America’s Retirement Time Bomb Ready To Explode

本站添加: 2026-05-13

[00:00:00]Pensions are 401K's are depleted. Only 14% of us have enough money to retire.

[00:00:04]So, welcome to humble town. Are we going to see a retirement crisis in the next few years? country is headed for a retirement crisis.

[00:00:12]a retirement crisis I'm 51 years old and I have no retirement saved. Reason number three why baby boomers are retiring broke.

[00:00:21]Overestimating social security. No one really talks about is how stressful retirement can feel. Half of all Americans who retired after 2020 have less than $90,000 in total savings.

[00:00:33]>> thing I don't want our retirement years to feel like we're in survival mode.

[00:00:38]Today's episode, we are looking at the retirement crisis in the United States.

[00:00:43]We're not fully there yet, but I do believe we will be getting there soon enough. Many Americans simply do not have enough to retire, or if they do retire, they are soon have to go back to work or at least part-time. Of course, this is difficult for many people because many people when you get into the 70s and your 80s, you're not as able to do as much. You may have physical limitations, and it's definitely not ideal to be working full-time in that age when you should be enjoying your golden retirement years. Now, there's a number of reasons for this that I think this has happened. Definitely, the onus for saving has been kind of pushed from employers to employees. That started in and around the early 80s with the 401K plan. The employers got rid of most pensions. Um, wasn't overnight. Of course, it did take time to happen, and some people do have them still today like teachers, I think.

[00:01:43]Policemen, you know, different types of organizations still have pensions. But, that was a good thing, I think, for people where they had that guaranteed uh lifetime income check. It's no longer the case though. People are worried about outliving their retirement and many people simply stated are just not good at putting money away. They don't have the background and the training.

[00:02:06]Not that it's a highly complicated subject, but they don't have the background uh really to understand things like the time value of money, just how valuable it can be just to put away a little bit and get that compound interest. Let's go ahead and let's dive in here. Got some great clips for you.

[00:02:22]I'm 51 years old and I have no retirement saved.

[00:02:28]I'm a single mom. I raised my three girls alone.

[00:02:32]And I've lived in survival mode for decades.

[00:02:37]Constantly tired, overwhelmed, and anxious about money.

[00:02:42]I even took a $10,000 pay cut to protect my mental health and that landed me $10,000 in debt instead of getting ahead.

[00:02:51]And now retirement is just around the corner.

[00:02:55]And it's pretty scary.

[00:02:58]No one really talks about is how stressful retirement can feel.

[00:03:03]You think you've made it. Yes. But then the bills keep coming.

[00:03:08]Prices keep going up.

[00:03:12]And you start wondering, did I save enough? Okay, let's talk about these two clips here. The first one is a woman who's fifth in her 50s.

[00:03:22]She has nothing saved for retirement.

[00:03:25]Normal retirement age is 65. She could technically start saving or she could start taking social security at 62, although she would get reduced benefits.

[00:03:35]So she's definitely in a conundrum, I would say, where she's got to start socking away a lots of money. Now, it seems like at this point her kids are out of the house. I don't know. I'm just kind of guessing here and she is aware of the problem. Um so hopefully she starts aggressively aggressively saving like those fire people do. Um, and that's really her only option at this point unless she just wants to plan on working till her 70s and 80s. Things are going to get are definitely scary because, you know, by the time she is getting ready to retire social security is going to be reduced. Now, the second clip here is a woman discussing outliving her retirement savings. I definitely think this is a big deal.

[00:04:20]Something not talked about probably enough because olden days if you had an employer taking care of you, you had that guaranteed lifetime income check.

[00:04:30]And you could still do that. You could still go to companies and annuitize. So, that is something that will guarantee you a payment. You can even set it up so that if you pass away, you can have your payments go to your spouse for a certain number of years. But again, that is, you know, something that you have to make the decision on. It's not something that the employer is doing. But the that fear of outliving your income I think is definitely um, or fear of outliving your savings is definitely a genuine fear because you've got to make those decisions like in your 70s where you're still like pretty mobile and still can do stuff. You know, should you take that $10,000 cruise?

[00:05:09]Should you go do this? Should you go do that? How long am I going to live? I mean, you just don't know a lot of this stuff. So, it's very difficult I think for a lot of people who don't have lots of retirement to really plan and make these decisions. Anyhow, comment. Let me know uh, what you think about this.

