STUDY: Fewer than 1 in 3 Americans expect to fully retire

[Bluebear]

Fewer than one in three Americans expect they will ever be able to fully retire, a new study commissioned by Scottrade online investment brokerage shows.

This represents a decline from 39 percent in 2008 to 32 percent this year.

Scottrade’s 2009 American Retirement Study shows that 43 percent of Americans said their accounts decreased 10 percent or more since last year. The study also indicated that nearly two-thirds of Americans said they do not plan to contribute to an IRA, up from just over half last year.

Baby boomers (67 percent) and Gen Xers (64 percent) are the generations most concerned about having enough money for retirement, according to the study.

http://www.bizjournals.com/seattle/stories/2009/02/23/daily30.html

[liberal N proud]

1. I figured that out about 10 years ago, Now with this depression

I am sure there are many more in the same boat.

[Warpy]

2. Boomers and Xers are the generations

the Republicans have robbed the most, from killing pensions and holding down wages to putting token "savings" into a hyperinflated stock market as 401K plans and then attacking Social Security.

I sincerely hope they all realize who has done it to them and vote accordingly. Conservatives are the enemy. They can never be part of any solution for this country.

[anonymous171]

3. They seemed to love every minute of it too, as I recall. nt

[Warpy]

4. A lot of them fell for the snake oil

from talk radio ranters and the prosperity theology pulpits.

Nothing makes a person angrier than realizing he's been played for a sucker.

I just hope it happens with a vengeance.

[anonymous171]

8. Me too. My republican dad is absolutely furious with the GOP right now.

Let's hope people keep on seeing the light.

[Fresh_Start]

5. bullshit

late boomers went into workplace with a gut of workers so starting wages were poor
late boomers were too young to get grandfathered into pensions
then we had multiple stock crashes

[Burma Jones]

6. I don't want to fully retire

hence the Doctorate.........

If you're going to be old and working, you might as well be teaching.

[CTyankee]

17. I am retired and just had an offer to teach an undergrad course next fall.

I had designed a small course on the poetry of our Poet Laureate, Kay Ryan, and the inaugural poet, Elizabeth Alexander, for the Institute of Learning in Retirement. Since I've never taught before, I ran it past my former faculty advisor at the school where I got my Master's (just for comment and suggestions)and she wants me to consider teaching it in their undergrad program.

You never know how things can turn out. I never dreamed, when I designed the course, that I would do anything with it other than as a study topic for the seniors in ILR. It's a volunteer thing, too.

People go back to school in tough economic times and even a poetry course, if it counts toward a degree, could be of interest and even excitement among students. Also, it's current.

Good for you. What are you teaching?

[Burma Jones]

20. Not teaching yet.......Doctorate is in Computer Science

I want to teach Systems Analysis.

My BA is in Theatre and maybe that would be more fun.......

[CTyankee]

21. My BA is in Fine Arts and Communications and I loved it.

Can you combine the computer background with the theatre degree in some way?

[Bonhomme Richard]

7. I always said that I would retire at 55. Well, I'm 55 now and....

I guess the day I turn 56 will be the day that I will admit I'm wrong.
I'm a hopeless optimist.

[CTyankee]

18. Is that a painting by Turner on your post?

I went to a massive Turner exhibit at the Metropolitican Museum in NY late last summer and it looks like some of his scenes of ships. It would fit in with your quote to Lord Nelson...

[Bonhomme Richard]

26. Actually it's a freeze photo from .......

the movie Master and Commander.
On a side note....Your from CT and the ship used in that movie was the HMS Rose which was docked for years at Captains Cove in Bridgeport. My friend had a boat there docked pretty much next to it. Then we heard that it was bought for a movie and it was moved elsewhere. They added components to the original vessel to make it look more like a British Frigate.

[City of Mills]

9. I don't plan to retire

I don't think I'll be able to financially, even so I'd rather do something useful. People break down faster, physically and mentally, when they no longer feel useful. Hope my body and mind hold up for awhile!

[barbtries]

10. my boss said something about me retiring

and i laughed and laughed. i'm relatively certain that i will die before i ever get to retire. how it is.

[Javaman]

11. I'm dying at my desk. I have always believed this. so I'm good with it.

:cry:

[leftstreet]

12. Look for the M$M to keep helping us lower our expectations n/t

[aikoaiko]

13. I don't expect to retire, but then again, Iike my job a lot.

[T Wolf]

14. Retirement has become a luxury of the upper class. People who work for a living must face

the fact that we will work until we are dead.

The little that we had been able to save has been reduced to an even smaller amount thanks to George and his cretinous thieves.

Hey - on the up-side. I once read a study that found that the average life expectancy of a man who retired at 65 years of age was EIGHTEEN fucking months!

[Forkboy]

15. Pffft...that's what graves are for.

Now get off your ass and get back to work. Papa needs a new pair of shoes...and a boat.

