.com/business/economy/i-hope-i-can-quit-working-in-a-few-years-a-preview-of-the-us-without-pensions/2017/12/22/5cc9fdf6-cf09-11e7-81bc-c55a220c8cbe_story.html https://www.washingtonpost.com/business/economy/i-hope-i-can.... Thanks!
• nhooyr 9y ago
  Whats with the scrolling on that website...?
• aramadia 9y ago
  And the best part is that the next generation will have it even worse. They’ll have 75% Social security payments, little chance of building net worth through home purchases and a lifetime of $10/hr jobs.
  • hkmurakami 9y ago
    Perversely, it may not be the worst thing if an entire generation decides that building wealth through your primary residence is not the best idea, and forgoes this in their lives and pushes their representatives to repeal the slew of incentives currently written into the tax code.
    • starlust2 9y ago
      Not if in lieu of homes they invest in nothing at all. If you don't own a home you're paying rent. Rent prices have also increased dramatically so it's not like there's money going into savings. Personally, I pay more in student loans than every one of my parents, aunts, and uncles pay on ybeir mortgage. I pay 2-3 times more in rent than their mortgage. I might be ok but only because of a high paying tech job. Those at the lower end the scale are absolutely fucked.
    • mobilefriendly 9y ago
      This is already happening. The new tax bill hits housing's special status three ways-- the mortgage deduction cap is lowered 25%, the standard deduction doubles (making the mortgage deduction less valuable) and high property taxes are no longer deductable.
    • zanny 9y ago
      Property ownership as your sole investment apparatus is obviously flawed, but seeing the ownership of all land and property centralized even further into the hands of land barons and oligarchs who can afford to rent seek an entire population is much worse. There was a lot of misguided misdirection in trying to sell every US citizen on home ownership, but there was also a tinge of romanticism towards the principle that maybe everyone could have their own small slice of the pie rather than a few fat cats owning the whole thing with all of us begging to borrow a piece.
• marcoperaza 9y ago
  Defined benefit plans, i.e. pensions, are a total disaster. They are premised on a fantasy: that the pension fund will make enough money on the market to to pay its liabilities, or that the backing entity will bail it out if not. Those are bad assumptions. The result is pension funds going broke across the country, and it's just getting started. Defined contribution plans, 401k's and such, are much more sensible. You set aside a percentage of your income, your employer throws some in for you as well, and you decide how to invest it. You decide what level of risk you want to take with your future wealth, and you reap the gains and losses.
  • jstewartmobile 9y ago
    I'm not sure 401ks are so great. Many charge ridiculous management fees for funds that track mundane things like the S&P 500, but if you want that employer match, no way around it. Mostly a case of perfectly intelligent people throwing wads of money into the market on autopilot because that's all the 401k lets you do. Lambs to the slaughter! edit: Example: Back when I was on 401k, was into a S&P500 fund that had an expense ratio over 1.5%. It may not sound like much, but that's compounded year-after-year. All of the other funds the 401k allowed had equally scandalous expense ratios. After starting a business, I rolled over into an IRA. Switched to a different S&P500 fund with expense ratio of 0.09%. Same curve, but I keep more of my money. It would be nice if people had more latitude in what they could put their retirement into--especially when it comes to tangible things, like buildings or equipment--that you can get some value out of even if the market happens to be down when you retire.
    • nunez 9y ago
      Yeah the only time it makes sense to have a 401k is if your company matches your contributions.
      • jstewartmobile 9y ago
        Don't they all have a match? It would be nice if people could keep the match and have more control over their portfolios. Buy & sell stocks, bonds, commodities, etc. whenever instead of a very small basket of mutual funds that can only be juggled a few times a year.