[00:05:26]Let's look at some more clips. Are we going to see a retirement crisis in the next few years? Because a new study just showed that 56% of Americans have less than $10,000 in retirement savings. And the total amount of savings that's estimated for you to need to live comfortably in America is 1.5 million.

[00:05:45]So, that means if you were to multiply these people's savings by literally a hundred, it still wouldn't even be enough. And what's crazy that a lot of people don't understand about social security is that it doesn't really pay you a whole lot. In fact, the average social security check is under $2,000 a month at only about $1,900.

[00:06:01]Meaning you get less than $23,000 a year from the federal government. The federal poverty line is $15,000 a year. So for most Americans, your social security check is literally just keeping you out of poverty.

[00:06:14]After looking at our retirement numbers the other night, I realized something.

[00:06:19]I don't want our retirement years to feel like we're in survival mode, where we're counting down the days until our money runs out. And right now, my husband is working part-time to help us out financially.

[00:06:32]And I have decided to start doing my part, too.

[00:06:36]Because after a lifetime of working and taking care of everyone else, these years should feel peaceful, not stressful.

[00:06:44]And something tells me we are not the only ones adjusting our plans. Other people are feeling this, too.

[00:06:51]Drop me a comment and let me know what you're doing to help supplement your retirement income.

[00:06:58]After looking at our retirement numbers the other night, I realized something.

[00:07:03]I don't want our retirement years to feel like we're in survival mode, where we're counting down the days until our money runs out. And right now, my husband is working part-time to help us out financially.

[00:07:16]>> Get into it. So I have often said that this country is headed for a retirement crisis.

[00:07:23]A retirement crisis, say in the next five to 10 years. Especially as Gen X gets older and we head into retirement and are older. Uh the youngest of us or the oldest of us are now 60. So now, [snorts] as we start getting into our 60s, there is going to be a real problem. Now, I was reading Rich Dad Poor Dad, as you know, I'm going through Rich Dad Poor Dad again, and I came across this right here. Go ahead and listen to this right here.

[00:07:52]So, today I often wonder what will happen when we have millions of people who need financial and medical assistance.

[00:08:04]They will be dependent upon their families or the government for financial support.

[00:08:11]What will happen when Medicare and Social Security run out of money?

[00:08:17]How will a nation survive if teaching children about money continues to be left to parents, most of whom will be or are already are poor?

[00:08:31]And there it is, and there is the problem that is going to happen that I bet that we've been seeing happening, uh is that we are going to have a serious retirement crisis on our hands, where the government or your family are going to have to take care of people because they are not ready for retirement. And I don't mean just, you know, hang it up, you know, and uh you know, just, you know, hang at the beach. I'm just talking about you got old and you can't work anymore or you lost your job. So, what is the remedy? Save for retirement.

[00:09:08]Save as much as you can in your 401k, in your 403b, in your 457, in your Roth IRA, in your traditional IRA, in your brokerage account. Save as much as you can.

[00:09:23]In the next 5 to 10 years, Gen X, as we get older, I'm 55 years old, right?

[00:09:31]Those who are 55, 56, 57, into the 60s, those who are even younger, you need to be doing it too.

[00:09:38]So, save for retirement. Make it so.

[00:09:43]Make it your priority. Okay, so some interesting clips here. The first one is about really just how little people have saved and it is pretty astonishing how little people have saved for retirement, especially compared to how much financial planners say you should save.

[00:10:03]Now, the other clips here are really more just general things about retirement, saving and we see a lot of this. Save it early, save as much as you can, sock it away. I think the message here is good, especially from the last guy here. I've watched a number of his videos and I think I've talked about some of his videos before on this channel. Now, the retirement crisis can be extremely ugly and detrimental to the US economy and I do think we are going to have one. Now, I don't know exactly when it's going to happen. I see it being more slow and methodical where, you know, you're going to have social security being reduced. You're going to have cost of living, it's just increasing and increasing and somewhere something is going to have to break.

[00:10:50]Even if you saved enough and you're like, I'm fine, I'm good. You know, if the economy starts going down, if we start to experience very high inflation, it could definitely hurt even like upper middle class who I guess arguably you can say is hurting right now. So, the retirement crisis right now, simply stated, people have not saved enough and this is probably mostly due to lack of financial education in the primary and secondary schools. Well, maybe not secondary, maybe not college. Well, yeah, I would say college too. But, definitely as people are growing up, they are not taught financial education.

