The United States financial system is facing a retirement crisis of unprecedented magnitude in the coming years. Social Security and Medicare are both on the verge of collapse, and both private and public pension funds all over America are massively underfunded. Now new data is revealing that the number of Americans who have virtually nothing saved up for retirement continues to grow at a rapid pace. According to the Employee Benefit Research Institute’s annual Retirement Confidence Survey, the percentage of American workers who have less than $10,000 saved for retirement has grown to 43%. The number of American workers who say that they have less than $1,000 saved for retirement has grown to 27%. But perhaps this should be no surprise considering the fact that tens of millions of Americans are just trying to figure out how to get through each month financially. After all, it is really hard to plan for retirement when you can barely pay your mortgage.
Retirement has always been portrayed as the “golden years” at the end of the American Dream. But for millions of Americans the goal of retiring comfortably is farther away then ever.
In fact, an increasing number of Americans are having to delay retirement. The survey also revealed that 24% of American workers say that they have postponed their planned retirement age in the past year. This figure was way up from 14% in 2008.
But even if millions of Americans won’t prepare for retirement, won’t Social Security take care of them?
Don’t count on it.
The truth is that the Social Security and Medicare programs are absolute financial disasters. Just check out this short video….
Social Security and Medicare are not going to be there in the future like they are today.
We have created a system which is fundamentally unsustainable. There is simply not going to be enough money in the future to pay out Social Security and Medicare benefits like we are doing today.
If you are under 50, you should not count on Social Security being there for you in the future. It still may exist when you retire, but it will likely only provide enough for you to eat dog food and live in a shack.
If you are under 40, you should not count on ever being able to retire unless you can finance it by yourself.
In fact, we all need to start learning how to take care of ourselves. The welfare state is falling apart, and we cannot trust that it will be there for us in the future.
Now is the time to get out of debt, build new streams of income and become as financially independent as possible. The American Dream is dying and very hard economic times are ahead.
You better get ready.