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In the pattern for these articles, the WSJ features vignettes for a selection of people that fit the focus criteria. It begins with a graphic that was somewhat revealing to me (mainly as I don't look at these stats often) - only about 3.2% have retirement savings of 1M and more and only 0.1% have retirement savings of 5M or more.
The vignettes feature:
65 YEARS OLD - PAUL SHEMWELL - Single. Annual spending $144K. 6.1M, recently retired. "...hasn’t mapped out a flight plan for what comes next.
61 AND 60 YEARS OLD - JAY AND ANITA MYER. ANNUAL SPENDING - $130K. 4.2M. "...decision to retire early was partly inspired by his stepfather, a small-business owner who enjoyed traveling and spending time with grandchildren.
72 YEARS OLD - HENRY HWU - ANNUAL SPENDING - $250K - Still works. "...Hwu travels up to three months a year, visiting his 98-year-old mother in Taiwan or exploring Scotland, France, Germany, Japan and Switzerland.
80 AND 75 YEARS OLD - BOB AND PAT FREY - ANNUAL SPENDING - $220. “We have more money than we can spend in our lifetimes.”
One of the takeaways for me is that people who accumulate substantial retirement savings the old fashioned way do so by living modest lifestyles in their pre-retirement years. And, their spending habits do not change dramatically when they retire. Some of them still work for satisfaction. We are well above in retirement savings than this cohort, still work and our plans in retirement are not a big departure from what we do now.
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Last edited by toosie; 08-28-2023 at 05:31 AM..
Reason: added mod note about TOS Copyright
Note, they are only counting assets in tax-deferred accounts. It does not include bank deposits, taxable brokerage accounts, rental properties, etc. Then there are people with pensions who may have never felt the need to save much in their 401k/403b/etc.
Last edited by toosie; 08-28-2023 at 05:01 AM..
Reason: Edited out deleted post
I find it hard to believe 49.5% have saved zero for retirement. If so, yikes!
I know people who want nothing at all to do with financial markets. They have all their investment money in rental houses. These people are counted as having zero retirement assets for the article.
There's another category of people who don't trust the 401k system, believing that the government is going to ultimately screw them over in such an account. I have a friend in this camp. I'll bet he's got more than $5M, but very little of that is in "retirement" accounts.
My dad was a farmer. Most of the assets are in the form of farmland, and my mom still collects rent from leasing the land.
Sure, there are a lot of folks who haven't saved anything for retirement, but the situation is not as bad as articles like this suggest.
I find it hard to believe 49.5% have saved zero for retirement. If so, yikes!
Probably a lot of them have decent sized pension and SS checks. We did a round about with this on another thread where it was debated whether or not a guaranteed future monthly pension could be considered an asset or not.
So that would exclude real estate, off shore holdings and pensions. Hmmm.
It would exclude anything outside a tax-deferred account, such as checking accounts, money market funds, on-line high-yield savings accounts, any mutual funds, iBonds, Treasury securities, any stocks, and corporate and municipal bonds.
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