• friedButter 9y ago
  Is retirement planning (Live "below your means" and put in 20-30% or more of your salary towards long term investments), and family support (you fund your kids education and parents post retirement needs, and your kids fund your post retirement needs and your grandkids education) such an alien concept for Americans? When you manage it internally, instead of paying interest to a bank, you just have lost opportunity costs of investment within the family. AFAIK, most Asian countries do work this way. Given American salaries, this should be very easy to manage in US
  • shorttime 9y ago
    Good in theory but difficult in practice. I only know what I know because I read about it, was lucky to be exposed to retirement planning, everyone else? Not so lucky.
  • newfoundglory 9y ago
    Welcome to the internet! Good guess - that style of extended family reliance is quite alien to many Americans, often discussed under the topic "collectivism v individualism" or a similar name. That aside, there are many other differences in financial expectations and abilities in the two cultures, so a simple comparison of salary amounts isn't a good way to tell if Americans "should be able" to do something that happens in other countries.
  • ajmurmann 9y ago
    There is lots of Americans who barely get by. I recommend taking a look at "Nickeled and Dimed" by Barbara Ehrenreich. So many people simply cannot afford to put that much money aside. To the point of family support: Many Americans move across state lines a few times during their lifetime. That very much weakens family bonds. On top of that it's much harder to take care of your parents alone while your siblings live in different states. It in fact also makes having children harder.
    • brightsize 9y ago
      ++1 for "Nickel and Dimed: On (Not) Getting By in America". A fascinating read, it's the narrative of writer Barbara Ehrenreich as she goes undercover and participates in the minimum-wage economy in the US. It recounts not just her time on the clock, but equally the trials and trade-offs of simply surviving on such incomes.
• shorttime 9y ago
  Terrible spot to be in, hoping I will avoid it with a traveling retirement plan (401k). How do other 1st world countries manage elderly workers/people that should no longer work? SS is an option and I don't believe it will go bankrupt, wages of about 125K contribute to SS, anything larger does not. Just have to adjust that limit to keep it where it needs to be. So that helps a little bit.
  • ajmurmann 9y ago
    I think most European countries have more generous/realistic state provided, financial retirement support.
    • user5994461 9y ago
      It varies vastly by country. In France, the state calculates a percent of your income during the 4X years you were working and gives you that as a pension. The estimation can be pretty complicated, but that's fair enough for a one line explanation. The system will collapse eventually. More and more elderly to support by less and less active workers. The younger population is suffering from vast unemployment (25%) and they will never achieve 40 years of continuous work in their lifetime.
      • selestify 9y ago
        > More and more elderly to support > The younger population is suffering from vast unemployment It appears there is a lot of work to be done and a lot of idle workers to do it. The fact that both can exist in tandem seems like an indictment of how horribly inefficient our economic systems currently are.
        • user5994461 9y ago
          Not sure what you mean. Retirees don't create jobs. They just get money handed to them monthly as promised by the pension formula decided decades ago. (that money is supposed to come from taxes on active workers's salaries) The whole system collapse when taxes are not enough to cover the pensions that were promised. It's a ponzi scheme.
• friedButter 9y ago
  > federal judge agreed that McDonnell-Douglas had illegally considered the pensions in its decision to close the plant. The employees case, presented by attorneys Joe Farris and Mike Mulder, showed that the company had tracked pension savings in its plant closure decisions WTF! So a company is not allowed to consider costs in a cost cutting decision? Was this not a conscious risk an employee took by accepting a job on the chance of pension received if they were not fired before retirement? How is it different from buying a ton of stocks of failing companies and then suing if the price crashes further?
  • newfoundglory 9y ago
    It's more like the risk assumed by taking a job and expecting a salary - the company has to pay you for your work, even if they would rather not.
    • JumpCrisscross 9y ago
      > It's more like the risk assumed by taking a job and expecting a salary Not really. The case doesn’t seem to involve the company trying to default on existing obligations. It involves them projecting future costs and deciding whether to carry them. This is akin to laying off an employee, something most states freely permit, more than defaulting on pay for work already done.
