Why Americans Are "Pleasantly Suprised" in Retirement

Added: 2026-06-01

[00:00:00]Why Americans are pleasantly surprised in retirement. This really shouldn't shock you, but I'm sure for many of you it will who've been following the stupid mainstream media. So, we're going to look at this right here from Gallup. Why Americans are pleasantly surprised in retirement and Gallup is of 2024 they did the survey. Um and they've been doing the survey for 23 years and they said three in four retired Americans say they have enough money to live comfortably.

[00:00:26]Consistent with our 23-year time that we've been doing this.

[00:00:31]The [snorts] generally positive picture of retirement contrast with the more negative expectations of those who've yet to retire.

[00:00:37]>> [snorts] >> Just about half of non-retirees say they'll have enough money to live comfortably when they retire. Much lower than experience reported by the retirees themselves. Now, Gallup they they kind of talked mostly about the the surprise of Social Security. Expectations of Social Security being a a major part of income versus reality.

[00:00:56]But I actually it's more than that. It's not just I mean look, we that's a good thing. People say, "Oh, I got more Social Security than I expected." I guarantee though they also pay a lot less tax than expected. Those are all good things. I don't think it's a big one. I think the big reason for people being more happy in retirement is just right here. This is from the Board of Governors of the Fed.

[00:01:14]Ban the Fed. I love the Fed. Uh the distribution financial accounts and this is updated for 2025 Q4 2025 where the Survey of Consumer Finances only comes every 3 years and the new SCF will come out in October 2026 which I can't wait.

[00:01:29]But we'll use the DFA for the time being. Still good. You can still download the data and all that stuff.

[00:01:32]It's fantastic. Um and what we're going to do is we're going to look at total wealth. Actually, let's look at Actually, I want to start here.

[00:01:39]Liabilities. We're going to look at total liabilities per generation going back to 1989. All right? And we're going to show you something. This is in actual dollars, not inflated dollars. So, if you see Well, I'll show you. You'll see the Silent Generation in that ugly green right there had 1.27 of total liabilities in 1989. That's in 1989 dollars. Fast forward to 2026, they got 0.46 trillion of liabilities in 2026 dollars. All right, so you can see they're basically debt free by and large relative to where they were, you know, 35 36 years ago.

[00:02:18]The baby boomer had 1.83 trillion of liability in 1989. And now they got, oh my goodness, 4.3. So Josh, they've taken all this extra debt. No, you're missing the point. 1989, the baby boomers, my mom was the earliest of the early cohorts of baby boomers. She was born in April 1946.

[00:02:37]Baby boomer generation is 1946 and 1964.

[00:02:41]My mom in 1989 was 42 years old, all right? So she still had two kids in the house. She was not an empty nester. I'd just gone in the army. So in 1989, I was uh private E-1 in the infantry. My my brother and sister still lived at home.

[00:02:57]So she was at the back of the front end of the baby boomers. You get what I'm saying? But a lot of these baby boomers had yet to form have family formations what not. So what So this is not I want to say misleading, but it's not really a great uh way to look at the baby boomer debt because what's happened the baby boomer debt's growing and growing and growing.

[00:03:16]So by the year 2000, you can see that 3.75 trillion in debt.

[00:03:21]But actually, look at this. By 2008, the baby boomers had a 6.49 trillion in debt in 2008 dollars. What they got now?

[00:03:31]4.29 in debt in 2025 dollars.

[00:03:34]Interesting. So I am a Gen was a Gen X, all right? So my first child was born right there in the year 2000. And uh I was 30 years old at that stage. So I was on, again, the older part of Gen X. I was born in 1970. But not like my mom was at beginning of Gen X, but I was the older part of Gen X, but still we're really probably right about there is where our most of us are family having family formations whatnot. By then, this point right here, I had four children, and so I'm probably representative of where we mostly were in debt at this stage. We had $4.92 trillion in debt in 2008 and now how much we got?

[00:04:14]6.91. See, George said take on more debt, but watch this. 6.88, 6.84, 6.86, 6.92. What? So, in 2024, we had more debt than we do now. 6.9 in 2023, 5 6.6.

[00:04:29]The percentage of our accumulating debt is grow is dropping is decelerating. So, what's going on here? The Silent Generation, they just like all generations, they take on debt while they're building a family, levels off, and then it slowly goes down, and then it rapidly goes down. Baby Boomer is the beginning of the rapid dissension of debt, beginning of that. So, Silent Generation basically has no debt. Baby Boomer still has some debt, but it's dropping like a brick in water. My generation is right there at the cusp of leveling off. We're on the precipice looking down and seeing little and little debt.

[00:05:04]And so, what happens is you get in retirement, you're like, "Ooh, I don't have any debt. I don't have to pay for braces. I don't have to pay for five meals, all this stuff." And all of a sudden, you're like, "I just don't spend that much money. My debt's paid off. I can downsize my house. A lot of us don't even have mortgages anymore."

[00:05:20]I don't have as much debt as I had.

[00:05:23]Yeah, social security is a bigger number than you expect expected, for sure. And your taxes are a lot less than expected, but at the end of the day, what lets you sleep at night?

[00:05:32]It's your lack of debt. And that's why you're pleasantly surprised. It's just it's the life cycle model of all economics. We've all done this for years. Your spending is down here at nothing when you're first starting out, you take on debt to buy a house, to buy furniture, to pay for a diapers, the whole thing, and you're like, "Oh my goodness, I'm stressed out." You hit a plateau where I'm at right now and then slowly starts being paid off. And then all of a sudden just like that, a massive acceleration in debt payments.

[00:05:59]That's why retirees or Americans are pleasantly surprised at retirement. And they don't talk about that. They don't talk about less taxes in that article and they don't talk about debt being paid off. And I'm surprised by that cuz yes, of the three-headed monster, income, debt, taxes, you have social security is just one of those, income. But if you don't look at debt and taxes, come on, buddy.

[00:06:20]You're You're missing I think you're missing part of the point. What? You just barked. You don't want to go out.

[00:06:23]Anyway, don't forget call the Josh Dameron hotline 1-844-Hey-Josh, 1-844-Hey-Josh, and hit zero and leave a voicemail. I'm going to put you on the the radio cuz this is a Josh Dameron radio program brought to you by the EIB Network and my former my former nicotine fingers. All right, God bless. We'll see you.