Retirement is not an age, it's a financial status.
You make it sound like it's supposed to be that way?
I didn't read it that way. It's just a fact. If you had enough money saved/invested, you could reasonably retire today. If you don't have anything saved, you can't afford to retire at any age.
As the OP shows, even the pension system in the UK (or social security in the US) amounts to little more than a sick joke in comparison to the actual cost of living.
I know I'm not saying anything new, I'm just rephrasing the GP's point in a particularly verbose way.
If you don't have anything saved, you can't afford to retire at any age.
But it's not supposed to be that way.
even the pension system in the UK (or social security in the US) amounts to little more than a sick joke
BUT IT'S NOT SUPPOSED TO BE THAT WAY!
People usually don't retire because they can but because they have to. Because they can't work anymore. Framing it like retirement based on savings only is just an unchangeable fact of nature is just wrong.
But it’s not supposed to be that way.
You're too focused on this, IMO. I can't fix the injustice here all by my lonesome. What I can do is live beneath my means, save up the extra (and I'm fortunate to have extra after paying for the bare minimum), and have something beyond social security for my own retirement. That's all any individual can do.
In a group? In the US, you can vote according to who you think will run Social Security better. But in practical terms, that's a choice between bad and worse. I don't like it any more than you do, but I don't see a realistic alternative in the near future.
In the UK (or other countries)? Someone else will have to weigh in there.
This still refers to this shitty comment:
Retirement is not an age, it's a financial status.
I'm not saying you should overthrow the system tomorrow, but those seemingly witty comments that just normalise how messed up the system is just don't help.
Retirement is not a financial status. Stupid teenagers that listen to right wing podcasts may think such a remark seems smart, but it is stupid and wrong. Retirement is a necessity that stems directly from the fact that people just can't work as well at 90 as they can at 35. It's not a hard concept to grasp and the fact that society makes it hard to stop working after people worked a lifetime but can't go on anymore isn't some wisdom to understand, it's just a neocon's wet dream and should be described and treated as such.
It would be nice if everyone could be afforded some kind of retirement when they got older. You are correct, in general a 90 year old will be nowhere near productive as a 35 year old. But it would also be nice if people working full time didn't need food stamps, and if the tax rates were higher, and a whole bunch of other stuff. But that's not the world we're living in.
I have to agree with OP here, right now it IS a financial status. It's a luxury only afforded to those who have the wealth. The whole idea of "retirement" is fairly new. Even 100 years ago a 90 year old might move in with their kids, provide childcare for the grandkids, help out around the house, etc.
Just to reiterate I am on your side, retirement SHOULD be something afforded to everyone. That's just not the world we're living in.
Nah, that's all you.
how?
when most people live paycheck to paycheck, and their biggest luxury is a bobba tea once a month, how the fuck can you do anything about retirement?
the system is set up to maximize human suffering for profit.
It simply stated the reality that retirement comes from having resource access without requiring employment. That's what it is. Hearing judgement about what should be is you adding it.
it’s a mindset
30 years? It's happening right now!
no retirement savings, but at least they own the place they live
god help the next generation
My boomer mom inherited a house that was paid off and almost immediately did a reverse mortgage on it. 😔
To make necessary repairs to the house.... right?...
Um... no.
While we need* property taxes, but it absolute hammers old people in some places.
Cheaper than renting still, but on a fixed income it hurts, and especially lately there have been very high tax increases due to inflation. But then the social security increases are comparatively small.
I know quite a few old people struggling and it seems like their plan was to own their home. But that turned out more expensive than expected with maintenance and taxes. Which has just led to cyclical reverse mortgages. So the banks win in the end and ensure no transfer of wealth
*It's necessary under the current system to fund services, but if we took it from elsewhere (like the ICE of military budgets) we could greatly reduce that tax.
Easy, property tax deduction on first 50% median price and then ramp up the tax rate above 200% median and above.
A refund based on assessed median home value would tend to penalize new home buyers over existing home owners, even if the existing home owner has a house that would sell for higher. Property tax assessments rarely keep up with home valuation.
I don't quite get what you're saying. If median home is 300k and your home is 350k assessed, then you pay property tax on 200k. 500k? Then 350k. Up to 600k where it would phase out and increase instead. I don't see how that penalizes new home or first time home buyers. It subsidizes new homes with low assessment, starter homes, and downsized homes for the elderly. It penalizes homes worth more than 2x median.
Yes once a new home is fully assessed it could cost more potentially than an older home, but a good property formula solves for much of that. Usually it's based on square foot and materials, not age.
In most places in the US, the assessed value of homes that have been owned for more than a decade is significantly less than the market value of a home.
The property tax burden therefore falls more on new home buyers rather than existing home owners. Eliminating the tax on the first portion of assessed value would make this existing imbalance worse, especially if the same amount of tax needed to be raised.
It's a tricky problem.
With comps, sq ft, materials, insured rebuild value, etc... I don't see how it could be that hard or that unfair to assess. The biggest issue is actually gentrification causing unaffordability in older homes. Some people will lose, and have to move. If you have no income, but you also have a nice home, you gotta reverse mortgage or get relocation assistance.
Even if you own a house, there are still plenty of expenses, like bills, property tax, groceries, healthcare ('Murica), and the occasional small luxury to stay sane.
Modern day Social Security isn't even going to cover half of that.
It's the normalisation process.
The same thing that happens every generation to the god-awful number of people who never had hope of retiring to begin with.
Probably something like this.
Inspiring?? 😭 AAAGH!!
Okay but honestly the expression on his face kinda looks like he's one of those people that chooses to work because he prefers "working" & being out in the world seeing lots of people every day & feeling useful rather than sitting at home doing nothing.
but 103 years old?! At Walmart?! AAAGH!