[00:11:28]It hurts them. It should be one of the most critical things taught because everyone has to do it.

[00:11:34]Um but we're taught other things in school. So it you know, when you get to a situation like this where people don't understand things like you know, compound interest and the time value of money and just how beneficial it is just to put away just a little bit when you're 20s and just how much that money can compound and really help you later in life. We are in a definitely a situation where a lot of people are going to be hurting and it's it's you know, what happens what unfolds is anybody's guess but my opinion is it's going to get pretty ugly. You think about retirement? Is retirement even something that's going to happen for a lot of people? I think a lot of people thought they were going to be able to retire until inflation started going crazy and it's probably not even done.

[00:12:22]Inflation is just out of control.

[00:12:25]I don't even think they show us what real inflation is because the cost of living is just outrageous. Like I don't even understand how people afford apartments these days. My mortgage is about $640 and then um for the year I pay about two grand in taxes. But if my property value gets reassessed, those taxes are probably going to more than double.

[00:12:51]And my mortgage is really low but there's people out there that are paying for the house I have which is four bedrooms.

[00:12:59]I think a house like this would probably go for about $2,500 around my area. I don't understand how people are affording to pay rent like this because if I had a family of five like I have right now and went to go rent a place it would cost me so much money. I wouldn't be able to afford it. And we got people out there that are retired and are on fixed incomes and the prices of the just keep going up. I saw a guy yesterday, this was actually yesterday at Walmart, and I overheard him on the phone. It was an older man, apparently he's retired, and he was saying how I can't even afford to to get gas to go home. He was at >> [clears throat] >> I think I said McDonald's. I don't know, I'm kind of rambling right now. He we were at McDonald's, the guy was sitting there and he's on the phone and he's saying, "I can't afford to get gas to go home."

[00:13:53]Like Like it's crazy. 95% of Americans are walking right off a financial cliff.

[00:13:59]Nearly half of current retirees say they would literally rather die than outlive their money.

[00:14:03]But here is the craziest part. The 5% who actually retire millionaires are not smarter than you, and they probably do not even make more money than you.

[00:14:11]Let me tell you a story about two women, Linda and Diane, who started their careers in the same city in the same year. Linda spent her career climbing the corporate ladder. By her early 40s, she was making $135,000 a year as a regional sales director. She drove a leased Lexus, lived in a massive four-bedroom house, and took expensive vacations. She contributed exactly 3% to her 401k because that is what the enrollment form defaulted to when she was 24, and she never changed it once in 33 years. Now, let us look at Diane.

[00:14:41]Diane worked at the same regional hospital for 28 years, maxing out at a salary of $71,000.

[00:14:47]She drove used Hondas that she kept for 8 years at a time. She bought a modest two-bedroom condo and paid it off. She never talked about money, but every 2 weeks for almost three decades, she automatically transferred 18% of her paycheck into her investment accounts.

[00:15:01]Linda retired at 62 with a 401k balance of just $19,000 and a voice cracking with panic about how to survive.

[00:15:08]Diane retires at 61 with $1.3 million, a paid-off home, and zero financial stress. The difference was not income.

[00:15:16]Linda outearned Diane by almost double.

[00:15:18]The difference was a cascade of specific fixable mistakes that compound over decades.

[00:15:23]First, default settings destroy wealth.

[00:15:26]The average person gets stuck at a 3% auto enrollment contribution and never increases it. 3% of a $90,000 salary over 30 years leaves you with barely $200,000.

[00:15:36]Second, car payments are robbing your future. The average new car payment is over $700 a month. Diane spent roughly $240 a month on used cars, while Linda spent $650 on leases. That $410 monthly difference invested over 30 years is worth over $600,000.

[00:15:53]Third is housing bloat.

[00:15:55]Americans are falsely taught to buy the biggest house a bank will approve them for, consuming up to 40% of their take-home pay.

[00:16:01]That monthly difference between a modest condo and a massive house is worth over a million dollars in lost investment potential. Fourth is invisible spending.

[00:16:10]The average American blows $851 a month on forgotten subscriptions, impulse purchases, and food delivery apps.

[00:16:17]Over a 40-year career, that money invested instead of spent grows to roughly $3.2 million. Reason number three why baby boomers are retiring broke.

[00:16:25]Overestimating Social Security.

