Home Forums Hunting & Shooting Hunter's Campfire How does your 401K compare to your age-group's average?

Don't have much 457 money left, under $20k. Spent it all on home improvements and a new truck when I retired 10 years ago. Not to worry, I worked 32 years in a job that was covered by one of the healthiest public employee pension systems in the country. Between my pension and S.S. I receive more than when I was working. Same for wifey, she worked for a private corporation and receives a pension check monthly, the insurance company had a matching 401k account, so she has a separate nest egg there, a county pension after 15 years, and S.S.. It required a lot of discipline and hard work to survive all the injuries and illnesses from working, and fortunately the medics found the tumor that was paralyzing me from the neck down. Now I am fine, but still grumpy. My father died when I was 10, leaving my mother hard pressed with twenty-two cents in her purse, she went to work and died at age 67 without respite. I decided that wouldn't happen again.

The time of the pensioner is about past.

Outside of government or union jobs, very few companies still have a defined benefit retirement plan.

Oh, that's utter rubbish. People can't save for themselves without .GOV holding their hand?

I've never had a pension of any kind, been self employed for 20 years, divorced, and still have over three times the average in IRA's. That's not counting the value of my business, etc.

There's lots of people that have the opportunity to save through self directed retirement arrangements like 401K's or Simple IRA's, and choose not to. I've had to physically wrangle some of my employees into signing up and contributing the minimum of our Simple IRA plan.

Usually, people are their own worst enemy, and very few can pass up the opportunity to throw their money at some ridiculous car payment rather than their own future.

What's rubbish? That defined benefit plans are being replaced by defined contribution plans?

Did you read the post?

I have a different view on retirement than most. I love saving money, but I'm not really saving it for myself. I also like being as efficient as possible. Efficiency for me is lowering my "cost to live" as much as possible, by prioritizing money to areas where it will bring me the most joy. I'm willing to give up going out to eat, having a new wardrobe on a regular basis, having newer vehicles, having cable tv, having a smart phone, etc if it means that I can have a good boat, a good house, and live in an area where I can hunt/fish to my hearts content and still save towards retirement and pay down the house to nothing.

My plan is to have my "cost to live" at around 25k a year by the time I'm 40, AND have everything I need/desire to hunt/fish in Alaska. I plan on living that lifestyle through "retirement" and hope to hand down a huge nest egg to my daughters when we pass. I have a few good friends who have done this. They look poor, act poor when it comes to spending money, drive beat up old rigs, but they live in 400k houses that are paid off and never have to fret one bit about money.

The premise of the post:

"The time of the pensioner is past".

Did you read the post?

Pensioners = those who worked for a company that provided a defined benefit retirement plan, aka a pension.

Very few companies still offer pensions. Very few. Nearly all have moved to defined contribution plans, aka a 401k, 403, IRA, or something very similar.

The time of pensions is past. My father, both grandfathers, and nearly everyone of that generation retired with a pension. I will retire with a 401k, IRA, and other investments.

You are correct and the few companies that still have huge workforces with pensions are doing everything they can to buy them out. We just offered 100k employees an an early out plan in exchange for what was promised 20 and 30 years ago. And even those who retired with a pension have been moved to an alternative health plan.

Pensions as we knew them are almost completely a thing of the past.

Yep, the CEO's got rid of pensions for everyone but themselves and their cronies. They've also convinced peons that they don't need unions because the company will be benevolent.
PS- A million dollars will give you about $40K a year to live on.

I do not buy this at all. I work for the #2 oil company in the world and will soon be retiring with a defined benefit pension after 30 years of employ. About 15 years ago the company started to offer the "portable" retirement plan as an option. For one, we could not attract experienced hires because they would receive little from the defined benefit plan and often only begin to collect it at age 65, later than many planned to work. The choice was yours though. Over the years more and more new hires were selecting the portable option as most do not believe or even want to work for the same company for their entire career. Finally in 2013, because 90% of the people were choosing the portable option, the defined benefit option was dropped. I forget the exact numbers but these days folks are expected to change companies 5+ times in their career.