Maybe it's inspiring... to behead some people that make that a reality.
I wish Luigi had been undetectable, had never been caught, and was still a free man as a superhero running around the world repeating his heroic deed to all nefarious people who deserve it.
Welcome to the future of America!
Welcome to the
futurepresent of America!
Disgusting. Contrast this with a similar story in the news of a 103 year old Italian.
The US treats its most elderly citizens as meat for the slaughter. In the future, when dystopian fiction writers reach for metaphors about true evil, they won't write retellings of german nazis or things like the Sith, it'll all be based on the late American empire.
Bold of you to assume that retirement age means anything or is some fixed time when one has to stop working, working becomes illegal or that the society is even stable enough to allow such a thing.
We're all just going to keep on working until death.
I'm 50; when I started my career pretty much everyone a little older than me had pensions and I arrived right as the pensions were being phased out. It was a running joke when they would talk about pensions and I would say "what's a pension?"
So my age group will be retiring in 15 years, not 30 years. Almost everyone I know my age has a meager 401k and nothing else.
The streets are going to be flooded with people too old to work and no retirement income in much less than 30 years...
56 here, I'm in the UK. I have 4 separate 'private pensions', from the four different companies I've worked for, adding up to fuck all. Basically I'm going to have to work until I'm 67 in order to collect my state pension of £1,049.22 a month. This will allow me to survive on cold baked beans out of a tin, before I freeze to death because I can't afford to turn on the heating.
Why do those private pensions not amount to anything?
I didn't get the benefit of a final salary pension. I have also not worked long enough at any particular company to really benefit from a big pot. The longest I've worked for one company is ten years, I think the company was paying in as little as possible. When I looked at a forecast for the pay out from that one, it was about £100 a month.
You should consolidate those 4 pensions into one pot and take more control of it. There's an extremely high chance that the employer provided pension is performing poorly and not growing as fast as it could be. They pick the lowest risk by default so growth is massively stunted.
It's pretty easy to open an account on something like vanguard and transfer those pensions in, you can then have control over how that money is invested - usually they make you pick a "risk factor" where highest risk has highest potential growth and lowest has lowest potential for crashing, but the TL;DR is over a 15 year period even if there's a crash you'll come out on top because it averages out.
Essentially what I'm saying is pool your pensions together and pick the highest risk factor for the next 8-10 years, it's a bit of a gamble but it's a better chance of that pot growing into something actually useful than you have right now.
Because a lot of pension plans are very disappointing. They for example offer a 'guaranteed' minimum intrest of up to 2 % per year, but don't forget the 'management costs' they charge. That's very very low compared to regular inflation. Pension funds exist to make pension fund managers, traders and banks rich (now, not later) and so that the government can point at them and say "it was your own responsibility!" instead of offering ALL weak and old people enough to cover basic needs. And that's to "motivate" as many people as possible to work as much as possible. If relatively young right now: you're probably better off putting money away in time deposits with higher guaranteed intrest than putting it in pension funds. Or ETF/random stock picking for those who feel lucky. The state subsidies to choose pension fund instead of time deposit or direct market investments is in many cases also misleading: you get tax cuts when depositing into the pension funds, but you get taxed when you get paid out at pension age. All differs a lot in different countries, but the core of it is pretty similar all over I think.
The pensions in the US for the generation before me were "Defined Benefit" pensions. What that meant typically is that if you worked X number of years you could retire with Y percentage of your salary. Both my grandfather and father retired that way.
Private corporations all switched to 401ks and colluded with all kinds of propagandists to convince the workers that they would be better at investing their own retirement money themselves, ya know, because they were all savvy investors.
Just based on the Google search I just did 15 seconds ago a "private pension" in the UK is the same tax-sheltered retirement savings account that gets funneled to the markets as a 401k is here in The States.
So yup, you got screwed too.
I hope they're at least Branston
"You guys are getting 401ks?"
Same thing that happens to the people who have no savings now when they reach state retirement age. They simply can't afford to, and have to continue working.
Unfortunately retirement is as much a financial state as it is an age.
It'll look like a lot of old people working themselves to death, or dying on the street AND future conservative politicians pointing backwards and saying "This is all because you voted for {insert socialist or left leading etc government here} but if we had have conserved X, Y, and Z like we said back then this wouldn't have happened. Only my conservative/far right or variant of nazi party can get us out of this trouble."
It's what they've been doing for decades, and the fucking idiots keep on believing that bullshit decade after decade.
The media isn't innocent and destruction of culture and education doesn't help either.
Don't worry, climate collapse will render industrial agriculture extremely difficult in the current form and society will collapse from there. It's really a tossup as to who gets it worse, but the whole world will be thrown into chaos and any retirement plan that you DO have will be obliterated and stolen by technocrats and before they too crash and burn.
I wish that it were any other way but every single time I see something about the climate, it is scientists discovering that things are actually happening sooner and worse than they thought. This has been happening for at least 15 years. What was once "2100 or beyond" became "by 2100" became "by the end of the century" became "around mid century" became "by 2050" became "it could happen any day. It may have already tipped over the edge"
I'm tired.
I expected more wetbulb temperatures happening everywhere by now. I no longer expect climate change alone to wipe us out.
Watch this summer in India. Idk exactly how el niño affects India but they have been getting record heat already. The el niño is going to be "record breaking" and the year was already going to be abnormally hot.
Last year, my co-workers were working in 40 degrees temperature, building a greenhouse for plants...
...I was also working on the actual production lines, which have no AC of course, as that would be too expensive.
Bold of you to assume capitalism survives the Gen X retirement 😅 when you go from families of 8+ children to 2 in one generation your existing pension mechanism and markets that require net contribution to function don’t compute.
Just keep an eye on the median age of most advanced populations that’s the clock lol
So am I dude... so am i...
