It seems more frequently every day I read about peoples' retirement plans going to shit. Doomsday predictions about social security, woefully underfunded pension plans, and unexpectedly bad 401k performances. I'm no economist or financial expert, but do these ideas seem flawed from the start to anyone else?
The modern assumption of retirement is a bi-product of the industrial revolution. Retirement was a brass ring that was held up for workers to see as a way to keep them productive and loyal for a long period of time. Just think of how many times you've heard the phrase "You don't want to jeopardize your pension do you?" said in a movie.<p>Unfortunately, greed, escalation, and bloat caught hold at lots of these companies. And the concept of company retirement became much more of a well organized ponzi scheme.<p>As one example, both of my parents were taught from an early age that they should grow up to work at one company for their entire life. And that's what they did. My mother, went to work for the local school system. And my father went to work for the local chemical production plant. When they started work they both expected a retirement package, payed into and provided solely by their employer.<p>Neither one got that. My mothers retirement plan converted. Into a 401k with a fractional matching contribution from the school district. So she went from 100% contribution from her employer, to 90% coming out of her paycheck. If she was to retire "on time".<p>My father had a much worse fate. He had a pension from his company and a company managed 401k. Both of which were gutted when the company was spun off in debt reallocation. He still has the company letters that shows him having over 1 Million dollars on paper as his retirement package. He retired with little more than a gold watch for 40 years on the job. I had to support him in the gap between his "retirement" and when his social security kicked in.<p>But the silver lining is that we can all learn from the fallacy of our predecessors. We can take responsibility for our own lives, happiness, and "retirement". That's a big reason why I work for myself.<p>And most of the people I know are into the "mini-retirement" concept that has been more recently popularized by Tim Ferris. Live now. Don't work your whole life to live later.<p>If you truly love the work that you do...who'd want to retire anyway?
In my unqualified opinion retirement is one of the great lies of the 20th century. Politicians lying to appease the general population after WWII. Baby-boomers lying to their children if they still maintain the line today. And you lying to yourself if you're below 40 and expect to retire 'normally'. Retirement is the biggest pyramid scheme of them all. Madoff'd be proud.
Something I keep thinking about is that if <i>everyone</i> is going to be poor, then that's relatively the same as <i>everyone</i> being rich. If anything these stories are good news as if you're lucky then whatever you can scrape together will make you relatively wealthy compared with others, much like if you'd retired to a developing nation.