Relying on pensions is not ignoring retirement. It is assuming that you will receive the benefit you were promised as part of your compensation. Not getting you

Relying on pensions is not ignoring retirement. It is assuming that you will receive the benefit you were promised as part of your compensation. Not getting your promised pension is the same as your 401k balance being confiscated by your broker to cover for their own financial shortfall. The main difference is that the 401k is a much more transparent product, so this outright theft is not as possible. The flip side of that is that your exposure to the market is more direct (which may not be that much of a flipside, as pension funds are still exposed to the market, but that exposure is more obscured). > I don't see how the taxes for the rest of us are going to go down with the aging population. Who says taxes are going to go down? Reading the political winds, the grass roots support for raising taxes is the highest I have ever seen it, and seems to be growing. We are leaving the political era of low taxes independent of the actual fiscal need to raise them.