Just learned there's some island town in Virginia(?) that lost like 55% of its land mass to climate change and they voted 88% republican in the last election. Seems like most people will simply not understand, even after it's too late they'll blame the wrong thing.
Kinda blackpilling but it really does seem like a large swath of the population are more akin to cattle than actual humans.
Curious because as gen z the climate change end of the world has been moving back consistently for me until about covid. My first memories was 2010 then it got pushed to 2012 then 2016, 2018, 2025, 2030, to 2040 and last I heard right before covid it back down to 2035. Could just be I was surrounded by propaganda though.
Idk what you are referring to but maybe it is the point of no return that people have been talking about? Like we have until such time to act? But they also were trying to stay below 1.5°C but now it's a pretty foregone conclusion that we will hit that this century. So now it's 2°C.
We already hit 1.5 °C...
We have been bobbing just above and then going back to a little below for a little. We haven't had a full year of 1.5°C global average. This year we will go over for good I think, though.
You're looking at cultural hysteria 'end if the world's, not the very real oncoming collapse of our biosphere.
Nutters always think the world is ending, and they e always got to push it back when their mental illness doesn't come through.
But in this case, we have models that, as they are refined, show us just how hopeful the previous "worst case" projections were.
That's why the western world is racing towards fascism.
It's either socialism or barbarism, as Rosa Luxemburg put it.
The less sustainable this economic model becomes, especially now that the overexploited nations of the Global South start emancipating themselves and the fruits of imperialism become fewer and fewer, the more state mandated violence will have to be exerted upon us by the capitalist class to keep us from organizing against them.
There will be no retirement plans for most of us. We will die working. Those that will refuse to work themselves to death will be criminalized or slowly killed by the powers that be (existing as homeless is already virtually illegal). Those that are caught living in illegality will be put in prisons and will be loaned out to companies as prison labour (already legal in the US).
That is if we don't die in another Great War just to resuscitate the powers of the empire over the Global South.
A lot of them will work shit jobs until they keel over delivering Doordash or shouting "welcome to Walmart."
Exactly the way the system was designed.
That shit already started.
oh it's gonna be a lot sooner than 30 years.
The vast majority of genx have had their retirement savings raided over and over again. 2000, 2009, covid, now - each saw people raiding their retirement to make ends meet short term. It used to work in a 'well, we pull funds out of this now but we'll be more diligent saving when times are good - "
the good times for most folks rarely came back. I know people in their late 40s and 50s who have basically nothing, and with little hope to keep their head above water, much less pour massive amounts of their income into making up for lost savings.
The great part is that they'll be blamed for it after all the shit they had stolen from them.
This is already happening. Every store in my vicinity has people who look like they should be spending time with their grandchildren doing menial service jobs.
they might be doing it because they are bored. a low key part time job is a choice some folks make just to get out of the house. don't asssume it's because they are broke.
a lot of people straight up die after they retire because they have no purpose in life anymore, leading to depression and deaths of despair. my dad died like 1.5 years after he retired because all he did was sit around, drink, and gamble.
my grandparents both volunteered and did odd jobs to keep active in retirement and lived until their early 80s thanks to that, they had plenty of money.
they might be doing it because they are bored
Both/And. Retirement is boring. Retirement when you're broke is absolutely enervating. Menial employment kinda-sorta solves both problems. Although, its as much a pox on the employer as the employee. Elderly workers don't tend to be the most motivated or the most energetic. And when you're paying a pittance, they don't want to bend over backwards for you, either.
my grandparents both volunteered and did odd jobs to keep active in retirement and lived until their early 80s thanks to that, they had plenty of money.
I mean, "plenty of money" is sort of a YMMV situation. I've got two in-laws both with less than a million in savings. One lives frugally to the point of a asceticism while the other just seems content to YOLO until he's down to whatever SS has to offer. Idk how much money they're going to need in another ten years. Nevermind another twenty. But they're both in an inflationary vice that keeps squeezing tighter with every year.
My own surviving parent spends her more generous retirement savings endlessly fixing up the four bedroom house she refuses to sell, in between routine visits to the doctor to find a cure for being old. She might actually benefit from getting out of the house to do some bullshit retail work, except she's more of a management-type personality than a worker bee. I'm not worried about her finances nearly as much her mental health. But I could see a future in which she's suckered out of a big part of her fortune, simply because someone on the TV sold her on it in a moment of weakness.
🙄
Long term, I predict a violent revolution of the young overthrowing the tyranny of the old.
Aging societies tend to divert resources from the young to the old. People vote for their own interests. When retirees outnumber parents, more money goes to retirees and less to kids. This lowers the birth rate even more and continues the spiral. In increasingly aging societies, young people face the prospect of having to pay a lifetime of ruinously high taxes (far higher than their elders did) to pay for the retirements of the old that outnumber them. And they'll do this knowing that they themselves will never have a retirement of anywhere near the quality of the retirements they're being taxed to death to fund.
Long term, we're entering a very dangerous situation in developed countries. We have a trifecta of three dangerous conditions:
- The young will be ruinously taxed to fund retirements of existing elderly, a retirement far more generous than they will ever receive.
- The young will be completely shut out of political power due to being outnumbered by the old.
- The young are the only ones actually capable of fighting in a war.
These are the conditions that historically brew revolutions. People take up arms typically when they see no hope for the future or feel they have nothing to lose. The young may not be able to outvote the old. But they certainly can outshoot the old.
As someone on the downswing of this seesaw, I welcome a rebalancing.
I think a big issue for working class folks who can even afford to prep for retirement is we don't know how much we'll need. And basically the fewer rights and social safety nets you have, the more money you need to attempt to insulate yourself from the ravages of capitalism.
