America's Retirement Timebomb!

Over the next five years the largest cohort of the baby boomer generation will reach retirement age and while it is broadly assumed that they will have comfortable retirements, a recent analysis of their assets shows that more than half of this final group of boomers are not financially prepared to retire whatsoever.
In today's video we look at how American retirees found themselves in this position, and how much you need to save to have a comfortable retirement.

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[vincenthamel]

Meanwhile the youngest generation is being told to start saving for retirement as soon as they graduate, while still paying student loans... and to not spend more than 30% of their income on rent.

[Kmax]

I’m part of the generation that asks…
“What’s a pension?” 😅

[savannah]

My mom is 1953 boomer and my dad is a 1959 boomer. Dad just retired, and my mom is absolutely doing most of the heavy lifting on their retirement expenses. Dad's retirement was way worse than mom's, you've hit the nail on the head. My dad is a heck of a mechanic but his finanical skills are lacking for sure. Without my mom, my dad would be in rough retirement shape indeed. Fascinating.

Edited to add: gotta push back a bit on the union hate. I'm a 9th generation child of coal country-you'll never convince me companies can be held accountable without unions.

[MsJusticeever]

This issue isn’t just an issue in the USA. Europe too. My father passed away, my mother is no longer well enough to work, she is the exact generation of peak boomer, her pension is pathetic and I have been feeding her and housing her for years now. She simply can’t afford to survive without me.

[PauloZunguze]

I think Patrick got distracted and forgot that this is a rapping channel

[cameroncunningham]

My parents are Babyboomers and many of them have following similarities

(1) Did not save adequately during their working years
(2) Carried and still carry excessive amounts of debt (mortgages, auto loans, credit cards, etc)
(3) participating in excessive consumerism
(4) Refusal to adjust their lifestyle to reflect their situation

My father for example, bought a car in 2022, which he could not afford, never made a serious effort to pay off the family home before during his working years because of his addiction to debt, he is know 72yrs old and working full time just to try to maintain his over consumption life style

In the coming decades many of the boomers will become homeless/destitute because of poor financial choices they made early in life and no amount of public outcry/intervention will solve this problem

[KyleWyattOnGoogle]

I’m over here looking at the ten million dollar sign on bonus and 1.6 million annual salary of Starbuck’s new CEO, and am having a real hard time thinking it’s the union’s fault the coffee tastes bad.

[michellebowers]

Our current system requires individuals to be financially savvy and make sound decisions for their investments. Yet we don’t teach personal finance in most high schools and expect everyone to acquire this knowledge on their own. Many don’t.

[fwiffo]

Maybe the boomers should cut back on avocado toast.

[bendrbot]

When you got handed THE MOST STABLE ECONOMY IN HISTORY - and spent it all on divorce lawyers.

[TGWazoo]

I read several decades ago that General Motors was the largest health care provider through pension/union agreements. That was the 80s.

[PerfectTangent]

All I know is that when the crystal in my hand changes color, I'm supposed to float up to the ceiling and be vaporized.

[Brogenitor]

Patrick brought up the primary issue when talking about the labor union negotiations. Rather than opting to pay their workers better wages immediately, the companies basically borrowed on credit - that is the future cost of those pensions. They did this to themselves. Happy workers don't generally tend to strike. Labor unions developed in reaction to labor exploitation. I will never have sympathy for a capital class that fails at every opportunity to forecast long-term consequences and adapt accordingly. Those same members of the capital class would say that workers aren't owed a living wage, or even a job. So why should they feel entitled to ever-increasing profit margins?

[wmwoods-lf]

Most Americans find it hard to retire comfortably amid economy downtrend. Some have close to nothing going into retirement, my question is, will you pay off mortgage as a near-retiree, or spread money for cashflow, to afford lifestyle after retirement?

[JRCP]

Interesting that the blame falls on unions for negotiating, rather than on companies for deciding they'd rather pay more for pensions in the future than increasing wages at the time.

[SuperChaoticus]

I'm a peak boomer. We came of age hearing about pensions and then suddenly, corporations started stealing the pensions and forcing us to get into 401k programs. The biggest problem with that is that we recieved little to no training on how 401ks worked. And this was pre-internet, so it wasn't like we could look up a guide or do any sort of in depth research into how they worked. If you didn't have the means to get professional help, you were basically effed.

[AQuietNight]

I remember many pension plans being dissolved back in the 1980's

[tinad]

T Rowe Price’s figures are useless. When I was 35, a “year’s salary” was about 32k; at 50, it was approaching 100k. You can’t move the goalposts out two more football fields in 15 years and still expect kickers to hit it from the same field goal line.

[phillipsoltan]

I love how the title of the video has the word "Timebomb" in it but, as usual, Patrick generally understates everything. Saying the seniors will "struggle" with retirement is like saying an airplane will "struggle" to maintain altitude if the wings fall off. 🤪

[gstlb]

So now the pendulum has swung in the opposite direction, the companies are awash in cash and the workers are retiring without enough money to cover their costs.