There are also those of us who’ve luckily been successful enough to get beyond paycheck-to-paycheck, but then every single medical event or bit of unemployment eats through their entire savings - repeatedly. Despite budgeting, saving, investing, and maxing the 401k, I’ve never been able to get near ‘on-track for retirement’. Especially with the cost of health care, what would probably be a week’s pay (or less) anywhere else in the civilized world costs an entire life savings here. The game is rigged so that by the time we get to retirement age, none of us will have any money even if we’ve saved assiduously throughout our entire lives.
To what degree do we blame people for not saving when we all know that they’re almost guaranteed to lose their savings if they do?
I can. They were born and raised and told their entire lives that “If you do this, you’ll get that.” and they did this, but then the that was yanked away from them. The cake is a lie.
Pensions are like mythical beings these days, but was this ever really an option? I’ve never heard of someone being able to opt out of paying Social Security. Other than by being unemployed, in which case they’d be retiring from unemployment. How did unemployed people get private pensions?