If we had more socialist policies to keep everyone relatively comfortable even the poor, then working people wouldn't have to be so mercenary about building their nest egg (which will never be big enough to be totally safe anyway).
What's a "retirement age"? That's what's gonna happen.
30 years? it’s happening already! But hey at least Israel has free education and free health coverage and they are killing all their neighbors and taking their homes on our dime. It’s not like the most powerful military in history is being cucked by israel!
I truly don't know what my wife and I are going to do. I can't seem to hold down a job for more than a year at a time, and when I do have work there is nothing left beyond bills, food, and car. It's just too much.
Just cause no one else has said it yet, that sounds really rough and hang in there.
I've heard too many stories of dual-income households that still can't seem to make ends meet inspite of everything. I wish there were some answer beyond "just move" I could offer, especially when there's nothing left after bills in the first place to contribute towards an immigration plan. Take care of yourselves and I hope something manages to turn out.
Hahahahahahahahahaha
Do you think we're actually going to survive the next 30 years?
We are putting as much energy as 13 fatman bombs into the planet's environment EVERY SECOND.
The only time in the past 25 years we weren't putting energy into the system, and the earth could radiate out more energy than we put into it, was summer 2002.
Now I'm curious, what happened in summer 2002?
Nothing, but it was the first period in the last 25 years.
Big dip in the graph
Potentially a lack of air traffic, or a knock on effect of an economic crisis lowering the level of pollution,
And a bunch of people were scared to fly because of 9/11
My retirement is wandering out into the deadly heat wave so my children don’t waste water on me
So the Fallout (1997) experience?
Poverty. Mass, wide scale poverty.
Uh, we already got that mate. But I dig what you're saying.
It can always get worse.
Exactly. They think homelessness in Cali is bad? Wait until it goes nationwide. Idk what people in the northern states will do in winter tho....
Plywood cities and trashcan fires
Ahahahah, retirement?!?
That ship has sailed, hit an iceberg, annoyed a gang of killer whales, suffered a meteor impact and sunk into a nuclear testing site. It caught fire shortly after.
I'm saving for it, but deep down I know they'll find me dead in my office at 90, and give me a disciplinary for the unmarked papers.
So they can dock your last check
In 30 years? Its happening now to anyone that ever had a medical emergency or a layoff . I think the administration just made it easier for people to borrow against their already meager retirement
I've been laid off four times in 30 years of trying to have a career. I will never live to see myself get out of debt, let alone save anything to retire.
It's going to look like it does now, only with 30 more years of negligence, incompetence, corruption, and willful destruction.
Unless we change it.
Boardroom suicide bombings probably.
Count me in. If I can't retire with dignity, let me contribute meaningfully.
That's assuming that we're still here in 30 years, and not living is post apocalyptic wasteland
Climate wars are here, we just don't recognize them as such.
America is already blockading Cuba and ran a hostile takeover of Venezuela, america also destabilised Iran in the 50s or thereabouts was because they wanted to privatise and keep their own oil, so they did a bit of their 'regime change' and suddenly the heavily oppressive highly religious leader is happy to sell oil to big america.
We've been in the resource wars for a long while.
Go back just a bit further to when Britain invaded Iran for full accuracy.
I won't claim the empire was ever a good thing but that was less resources and more straight up territory landgrabbing touted as 'spreading civilisation to the colonies' (where do you think america got the idea for 'spreading democracy'-learned it right from papa britain)
Britain literally invaded Iran during WWII and found every reason to stay (well oil but ya know)
Bold of you to assume any of us will be able to "retire"
That may be bold but the idea that there will be a thirty year wait for that to happen is simply childish.
The same as every generation. The whole reason Social Security was started here in the US is because there were so many indigent old people.
And it's been running out of money since forever, I always figured I'm just paying for my mom's generation and I won't get anything but my kids think they are paying for me and I will get social security but they won't.
Whatever. It was so difficult to work while raising a family, now they are grown it's not so bad, why not work now? I could have used years off better when younger. I would happily work now to pay taxes to support younger people's retirement, and medical/parental paid leave, honestly, even if I can't personally retire.
They really need to remove the income cap on the FICA tax here. It's regressive.
They really need to remove the income cap on the FICA tax here. It's regressive.
Yep, and that's the point. It's the same reason why the rich pay a pittance in taxes and the poor van barely survive and get next to nothing from the government (which wants to take even that away).
It's the same thing we see internationally as well. It's why foreign leaders who try to care about their people are always labeled 'militia leaders' or despots, since it's easier to use thought terminating cliches instead of acknowledging how they're fighting against the colonialist and extractive "agreements" that are foisted upon them.
The point is to make the "lower class" desperate to survive so they don't have the means to better themselves and survive without them.
Hopefully we will overthrow the government by then
...any day now...
got 5 years. best get to overthrowing
Im guessing prison would make a decent retirement plan for many. Make a game of it to see how many billionaire pedophiles you can take down before they catch you. The "retirees" may even luck out and get a jury that gives a "not guilty" verdict and can then make money off a book deal or something.
If they get out a second time do you just try to beat your previous high score?
New game plus.
As if I would let anyone "catch me" if I took this road. Always save the last one for yourself.
Retirement has several meanings
There are no serious answers aside from those involving guillotines. The 1% have spent billions of dollars and decades getting things exactly how they are. Anyone that thinks voting or changing a policy will do any good is truly living in a fantasy.
Voting would’ve worked 40 years ago, but I’m thinking you’re right.
I went off a medication a couple years ago but I didn't tell anyone. I still get it filled routinely, my benefits pay for it. It's hidden away in a safe place for when it's time for me to go. I figure maybe 8 more years.
Why does life have to be this depressing?
Because greedy shitty people make us feel this way.
Thats a good way to talk about your parents
I'm Canadian.
And here I was thinking you had a side hussle going to pay for retirement.