      • defined 9y ago
        I just see it as making promises (pensions) the company was not committed to keep. I'm sure the judge didn't use the word "mendacity " lightly or unadvisedly.
        • JumpCrisscross 9y ago
          The case [1] is an interesting skim. Section 510 of ERISA says “[i]t shall be unlawful for any person to discharge ... or discriminate against a participant or beneficiary for ... the purpose of interfering with the attainment of any right to which such participant may become entitled under the plan (or ERISA)” (¶ 219). Closing a plant to save money isn’t per se illegal (¶ 222). The employer just had to show they had a legitimate reason for closing the plant (¶ 223). Instead, they kept talking about how the pension plan had nothing to do with the plant’s closure (¶ 226). That was not credible (¶ 263). (The plant’s employees had helped lobby for a new F-15 contract (¶ 15). There may have been political reasons the company couldn’t say “pension costs factored into our decision, though other reasons were prominent, too”.) Since the “Defendant was in the best position to put forth the actual reasons for its decision, if in fact such reasons were legitimate” and it “repeatedly failed to do so, engaging in a pattern of discovery abuse and refusal to respond to proper inquiries by both Plaintiffs and the Court“ (¶ 257) the plaintiffs won (§ 4). It is unclear how cleanly this unusual case generalises to the claim made in the original article. [1] https://law.justia.com/cases/federal/district-courts/FSupp2/162/1262/2319718/ https://law.justia.com/cases/federal/district-courts/FSupp2/... Disclaimer: I am not a lawyer. This is not legal advice.
• ghufran_syed 9y ago
  Defined benefit plans are unaffordable, whether for a company or a government. But while defined contribution actually generate great returns, they have the problem that urgent expenses always crowd out saving, particularly for lower income groups (same as it would if income taxes were collected annually, or less frequently). Seems like the optimal solution is to combine the compulsory contribution part of the current social security system with a defined contribution system that can actually generate the income that will be needed. As far as I can tell, the pension system in Chile in the 80’s and 90’s was like this, and had the additional benefit of generating large amounts of investment capital during its operation which helped economic growth. https://en.m.wikipedia.org/wiki/Pensions_in_Chile https://en.m.wikipedia.org/wiki/Pensions_in_Chile
  • ec109685 9y ago
    Why are defined benefit plans always unaffordable? You don’t want people’s retirements to be affected by the value of their investment at the moment of withdrawal. Instead you want the benefit to incorporate the expected value at retirement of the investment over the long run. The problem with many pensions is that the businesses themselves supporting them essentially went belly up as competition, technology and investors took their toll.
    • zzleeper 9y ago
      For company plans, you said the answer. It's silly to assume that your employer will be alive when you are 80 year sold, and also seems like a stupid idea for a company in a completely unrelated business to get into the retirement fund mgmt business. For states, the reason is population. If your pop doubles every 50 years, then you only need 2 young people to pay for one retiree. If it's the opposite (Japan now, US in a few decades), then you are screwed.
      • briandear 9y ago
        So it’s a Ponzi scheme.
• lewis500 9y ago
  This is horrible. A few years ago I realized my parents were way behind on savings and just incessantly nagged them until they got on a good plan. They kicked and screamed the whole time ("You're our son. You can't tell us what to do."), but it's turned out to be one of the best decision I ever made. Next year they are actually going to retire. I dunno what I'd do if they had to work at Wal-Mart just to make ends meet. Recently, I made this visualization of how US social security benefits are calculated: https://lewis500.github.io/socialsecurity https://lewis500.github.io/socialsecurity Before I made it I actually had no idea. I think I might have worked a little harder to earn money when I was younger if I'd understood.
  • bagels 9y ago
    Would be nice if the birth year were adjustable.
    • microcolonel 9y ago
      If you're willing to risk jail time, it can be. :- )
    • robert_foss 9y ago
      Or even better, birth place!
