What Retirement with Less Than $1M Looks Like in America

I love the headline, as if retiring with 1M or more is <i>common</i>. News flash, that&#x27;s the reality of 80% of America. Hell, where I grew up, people mostly just relied on social security. Retirement wasn&#x27;t lavish, but they still enjoyed it.<p>I get the feeling that financial advisors push high savings &#x2F; low spending for retirement so hard because they get a 1%+ cut of assets under management, and there&#x27;s nobody complaining when their client dies with a pile of money. It&#x27;s one thing to be responsible, but it&#x27;s easy to over do it.

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They should really have a synopsis for non-subscribers. Might help pull in new subscribers-as why subscribe to something if you don’t know what you’ll get? Compounded by the hell of modern subscription cancellation.<p>(I recently got an Economist subscription and it’s way better than expected, but I would have never known has I not bit the bullet…)

&quot;Mr. Jones’s retirement account took a hit in 2008 and never recovered. Spooked by the S&amp;P 500’s 38.49% decline in 2008, he sold his stocks and invested in a stable value fund that earned about 1% a year, said the couple’s son-in-law, Jon Older, a doctor who has managed the portfolio since 2018. Dr. Older moved 35% of the balance into a low-cost stock index fund and the rest into an intermediate Treasury bond index fund.&quot;<p>So he missed out on one of the best stock market rallies in history out of ignorance and fear. Ouch.

&gt; She recently bargained the couple’s monthly cable and cellphone bill to $300 from $400 and cut her restaurant budget to $70 a month from $150.<p>I can&#x27;t believe what some people pay for cable and cellphone service. I pay $23&#x2F;mo for cellphone service and cut the cable cord many years ago.

Note that many of these folks have much less than $1m in savings though most seem to own houses and one probably has decent income from rental properties. So overall--perhaps not surprising given this is the WSJ, these folks are not exactly scraping by off social security even if they&#x27;re not &quot;wealthy&quot; either.

Random inflation trivia if these retirees wanted $1M (nominal dollars, as a goalpost) for retirement while headed into their prime earning years:<p>&quot;The Millionaire Next Door&quot; was published in 1996. $1M then has the purchasing power of ~$1.92M today.

$1 million will be a king&#x27;s ransom compared to Gen X&#x27;s retirement plans<p>last time I checked known stats on Gen X retirement savings, the national average was under $100k...Gen X is the first generation that is almost entirely dependent on 401k<p>for bonus points, Gen Xers in large cities are more likely renters than owners, so they won&#x27;t even be able to sell a property to prop up the low 401k balance<p>the Gen X retirement bailout is probably already unavoidable and will be in the trillions<p>everyone says its fine because they love what they do and will do it forever...do they really think there will be a hot market for 67 year old React devs?