Nobody wants to buy these meds haha.
A lot of suicides
deleted by creator
yeah, kinda like that.
Downvoted for self censorship
Isn't retirement a fairly modern idea? Didn't people in relatively recent times (say, 100 years ago) just work till they died or lived off the alms of their relatives? We got an economic boom for the boomers which allowed pensions as an invention and they used it heavily, but now the economic situation is completely different so the new generation does not stand to have the same retirement luxury.
I am by no means a historical or economic expert so I may be completely wrong.
No. That isn't how people lived. You call it "alms," but alms had a specific definition. Giving alms was giving to poor beggars in the street. Taking care of your elders was not alms. It was just something you were culturally and often legally expected to do. The Ten Commandments include "honor thy father and mother." In modern times, this tends to be read as "respect your elders." But in premodern times, this really meant, "take care of your parents when they're old." It was such a societal obligation that it was a literal commandment from God.
What really tended to happen was that children would take over family businesses, and then in turn support their parents when they could no longer work. Are you a farmer? You have kids. All of them help on the farm when they're young, but most move out when they get married. One of your kids works on the farm into adulthood and keeps doing so on the understanding they'll inherit the farm. You and they work on the farm until you're too old to work. Then they take over, and you keep living on the farm in your elder years. In these final years, you help out with whatever chores or childcare for your grandkids that you can manage.
Family businesses were the main form of retirement savings. You passed your farm, your shop, your workshop, etc to your kids. Then you lived with them in your final years. Agreeing to take care of you was a prerequisite to taking over the business.
Family businesses were the main form of retirement savings. You passed your farm, your shop, your workshop, etc to your kids. Then you lived with them in your final years. Agreeing to take care of you was a prerequisite to taking over the business.
This also plays into the business names that you'd see in the 19th century. "Keplar Masonry" might rebrand to "Keplar and Sons Masonry" and remain under that name for another 60 years until they rebrand to back to just "Keplar Masonry" because they're tired of explaining that 3 of the 4 sons have already lived fullfilling lives and passed on, it's currently actually run by the remaining son's nephew's best friend but on paper it's owned by the grandsons who are currently starting up their own plumbing business that's operated out of a spare office in the back of the masonry business
Retirement is a modern idea. But looking after the elderly or infirm in your tribe probably dates back to when we were using stone tools and living in caves.
Older folks can still look after, feed, and educate children.
Yeah I'm not sure exactly. I know in my country - Australia - we only started our compulsory retirement fund, superannuation, in 1992. Which is 12% of every paycheck goes into a retirement fund.
So the first generation who have had that their whole working lives hasn't actually retired yet! That would be some gen x's and all working millennials.
Theoretically, millennials + who have worked consistently should build up a decent super fund by the time they retire. But of course a lot happens in the world since the inception of super and it's now a thing that people can access it early to buy a house - which was never the point of superannuation, it's supposed to be locked away as a retirement fund.
So I really don't know how it's going to work long term. I know boomers who have retired with a great amount of super and yeah, the plan was that the upcoming generations should be even more better off because boomers would only have had super for like half their working life but y'know, economy changes.
A lot changes in 30 years. Hopefully for the better at some point!
It is fairly new. You used to work until you physically couldn't. And you also usually lived in a house with multiple generations all contributing. But instead of going back to that everyone is just going to load up on CC debt until they get taken to court or declare bankruptcy.
Alms of the relatives is pretty much it, buuuut retirement has been a thing for the upper middle class for a while. Just about every british story in the last few hundred years has a significant portion of their main characters 'retiring' to the country, as an example.
Go back further in history, and yeah, you're living with relatives after you can't work at your trade anymore.
pretty good here in Australia, we have superannuation which is basically like a forced savings account so when you retire you get a nice little present
Except everyone's looking for ways to spend it science covid.
There are ads on YouTube now for Self Managed Super Funds that allow you to gamble invest in stocks, ETF's & I dread to think what. Prediction markets?
Edit: super is still a pretty good idea.
For once the UK system looks ok in the world; our ’forced savings’ of ‘national insurance’ paid as a tax style deduction on wages can’t be touched till state retirement age, so you’ll get it when you retire and it’s paid monthly not a block. It used to be set at 65, now it’s on a rising rate for people retiring in the next years. I’m in a group that will need to be 67. It’ll be really basic, and a private pension is expected in addition if you want to have a nice retirement rather than just managing.
Think of super as the same, but you employer matches your forced contributions and, up to a limit, voluntary ones.
Better then, for us to get an employer contribution, at least a visible one as they pay tax on employment as well, you go to a private scheme in addition to the state one, but then that’s where some people may not have that, and be reliant on state only.
Well it's either you gamble it or you pay them to do it for you. If you just go s&p500 and vanguard world anyway might as well do it yourself and save some fees.
Industry super funds usually have super low fees and a fairly conservative investment strategy. Theres AUD$4.5trillion invested between them all
I heard you can pick and choose where your supers go, so you'd be able to actively 'vote with your wallet' by pulling it out of companies you didnt like, is that actually a thing or am I misremembering a jordies vid segment from years back?
sure is :)
I'm with Rest since they were recommended to me working at my first job and they seem pretty competitive and then yeah it's basically just the same as picking ETF's, where you go based on your risk levels you want to take, if you're young pick the riskiest, if you're older and about to retire pick the safest
I am 100% in Sustainable Growth ofc
Maximise returns over the long term by investing in a diversified portfolio with enhanced environmental, social and governance investment characteristics that is weighted towards growth assets.
https://rest.com.au/investments/options/compare#super
You can also self manage your own super but I think only around 5% of people do that
Hell yeah go help that state down south smash more renewable records and maybe the rest of your parliament will go 'hangabout ,we've got just as much sun as them, why are some of them being paid to use power during offpeak hours?'