    • lewis500 9y ago
      I thought about that but it makes the visualization much more complicated and, moreover, would require forecasting wages way out into the future to be relevant to a millennial. If you had tried to do some wage forecast in 1970 you would've gotten things very wrong, so maybe the same is true today. One day I will add this feature but not soon.
  • danvayn 9y ago
    Thanks for this! As a young guy I had absolutely no idea what social security checks entailed.
  • sjg007 9y ago
• Kyragem 9y ago
  Yet these old folks all voted for trump/GOP. Good luck trying to make a living when they cut social security next year.
  • dizzystar 9y ago
    Sigh... the voting data is out there, and let's not all pretend the poor are any better off after ACA took effect. Clinton won the poor, Trump won the rich. When will you all stop with this?
    • SubiculumCode 9y ago
      My parents finally have health insurance after ACA, so yeah, they ARE better off.
      • dizzystar 9y ago
        I recently worked in two restaurants. Everyone was part time because no one wanted to employ full time. No one had insurance. On of my coworkers ended up in the hospital. She was taken on then dropped by 4 insurance companies, this was directly after she lost her military coverage. She's 15k in debt working a job that pays $200/week. I can toss a lot more stories back at you if you want.
        • ec109685 9y ago
          Why didn’t your coworker enroll in a ACA program?
          • dizzystar 9y ago
            She was covered under military, then she was enrolled in ACA, then dropped multiple times.
            • mwfunk 9y ago
              How do does one get involuntarily booted from coverage provided by the ACA? Or did she voluntarily drop coverage? If the latter, that’s 100% on her, but if the former then that seems like it should be impossible and I’m very curious how it happened, that doesn’t make sense but then again neither does health insurance sometimes. :(
• jstewartmobile 9y ago
  The fundamental problem with pensions, however you arrange them, is that no one has a crystal ball. If you were FDR, how could you possibly know that average person will live 10 years longer, or that we're going to end up with birth control and a consequent demographic cliff?
  • microcolonel 9y ago
    > how could you possibly know that average person will live 10 years longer This is not really what happened though, people who made it to working age generally did not live that much longer.
    • jstewartmobile 9y ago
      So you're saying that they were offering a pension with the expectation that most people would die before they could claim it? Not so much a dispute as a clarification...
      • microcolonel 9y ago
        I'm saying that life expectancy at birth is a misleading statistic when it comes to gauging the ratio of inputs to outputs on pension programs of any sort.
• 1001101 9y ago
  World Economic Forum estimates retirement shortfalls in public pension/private pension/individual savings in 2015 at 70 trillion$, and projects nearly half a quadrillion (400 tril) shortfall in 2050, with the lion's share belonging to the US. [1, page 7] Interest rates stuck at the 0 bound (and negative real) for nearly a decade haven't helped. I foresee a bumpy ride figuring out who gets stuck with the bill. [1] http://www3.weforum.org/docs/WEF_White_Paper_We_Will_Live_to_100.pdf http://www3.weforum.org/docs/WEF_White_Paper_We_Will_Live_to... [PDF]
  • ec109685 9y ago
    Why will the world be so much worse off at 400 trillion instead of 70 trillion? Presumably “the world” will have many many more folks making more money by then given the rates of economic growth in third world countries. 10B people can cover 400T in 10 years paying just $10 a day.
    • mattmanser 9y ago
      Western world has stopped having as many children, hence why governmemts are dead keen on immigration even though their constituents aren't.
      • pjkundert 9y ago
        However, immigrants are not “fungible” (as much as central planners wish they were). In fact, it’s becoming evident that certain immigrants may be a liability, and even displace potential immigrants who are valuable. This will be addressed as the facts unfold themselves, I suspect.
        • urbanjunkie 9y ago
          Why are dogs barking? Perhaps they hear a whistle...
  • en4bz 9y ago
    This paper seems to assume life expectancy will increase indefinitely but this doesn't seem like it will happen due to the fact roughly 2/3 of people are overweight or obese.