:hide:

[corpseratemedia]

16. The Reagan legacy of turning a stable workplace into a part-time

contract-work, low-wage, "right-to-work" H1-B outsourced joke eliminated the hope of ever retiring for many later Boomer and younger generations.

Look what happened to college-level teaching, the "female" tenure-track is now the norm.

My grandparents and my s/os parents here and abroad were able to retire in their early 60's and spend money on travel and extended vacations while living middle-class or working-class lives.

Of course Boomers and older got duped with co's. replacing pensions with 401ks. Unfettered my ass.

[HughBeaumont]

19. Money be damned, I AM NOT working past the age of 60

Many of us spend half to 3/4 of our day doing something work related; whether it's commuting, the job itself, added work from the job or schooling to improve our career prospects. We're trained to be cubeslaves almost from the time we set foot into elementary school. We're not trained to think creatively (unless it benefits your employer), but merely to regurgitate feasible solutions within an hour's time. Love of learning doesn't factor in, because the schedule given and the kind you'll have in your future fabric box doesn't allow for it. Being able to attend college is only going to get more difficult as life goes on, what with no liquidity for student loans and companies cutting tuition reimbursement.

Humans aren't meant to wake up at the asscrack of dawn and spend 12 to 14 hours a day away from their families, wearing uncomfortable clothes you otherwise wouldn't even think TWICE of buying (unless you were a Young Republican) to make a pittance in a prison-grey cubicle with zero scenery besides your radiated blue desktop. Your golden years should be YOURS, not some goddamned retail company's. Corporate America is NOT entitled to cradle-to-grave wage-slavery.

We get 2 weeks of vacation if we're lucky and health care only after we pass a 6-month probationary period. We deal with nasally-voiced bosses with bad hygiene that make Bill Lumbergh look like a saint in comparison. We deal with mental abuse, guilt, depression; the constant fear and the voice in the back of your head that states "Is this going to be my last day here? Am I doing something wrong?".

Corporate America no longer works for the average stay-in-one-place Joe, and even less so now. It's beginning to look as if an MBA will no longer help a worker advance to any higher level of salary, but merely a requirement to their employability. An MBA. Just to remain employable. How did that happen? What's the point of HIGHER education if there's so little ROI from it?

As the years go by and more and more ladder-climber extroverted sociopath Repukes control the upper echelons of management, the chances of advancement simply to get ahead in life, God Forbid, just dwindle.

This is why I don't believe in "If you work hard and you're really determined, you'll go FAR in life" anymore. NO. That is bullshit. That is a cliche. My dad worked hard for 40 years. All he got out of it was two kidney operations, three layoffs, a defibrilator, back surgery, shaky hands, tons of meds and a soon-to-be-cut-in-half pension.

At least he was "lucky" enough that his "layoff" meant he would return to the same job when business picked up, whereas our layoff means "get the fuck out" with security escorting you from the building with everyone staring as if you embezzled money from the company or something.

I believe hard work is about a 5% determinant of a person's success in life; with personality, connections, an insane amount of luck and family fortune having far more to do with it.

I envy ANYONE who is able to retire. I would travel my ass off. Hike. Drive. Write books. Compose. Do what you WANT to do. Do what you would have done, had you not had the fruitless cubicle treadmill forced upon you. Even with meticulous planning, one cannot time stock markets well enough to avoid a catastrophic bite in the nest egg, thanks to the permanently installed Friedman economic crapcake that our business leaders still think is the best way of doing things. Right now, it's probably up to a financial miracle if any of us aren't going to die at our desks.

I've seen people die at their job. I cannot do it.

[Bonn1997]

22. I don't understand retirement anyway

To me retirement is something you should do only if you're physically unable to work. Otherwise, I don't understand why someone would want to stop contributing to the world by working hard.

[Bluebear]

23. It's called revering the elderly and rewarding them FOR working hard their whole life

[Bonn1997]

25. If you like your work, retiring would be a punishment, not a reward

[raccoon]

27. If you like your work, you are blessed.

I like the job I have now OK, but I know many people HATE their jobs.

And I've had jobs I've hated in the past.

[Bonn1997]

28. Oh I agree with that

[mwooldri]

24. I aim to quit full time work at 70.

I'm 34 now. Not anywhere near enough in retirement :( plus the stock market tanked ... so what I did have went down by 40%. I'm still stocking away into the 401k but not into stocks right now - just a "stable value fund" which believe it or not is growing. If the stock market looks like it's on a general trend upwards again I *might* switch some money around but not right now.

Plus at age 70, I probably don't want to become inactive. I might well do volunteer work or work part time or something. I think I'd go insane if I retired completely.

But ill health will be the downfall of me, if it happens.

Mark.

[leftyclimber]

29. I never expected to be able to retire (GenX here).

It's why I went back for a doctorate. No maximum retirement age, can usually still do the work if you're stove up.