It will look like a lot of people not retiring. Nor being able to get jobs either. Fun.
A call to system change!!
Just kidding, it's Soylent Green.
no joke. I'm pretty sure that for a significant portion of the population, their retirement plans is revolution or end of the world
My early retirement plan is suicide when my mom dies.
🫂
I joke my retirement plan is 20ft of rope. I may upgrade to a tank of nitrogen if I can afford one
You mean helium?
Helium? In THIS economy?
Nitrogen asphyxiation. It’s like cheating. You have zero clue anything at all is even happening. Sounds pretty peaceful
Ok, same as helium then.
Kinda same, regardless if I might financially survive.
Yup, not really about money, I just don't want to partake in this clown show anymore.
Ahh the Smith & Wesson retirement plan, classic.
Respect for waiting until your mom goes. I've heard it's best to wait until your parents are gone, if you can.
She's had a tough enough life, I couldn't do that to her..
End of the world As you know it*
high capacity morgues, crowded street people camps, lucky ones living with their kids
Just ask the Chileans that started retiring in the 2010s what will happen in 30 years
I see a couple of possibilities:
They're not going to retire. As they age, if they don't land on a lifelong career and progress the ladder at least a little bit, they'll get to work in physically demanding jobs which will destroy their body and they'll die before traditional retirement ages, or just at where older gens would retire. If they do land into some kind of lifelong career, they'll just work till they die. Think: 85 year old programmers looking up how for loops work again...
Another fun possibility is that they will retire after having started saving at a later date but having no children.
Another one is having small savings and moving to poor countries, Africa may see an influx of such persons once South East Asian countries stop letting them in.
Still time for revolutions and complete changes of systems following armed revolts or wars though..
many possibilities ahead.
Yeah that first one is what it was like before social safety nets and pensions were a thing for those who didn't have kids that could support them. It was enough of a problem to cause things to be changed
once South East Asian countries stop letting them in
Why would SEA countries stop letting tourists in?
If they don't want people living long term on tourist visas, just copy Japan's model and say no if someone is obviously doing visa runs.
They were talking about immigrants, not tourists.
It looks like pensioners digging through the trash to survive, ala any post Soviet nation.
I should retire in 23 more years but the truth of the matter is I'm going to work until the day I die, probably at the same hospital where I currently work. Maybe I'll eventually be a nurse but when I'm too old to do patient care I'll stay on as a sitter until I croak or go senile.
Same brother. 43 years old here and it’s looking bleak. :(
There used to be stories about grandma eating cat food to get by. So probably something like that.
I think she just had a taste for it.
It's gonna be like skid row in LA but in every town in America. Idk might be kinda fun, I'll definitely try to make the best of my golden years.
I already encounter way more old people in poverty than the alternative. They certainly seem to outnumber the ones doing well.
If you worry about that, wait until you see the current AI slaughter
I'm in the tech sector looking for a new job
300+ resumes sent so far, got a single intro call
5 Tara ago I had more calls than resumes sent, as recruiters picked up. Now? nothing
If I lose my current job, I'll basically have the option to become homeless or move to another country
Fun times
the current AI slaughter
That's not A(rtificial) I(ntelligence). That's A(ctually) I(ndonesian).
Chevron just laid off its IT department and sent all the jobs to call centers in East Asia, and it is going exactly as bad as you might expect. My own company tried to eliminate its DBA office and send the work to a subcontractor of a subcontractor. It's now the worst performing department in the office.
This isn't a new policy. I've worked at half a dozen firms who have all tried to outsource their work to save a buck. And it saves maybe half a buck, then starts costing them their clients in droves.
5 Tara ago I had more calls than resumes sent, as recruiters picked up. Now? nothing
I don't know how long a Tara is, but that sounds pretty nice for you. I remember the '08 and '14 and '21 IT markets being particularly rough. But then the rebound had people getting vacuumed up out of middling back office positions with five figure signing bonuses and 50% salary adjustments.
The prediction of The End Of All The Jobs gets made on the eve of every downturn. Then we get a slew of "Nobody Wants To Work Anymore" apoplexy from the business community when they realize they cut into their own bones and can't function properly anymore.
If I lose my current job, I’ll basically have the option to become homeless or move to another country
Unemployment claims typically last 26-52 weeks by state. If you're that worried about making rent, might want to downgrade your unit now rather than waiting for the pink slip. But also, consider that the COVID layoff/rebound wave was measured in months and - thanks to the wave of Boomer retirements - resulted in a labor market tighter than when it began. Generally good for anyone looking for a raise or a bigger bonus.
Climate change, advanced medical technology + health insurance incentives, political unviability/unsustainability of the federal government (in the US), and automation/AI will make retirement fundamentally different by then.
People in the rural areas or red states will basically be living in third world countries and will almost certainly be left behind as they demographically decay and become even more rabidly rightwing. They will continue to have outside influence on the federal government due to the mechanics of our electoral system, hollowing it out to the point of absurdity (even beyond what they've already done). However, because of the general incompetence stemming from this, the federal government itself will increasingly lose leverage over the economic powerhouse blue states. Workers who are still in rural areas or red states will basically become serfs and never afford to be able to escape to more functional areas of the country once this transition is complete. When climate related famines start happening, they will die off at the highest rates, but because of automation it will be unlikely to meaningfully disrupt the economy.
People will be forced to mass migrate away from the most dangerous climate areas and because the federal government is basically locked systematically into being eternally dysfunctional now, state level balkanization is inevitable. Likely resulting in Seattle, New York City, & most significantly Chicago becoming major city-states within a barely functioning federal system that they can largely just ignore outside the military and currency, using their massive economic leverage to negotiate their own sovereignty as well as influence surrounding more right-wing poor states laws with their own internal trade regulations.
