Home Forums Hunting & Shooting Hunter's Campfire "Boomers" have dismal retirement investments.

Let's go people, get focused and get to work!

http://blogs.marketwatch.com/encore/2014/09/18/dismal-fed-data-on-retirement-saving/

Boomers ain't the smartest group of people I've come across.



Travis

hard to help too, as they diagnose their own problems or completely ignore them.

I would love to meet with 4 of them a day and help them get turned around but it's a crapshoot

I'm a boomer and I'm set. My kids might suffer, but that's on them.

I'm betting alot of the over 55 group cashed out in fear at the 2008 market low, so they "wouldn't lose it all", and promptly missed the bull market from then til now.

They don't care. They have voted in nothing but socialists to take care of their spoiled azzes since Day One.

Yes, there are some conservative "boomers", but the majority are outright socialists. The "greatest generation" (and I HATE that moniker, because they were not) gave us the worst.

4ager, I'm a "boomer" and I don't know a single soul my age who is an outright socialist. Perhaps you missed something, but it was my generation that elected Reagan.

As to the OP, my wife and I have been building our nestegg since 1972. If the rating scale is correct, we are solidly in the topmost 5% of net worth.

Why invest in a retirement account? I have Social Security.







(Now where's that fat, dumb and happy icon? )

Most people in most generations are stupid, lazy and don't have sufficient retirement investments.

True, but there are a LOT of "boomers" and not a lot of the rest of us working to support them.

Too many with the attitude of "well, I might die early". Well, that's all fine and dandy until you don't die. Statistically, you won't die before retirement.

Saving should happen early in life. You should have at least 100k in investments before the age of 35. You should add to it monthly, and let compounding interest do what it does.

I am amazed that so many people that have the means (income) to save and invest, don't. This is also frightening as the US will probably not let people starve in the US and that means the US tax payer (us) will be paying up in the form of new or increased taxes!

I find it interesting that the story is about research from the Federal Reserve. The Fed keeping interest rates at near zero for a 6 plus years is really helping those retirement investments. Like Rocky, we have been saving and investing for decades and will be fine. In addition, we operated on the presumption that SS would be gone by the time we were eligible. That will be a bonus. I also think the focus on IRA's and 401Ks overlooks the fact that some have as much invested in taxable financial assets. We made a decision many years ago to hedge our bets and split our retirement funding between IRA's and after tax investing. We knew we would lose some tax shielded appreciation, but balanced that off against having some withdrawals that are not ordinary income. We just wish we could have invested more in Roth IRAs.

Trav, the best part of being a boomer is having you pay my social security while I go wolf hunting in Idaho next week. Thank you very much. The reality is that my gen fugged things up compared to our parents. I hope you guys learned from our mistakes.

P.S. It was those other guys that screwed up, I was awesome.

mike r

Lets just run some realistic math.

Start working at the age of 16. Save 2k a year till 23. Pay your way through college too.

That gives you a net worth of 12k. Not much, but a start.

Get a job, get married, have kids, buy a house, etc. Still manage to save and average of 7k a year during these years. Very reasonable to do. You have it in a variety of bond/muni funds averaging 6% a year.

By the time you hit 35, you have a nice 149k tucked away. Sure you pay taxes on it. You pay taxes on that dividend income.

Now, you have 30 years until retirement. You invest in a variety of index, mutual funds, and closed end mutual funds. You earn an average of 7% a year. Easy to do. You reinvest all dividends.

Now you add just 10k a year, for the next 30 years. That's it. You can live pretty high on the hog only saving 10k a year. You ride the markets up and down, you don't touch it, don't panic, and don't listen to a bunch of fools on the internet.

By the time you hit 65, you have a total of 2.3 million in investments.

Retire. Put in good income funds, making an average of 7%.

That would give you an annual income of 161k, or 13.4k a month. (taxed of course) Of course you'll be debt free. Sun City AZ and other retirement communities are full of people who live on income fund dividends. They figured it out! That's how they do it. Principle stays the same. People who don't figure out it retire in a medicaid retirement home.

Now, why don't they teach how easy that is in schools? Nothing about it is very hard. It's not hard to save money.

YES! amen brother! they are the ones who put us right where we are today. they can lay the blame where they want, but it sits square on their shoulders.




everything is easy to say..... my generation will never see SS, yet we will pay into it our whole lives. the job market sucks and there is virtually no growth in this economy. in 30 years everything you just said will be a bigger pipe dream than it is now. we face higher taxes and a weaker dollar. real estate is high compared to past decades. every retiring boomer out there wants to buy 10-40 acres to get away from all the other people. and it will only get worse. I would like to live in your world though! sounds peachy!

People back in the 60's and 70's said the same thing. Those who made excuses are now rotting in a crappy medicaid/medicare nursing home.

Sure, you could be right.. but it'll really suck if you are wrong.

BTW, you could easily do what I described above on less than a 60k salary.

Says the guy that waited till his 30's to get laid and ain't been hit by the pavement yet.

I have a feeling that there will be a great cry from those that didn't save to take from those who were 'lucky enough' to have saved.

I've fathered 2 children, have a solid marriage, have a job I love, and I live exactly where I want to live. Tell me again how much better your life choices has made your life? Why exactly should you be the standard in judging anything or why should anybody aspire to be like you?