• cmurf 9y ago
  Today, Social Security provides only enough for a bare-bones budget, about $14,000 a year on average. Republicans: This is too much money, we can't afford it, it's take from the rich, give to the poor, these social programs need to end. Grandma deserves to die under a bridge by herself, it's her own fault she didn't work harder or save more. Me: A bullet to the head of the aging is more ethical than the Republican prescription. Yes, absolutely take the money from the wealthy and keep grandma off the street. Jesus...
  • clackanon 9y ago
    I'm not saying I have a better answer, but wealth redistribution is theft. That's every bit as immoral as leaving grandma on the street.
    • mwfunk 9y ago
      That’s not remotely as immoral as leaving grandma on the street. It’s a compromise, like everything else in the world that does more good than bad.
    • chrisbennet 9y ago
      When the 8 richest men have as much wealth as the poorest 50% of the planet one might conclude that wealth has already been redistributed.
• rukittenme 9y ago
  Here's a fun game for everyone. If you don't save, and your company doesn't save, and your government doesn't save then how the hell do you figure you're going to retire?
  • busterarm 9y ago
    Stock up on bullets and get comfortable firing them.
  • hkmurakami 9y ago
    the current plan around the world seems to be that the next generation props you up I guess?
  • cinquemb 9y ago
    It seems like in this monetary environment solutions are thus: Individuals can get lines of credit issued against their homes or reverse mortgages. Also there's a plethora of subprime debt individuals can acquire and default on ranging from autos to ones education. Companies can keep issuing bonds so that on some end of the food chain, central banks can keep purchasing them. Governments can keep issuing bonds, even at negative interest rates, central banks can keep purchasing them. If it isn't clear, this can go on forever and will always end well.
  • konschubert 9y ago
    You can have a "contract of the generations", where the younger generation finances the pensions of the older generation through social security payments. Many countries do it like that.
    • user5994461 9y ago
      That's a ponzi scheme. That's what many countries in Europe do and that is currently collapsing. It takes something like 4 active workers to pay the pension of 1 current retiree. The proportion was fine after the baby boom, it's not anymore and it's getting worse.
      • 9y ago
• alkonaut 9y ago
  This is the most jarring thing to me when I land in the US. Already at the airport you see security staff, cleaning staff that look like they should have been enjoying retirement for several years.
• rwmj 9y ago
  I'm missing a detail of the US system ... > Years ago, Coomer and his co-workers at the Tulsa plant of McDonnell-Douglas, the famed airplane maker, were enrolled in the company pension, but in 1994, with an eye toward cutting retirement costs, the company closed the plant. Did the McDonnell-Douglas company not pay into a separate pension fund, or did they raid the fund somehow?
  • advisedwang 9y ago
    It sounds like by closing the plant and stopping the employees reaching retirement age, they massively reduced the amount the employees were eligible to receive. Even if the pension fund was separate, by reducing eligibility this way they company had to pay less into it over the following years.
    • ac29 9y ago
      To add to that, this pension (and many others) was structured such that payouts are non-linear based on number of years worked, so for example, you might get: 0-5 years worked: no pension 5-10 years worked: 5% pension 10-20 years worked: 20% pension 30+ years worked: full pension By preventing workers from being able to work the full 30+ years, they never had to pay the full pension. One of the workers in the story mentions receiving 1/5 of full pension after being laid off due to the closure.
      • woobar 9y ago
        And this detail - someone working 27 year for the company and only getting 20% of the full benefit - doesn't make these pensions really attractive. And in the article they even call it a "more generous types of pensions". I know most of the DB plans were structured in a similar way, i.e. earlier years with the company have less impact on the overal pension. But this one looks more like a lottery, where you bet to stay employed at the same company for 30 years no matter waht.