Except California and other south western blue/purple states, whose fate is questionable due to climate change.
Automation and AI will fundamentally alter the job economy. White collar work will continue to exist but will pay barely any better than a basic service job and AI use will be mandatory/expected. Service jobs will exist but only in luxury spaces where people pay for human interaction in their dining and shopping experiences. Factory, farming, transport, will all become heavily automated and virtually cease to exist as jobs sectors. Leaving largely repair/mechanic/plumbing/hvac & construction (though even these job sectors will shrink with automation) as some of the only options left. Technology, Healthcare, and Legal services will continue to exist as high paying career paths for the lucky few but all the entry and mid-level stuff will get shrunk to basically nothing.
One of the few silver linings in terms of retirement itself & getting old: For people living in the more functional parts of the US (mainly in major cities in climate refuge zones) Government incentives to avoid having to pay out retirement when intersecting with currently rapidly advancing geroscience & birthrate decline will likely mandate anti-aging treatments. Most people will legitimately significantly live longer and healthier as aging's impacts are significantly mitigated and even partially reversed but they will likely be trading this for retirement and will be probably expected to work until death. And a huge chunk of their income will go straight to health insurance companies who are also incentivized to mandate anti-aging treatments to even qualify for health insurance as anti-aging treatments will probably be cheaper and more profitable than treating the pathology of aging (cancer, heart disease, diabetes, etc) which tends to lose them money. Make no mistake, everyone here is evil, they are just are the pragmatic kind of evil who'd rather exploit your labor indefinitely than have to spend a bunch of money paying to keep a patient alive who will never work again. But this will result in people living decades longer at least and in relatively good health... you'll just never stop working. Ever.
We will basically live in a strange mostly-dystopic lightly-utopic US that is likely very alien to the one we currently live in.
yup, and we're just starting to see the beginning; the oil shock caused by the pointless trump debacle in iran is already hitting farmers trying to fertilize fields, it's going to have multiple waves of effect in the coming months when those crops are blighted by an increasingly hostile climate, then when the farmers don't have enough resources to harvest their crops and get them to market.
we're just at the beginning and shit's about to get real.
And almost all of it is self inflicted.
I feel like you'd enjoy FutureTimeline, or maybe already do
Oh I know what they will do, they will tax the young more and "save" the old with the money
Hopefully we'll vote better.
Soo prime for revolution
Its gonna look like either a revolution now, or soylent green in 30 years.
Given what choice everyone's been making lately, or rather lackthereof, I do not like those odds lol
Split the difference and figure out how to make pizza with crickets and ants instead of cured meats.
Is this really you irl?
Well let's not presume to know, instead ask yourself which two groups of society won't care at all:
Rich people won't care because their children will have inherited enough to be set for retirement.
The children of rich people, because their parents were able to save for retirement.
Well and those who earn a decent living because their parents were rich and able to provide a decent education which allows staying above the current job market Like me.
I won't be able to afford a house ever. But if I prioritize earning over my health its gonna be enough. But I already have to choose between providing a decent education for my three children or retire at more than the absolute minimum.
FUCK
I know this sort of thing usually happens in a form such that the OP sees the meme already edited on another site where censorship is a concern and then shares the image without modification because finding the original is a pain, and I don't blame the OP for it, but man is it an annoying cultural phenomenon.
Mass suicide
I can't believe it took thos long for someone to say it. We're gonna be throwing kool-aid parties in each other's backyards.
Pain, suffering, indignity, and death.
ITT: people who are just realizing why democrats and republicans are working together to enslave Americans.
you will never retire and will die happy knowing your life was in servitude of the ruling class.
Same thing it looked like when my parents did it
Well this has been happening for decades already so its not that hard to figure out how that will look like
Just look at the US
Tent camps on parking places, that sort of stuff
Heroin overdose is my retirement plan at 70-80 depending on my health.
Everyone here in full time employment gets auto enrolled on a private pension when they start work and companies legally have to pay in. If and when they move to a new employer, that pension remains in place and their new employer must either add a new one or pick up the existing one. Been like this since about 2010.
A massacre
3/4 millennials have retirement savings, a minority don't, but that is true of every generation.
I'm pretty sure I'll be selling candies at a bus station just to stay alive.
Oh hey that's me. Wup Wup.
Thankfully I love my job dying while doing it kinda gives me a warm fuzzy feeling.
Stay positive.
Tweakers Geographic https://duckduckgo.com/?q=tweakers+geographic&ko=-1&ia=web
Probably like this: https://youtu.be/n-gYFcVx-8Y
Maybe that generation should do something about it. Get elected. Change things.
Too many boomers. Can't get the voting block.
So they keep draining funds for themselves and leave nothing for the rest of us.
Of course the bigger problem is the corporations and 1%. Need to tax them (except they're boomers) fml
As of early 2026, Millennials (ages 30–45) and Gen Z (ages 18–29) together make up nearly 40% of the eligible voting block in Canada. While Baby Boomers (ages 61–80) remain a potent force, they no longer hold the single largest share of the electorate.
Btw the boomers are dying fast. Then it's all yours.
Can't be fast enough tbh
Instead of blaming them for struggling and saving maybe you should do the same
Time for Boomer Remover 2, Electric Bugaloo
the real reason they let us have guns is so that we can afford to retire
American?
I'm can officially retire in about 13yrs or so. Probably not getting much anyway as I maybe worked a year in toto my whole life. As I unofficially retired in my mid 20s and luckily don't need to worry and will donate my governmental retirement-funds.
But comparing the newer generations with e.g. the boomers or ealier is sickening. How much would one need to work in a well-paying job just to be able to live semi-comfortably in retirement? And what if you're us-american or from some other semi-civilized country...the world sucks.
