Retirement crisis looms as Americans struggle to save | CNN Business
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Eric Payne, a 37 year-old single father to two boys, works hard to stretch his paycheck each week. It’s a task he refers to as “clicking.”

The number of US workers in the labor market over the age of 75 is expected to nearly double over the next decade, creating a looming retirement crisis.

Retirement savings in the United States were long thought of as a three-legged stool. Americans had pension plans, Social Security benefits, and defined contribution plans like the 401(k). Not anymore.

Pension plans are nearly extinct. About half of private sector workers were covered by those so-called defined-benefit plans in the mid-1980s, but by 2022 only 15% of private sector workers had them.

Social Security payments still provide about 90% of income for more than a quarter of older adults, according to Social Security Agency surveys. But the Social Security trust fund is facing a 75-year deficit, and without intervention it will be depleted by the mid-2030s, meaning that only a portion of retirees’ expected benefits will be paid out. Lawmakers have faced a decades-long political stalemate on how to fix it.

What’s left is the 401(k), which 68% of private industry workers have access to, but only 50% use.

  • COASTER1921
    2•3 months ago

    Employer sponsored 401k plans usually don’t give that much choice in how you allocate the money.

    That being said our whole economy is tied to the stock market, in my opinion to the point it’s “too big to fail” (at least catastrophically). Betting against it on the order of decades would be a very bad idea as our whole economy relies on inflation of the dollar.

    • partial_accumen
      1•3 months ago

      Employer sponsored 401k plans usually don’t give that much choice in how you allocate the money.

      401k plans aren’t usually the place to do exotic investing. Most offer at least one fund matching the S&P 500 or total stock market, another covering the total bond market, then usually a mix of small cap, mid cap, growth, and income funds.

      Realistically you only need some funds moderately solid in your 401k while you’re employed there. As soon as you change jobs, you can roll it over to your own IRA where you have much more control.

      That being said our whole economy is tied to the stock market, in my opinion to the point it’s “too big to fail” (at least catastrophically).

      It isn’t that those companies are publicly traded in the stock market that makes them “too big too fail” all at the same time, its that the stock market also overlaps with the huge majority of GDP generating commerce in the USA. If the stock market is failing (the whole thing at the same time) then the US economy is failing.