      • VLM 9y ago
        The popular marketing reason why the pension disappeared is the factory closed. The real reason the pension disappeared is the proposed vesting duration was ridiculous. I am older so current jobs have no pension of course, but when I worked jobs with pensions, the vesting duration was typically something like 3 to 5 years for 100% vesting, sometimes only 2 years for 50% vesting. In fact I have a pension from a previous employer projected to be worth $800/month which by then will be about the price of one cup of starbucks coffee... To make it crystal clear, the pension was eliminated when the vesting duration was moved from perhaps 4 years to 30+ years.
• sbennettmcleish 9y ago
  These "company managed" pension schemes have always fascinated me and would seem ripe for corruption / raiding by the company if they're short a few $$$. Seems like in Australia we're in a pretty good position with "superannuation" https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Superannuation_in_Australia https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Superannuation_in_Australia being compulsory since 1992 and is typically managed by completely unrelated parties to your employer. The payments are generally made directly by your employer into the fund of your own choosing. The biggest thing is once you've had this contributed to YOUR account, it is YOURS (drawable from age 65) and doesn't matter what happens to the fortunes of your employer(s) in the future.
  • sjg007 9y ago
    Replace corporation with government and you see the same behavior at city/county/state/national levels.
    • deleted 9y ago
      [deleted]
  • falcolas 9y ago
    My dads pension plan was raided in exactly that manner. Thankfully, his union took care of it for them, hiring a shark of a lawyer who got it refunded by fining the hell out of the executives and the company for their illegal actions. Of course, he also inherited thousands of acres of land, so he’s not exactly in a bad place had it not been funded again.
  • e40 9y ago
    That's why independently run 401(k)'s are the best. I'm a trustee of the one for our company, and there's no way I could raid it.
    • walshemj 9y ago
      But its an awful DC scheme you cant put much in there is zero tax relief an employer Mach is tiny the UK from April mandates 5% match for an employer -better than nothing I supose
• jo909 9y ago
  > The average life expectancy in 1950 was 68, meaning that a pension had to pay out only three years past the typical retirement age of 65. Today, average life expectancy is about 79, meaning that the same plan would have to pay out 13 years past typical retirement age. That's the wrong statistic to use and completely wrong conclusion. Life expectancy _for a 65 year old_ person in 1950 was another 13.9 years. That rose only to 19.1 years in 2010 (newest number I found at a glance). All the babies and people dying before age 65 reduce the average life expectancy drastically, but have no bearing on pension payment length.
  • skookum 9y ago
    All the people dying before 65 absolutely do have a bearing on pension payment length: If an employer promises someone a pension at 35 and they don't live long enough to collect then the employer doesn't have to fund that commitment. Using life expectancy at 65 would only be valid if the pensions were being promised only to those who had already lived to 65 and at the time they were 65.
    • jo909 9y ago
      This is totally an important factor for the pension provider, your are right about that. They will factor in how many people will never reach the payout age, the distribution of payout age, maybe if the spouse is covered too how long they might live, how may people switch their jobs and forfeit the pension etc. I'd argue this has an impact on the "savings rate" per employee, but not on the average payout length.
      • skookum 9y ago
        > I'd argue this has an impact on the "savings rate" per employee, but not on the average payout length. Your argument is only correct if we define the average payout length to only factor in those employees who receive at least one check. However the original quote that you claimed was wrong is referring how much the pension has to pay out on average, which is not limited to those who live long enough to collect a payout. Their average payout length of 3 years factors in a whole bunch of $0 payouts, whereas your average ignores all of the zeros.
• dsr_ 9y ago
  Then corporate America changed: Union membership waned. Executive boards, under pressure from financial raiders, focused more intently on maximizing stock prices. ... Exactly what led corporate America away from pensions is a matter of debate among scholars, but there is little question that they seem destined for extinction, at least in the private sector. Oh, please. Nobody seriously debates this, the answer is right there. The policy of the federal government, since Reagan, has been to bust the power of unions every chance they get. Just look at the decisions of the NLRB before and after Reagan. Labor lost power, corporations gained it. First pensions were reduced, then deliberately underfunded, then raided, then eliminated. The government went along with all of that.