Ikr! They should just try being positive and writing in their gratitude journals about it!
That'll sure fix everything /s
And what does your utopian vision of the future look like, based on our current trajectory? Or are you in the camp of "there's 8 billion of us someone smart will figure it all out"?
Nice cop out
What's even funnier is the people my age or younger without kids thinking there's going to be some magical person to take care of them as they get older.
Jesus people are deluded. I get many of you don't want kids. Good fucking luck expecting the system or strangers to take care of you 🤣🤣🤣
You assume your kids are going to be your care takers? What makes you think your kids won't move away?
I never said that, but statistically and anecdotally when you get older your first line of support is your family. When you have no family you have no first line of support.
Children are a shitty retirement plan.
Never said they were.
No but you implied that they were
Statistically and anecdotally, if you only make children so they will take care of you when you're old, they will ditch your sorry ass at the fist opportunity.
Never said that but if you don't have them everyone around you is going to die unless you're lucky enough to die early. With no kids and a government that doesn't give a shit and no money what's your plan? Lol
Are you just an inconvenienced millionaire right now waiting for your day to be rich?
Never said that
You did say that, there is no other reason for you to make that comment. If you wanted to say something else, perhaps that was a bit of unconscious talking. Anyway, I am not selfish and psychotic enough to see kids as my retirement plan, so thanks but no thanks.
Hi, I'm part of the system of strangers that takes care of the elderly in America. Most of them do have children, and are abandoned to the system. They are in a similar position to those without, but there are some whose families do still visit at the facility, and those do tend to be the ones doing the best.
It's iust a general trend though. Exceptions exist on both sides
The one who is deluded is you. First, you definitely can't guarantee your kids will live in the same town as you when you are retired and need help. Second of all, having kids costs a shitload of money. This money you can use instead to build up savings so that later in your life you can afford to hire someone to take care of you.
Life costs money and poor people are fine having kids. People really need to stop that excuse.
I stand by what I said. Statistically and anecdotally if you have no family you are relying on the state and strangers. The state specifically in America can no longer be trusted and strangers don't give a shit without a paycheck. You planning on being rich?
So you're gonna pretend friends and neighbors don't exist? Lol. Pretending the only two options for a support system is your immediate family or the state is kind of a wild.
Lol. So let me get this straight. Your neighbour is going to drop everything to take you to a hospital appointment? Friends? I love whatever magical world you live in.
Let's flip the question. Your parents get sick. They're retired. Fixed income. What are you doing?
I know for me my sister and I have been juggling taking time off work to run them to appointments (note there are a lot of fucking appointments). I don't think you or any young person is truly appreciating what is involved with taking care of our elders.
It's wild that's that you seem to think "helping your neighbor" means dropping everything and catering to their every whim. This is a very warped view of the world. Did a narcissistic parent "teach you" that love means catering to their every whim and your life comes second to theirs or something? Maybe it's some other deep-seeded emotional issue that is skewing your perspective.
I would absolutely drive a friend to a doctor appointment, or watch their kids when they go out of town, or help them move. That's why they are called "friends". And if I drove a friend to the doctor a couple times, but they always refused to help me, then I would no longer consider them my friend.
Maybe you just don't have a good support network near you so you assume it's the same for everybody else.
Perhaps you don't understand the limits of elderly people and what they need including help with appointments, getting meds, groceries, etc especially when they don't live in a city center.
Seems that you're the narcaccist only thinking of your own narrow worldview.
Would you help a friend or neighbour in that same scenario when it's 2 appointments a week? 6 times a month? When the hospital or doctor is 30 minutes to an hour away?
I appreciate your optimism and it's possible you may do this. You're the exception not the norm.
If you can't get out of your narrow mindset to see this that's not on me. Best of luck in the future. I hope I'm wrong but a lot of you child free adults are going to be absolutely fucked when you're elderly.
Every accusation is a confession, you narcissist. Again you're showing your hand by assuming only elderly can take of elderly people for some reason?.. I bet your parents are horribly narcissistic too, probably contributed to your horribly warped world view. I'd say have a nice day, but I'm sure you could never see it that way.
Jesus Christ you're deluded. You're doubling down in every way possible to justify the fact that when you get old you're fucked. I can't help that and whatever you need to do to rationalize that it's on you.
This is not just you. Every single one of you childfree people have a reckoning unless you can get society to double down on communal care which is currently not the norm.
Were you even an adult during COVID? Did you see it decimate old people in retirement homes like a cattle farm? The safest elderly were the ones in the care of their loved ones outside of being dumped in a long term care facility.
Best of luck.
Every accusation my friend :)
You believe that when people get old they are fucked. And you just assume I don't have kids because I pointed out there's more support than just the state and immediate family. Hell, if you're part of a church that's another level of support.
Family, friends, church, neighbors, immediate family, extended family... these are all layers of support. Somehow you think I'm trying to say that means they will 100% always be available for my use (sounds like your narcissistic protection here). When in reality each layer is meant to help insulate, but not completely eliminate, the need to go it alone. Yes, at the end of the day we are alone and only have ourselves to rely on, but that doesn't have to be the only way you live, contrary to what you seem to think.
Just because you have no support system doesn't mean everyone in the world is the same. Maybe you're angry that other people have robust support networks while you don't. Idk.
I think I see it now. You have a parent who has no support system other than you and your sibling(s). Which then forces you to bend over backwards catering to them cuz you love them, they're your parent. But you get resentful you have to do all this work for them though. You think "they wouldn't be able to survive without me". Which then gets extrapolated to "anybody without kids won't be able to survive on their own". And you can't vent this frustration to the person you're caring for so it comes out online.
It's your parent that has basically no support system, not you. But even people with kids can have no support system, having a kid doesn't automatically mean they will care for you in old age.