  • zackmorris 9y ago
    I second this. We have access to vastly more powerful technology than in 1980 and the GDP of most developed countries is many times what it used to be. We should all be earning at least twice what we did, and we should be working fewer hours, with more benefits. The retirement age should be 60 or even 55 today, maybe younger, and social security should have kept up with inflation to pay more. All of this would have happened with unions and deciding in favor of labor whenever possible. Instead we did the opposite, and here we are in an unsustainable class war with the ugliest aspects of our past coming back to haunt us. I am all for ending labor as we know it and letting machines do most of the work. But humans must still be in charge, not capital/corporations/sociopaths/liars/lobbyists and so on.
    • toomuchtodo 9y ago
      I'm going to keep beating this drum: organize and vote.
  • dreamcompiler 9y ago
    What you say is correct, but pensions are inherently risky to companies. There are two prime sources of risk: The stock market and retiree statistics. If either turns south, the company is required to make up the difference, which can cause smaller companies to fold. When both the stock market and retiree statistics were stable, companies were happy to provide pensions. But both (especially the stock market) are too volatile nowadays for pension plans to be viable. The only solution now is for the federal government to cover the unpredictability of planning for retirement.
• maerF0x0 9y ago
  IMO a major issue is the expectance of someone else to take care of "me". I know that I'm retired for ~30 out of 80 years of my life and thus have to save ~3/8ths of my income, else starve. (Yes, some modifiers for tax brackets, compounding blah blah...) In the past people's children were the "investment" that paid the dividends into old age. Now we no longer have children to bear the burden. Yet we spend the normally sacrificed dollars on lattes, world travel, iphones (and whatever icon of excess you choose). I realize many people say its "hard" to save these days. But I also think there is some spectrum involved with doing what pays vs what one "wants" and ensuring one's lifestyle matches their actual ranked income in a society. (ie, if you earn on the 10th percentile, then you probably should be spending on the 10th percentile on dinners out or whatever icon of excess you want to pick on.)
  • gedy 9y ago
    I hear a lot about the nickel and dime stuff on how to save, but most people get eaten up by interest on home and education loans and medical costs. The other issue is interest rates being so low it amounts to a war on savings that neither party seems to willing to do anything about.
    • Rebelgecko 9y ago
      You can't have it both ways. Increasing interest helps people that save but hurts people that are taking out loans.
    • JoshTriplett 9y ago
      > The other issue is interest rates being so low it amounts to a war on savings I used to think this; then I discovered index funds, and stopped keeping money in a savings account.
      • njarboe 9y ago
        How did you feel in the 2008 crash? No snark, just wondering how that was versus a savings account.
• clackanon 9y ago
  It's nice to know someone can express a dissenting opinion, and still be reasoned with, and not downvoted into oblivion. Oh. Wait. That's par for the course on HN. God forbid you think anything different from the hive mind. If you do, you're not welcome here.
  • plandis 9y ago
    Huh?
• scarface74 9y ago
  Why would I want to be at a company for 30 years with a ridiculous vesting schedule in hopes of getting a pension? On an unrelated note, the article mentioned in passing that some of these people are in debt paying for their children's college. Why does anyone feel like it's their responsibility to get in debt to put their children through college? Let their children go to a more affordable college, or let them take out debt on their own. Every financial planner tells you to take care of your own retirement before you worry about your children's college. I've made a lot of mistakes and made some intentionally choices that in my mid 40s, I don't see a comfortable retirement in my future even at 65. I'm not complaining about it, I like what I do, it's not physically demanding, and as a developer, my job is my hobby. I can't see myself not at least working part time in technology in some form.
• flatfilefan 9y ago
  Isn't this the result of diminishing return on the military spending in the US and the now absent pressure form Soviet Union to maintain the paritiy on social benefits?