[00:16:28]Either through ignorance or willful neglect, I've got to say that many baby boomers assumed that Social Security would be enough to provide for their retirement. I've actually heard people prior to retirement saying exactly that much. And then you get something totally different once they retire. Oh, I thought it was going to be more. I got screwed. No, you can go on the Social Security website and you can set up your own profile there. You'll know exactly what you're going to get years before you retire. So, that'll help you to plan. I recommend that you do it. You can just go to the Social Security website and go to the benefit estimator.

[00:16:58]It'll tell you um approximately what you're going to get.

[00:17:02]I did that for several years before I began collecting. The number was right on the money. So, there was no surprises there and I actually thought that the benefit was quite generous considering it's only Social Security.

[00:17:14]Understand Social Security doesn't replace all of your income once you retire, typically it replaces about 40% of your income and it'll be less if you are high income earner. If you're making 75,000 a year, you probably figure around 30,000 thereabouts, maybe a little bit more. If you're making 150,000, it's going to be less. Okay, some good clips here and I do think I will say that I think social media is helping raise some awareness around saving and the importance of it.

[00:17:41]Now, one of the clips talks about, you know, just how important it is or just making sacrifices, maybe not buying a car or not leasing a car, but going for a more inexpensive um automobile and just taking that money and just putting it away. Um maybe not taking the super expensive vacation, you know, finding ways to cut corners and save. And the guy shows just, you know, retirement and retirement savings isn't really linked to income, it's more linked to habits, lifestyle, your attitude, savings. Um that's what's important and it's definitely true, definitely true. Uh next one here is really one of the other clips is around a guy talking about a flaw with [snorts] with uh retiring and people over estimating social security.

[00:18:29]Um I think that that's that's true, I'm sure, but I don't think it's as um as prevalent or as abundant as he would he would say. Um it seems like to me a lot of people they just haven't saved enough, they haven't taken on that personal responsibility of saving. So, you know, you're in your 50s, you're trying to get by, you've got all these different things like car payments, all this stuff, and maybe maybe you are putting something away, maybe you're putting away like 2 or 3%, but you just don't have that that number, you don't know what you need um because ultimately it's about maintaining your standard of living.

[00:19:05]That's what it's ultimately going to be about and I don't think a lot of people are really educated on that.

[00:19:12]Half of all Americans who retired after 2020 have less than $90,000 in total savings. Not 90,000 short of their goal, $90,000 total. And the number that an entire generation of financial advisors handed you as gospel, the 4% rule, was quietly revised down to 3.7% by Morningstar in 2025. Meanwhile, the Social Security Trust Fund is now on track to run out in 2033, triggering an automatic 23% cut in benefits under existing law, with the Congressional Budget Office moving that date to 2032 in February of this year. Three systems, all three degraded simultaneously.

[00:19:53]That's the actual story of retirement after 2020. Here's what I'm going to walk you through.

[00:19:58]The rules of retirement didn't just get harder, they got structurally broken in ways that are invisible until you run the real numbers. And by then, the decisions that matter most have already been made. I want to show you exactly where the breaks happened, why the conventional advice doesn't account for them, and what you'd actually have to do differently to make the math work in this environment. The metaphor I keep coming back to is the three-legged stool.

[00:20:22]Classic retirement planning used to rest on three legs: Social Security, your personal savings and 401k, and employer-provided benefits, either a pension or health coverage that bridged you to Medicare. For two generations, that stool held. It was sturdy enough that even if one leg was short, the other two kept you upright.

[00:20:45]But after 2020, all three legs got shorter, wobblier, or cracked at the same time. A three-legged stool with three bad legs isn't a stool anymore.

[00:20:57]It's a hazard. And you don't notice it's a hazard until you sit down. Let's start with the leg that surprised the most people first. In a few minutes, I'm going to show you exactly what happens when the Social Security leg of the stool snaps and the specific year that matters for almost everyone watching this. But first, here's why the inflation leg of the stool is far more broken than most people admit and why it's broken in a way that goes deeper than your grocery bill. 2021 through 2022, cumulative inflation peaked at 9.1% in June of 2022. Talking about it, 86% of us don't have anywhere near enough to retire. Only 40% of us own our homes outright and that number's not expected to go up much in the next 10 years.

[00:21:41]We're the first generation that doesn't have pensions. We were the first generation to have to self-manage our retirement and it turns out we didn't know what the we were doing. The rise of the 401k happened in the early '80s and at that point in time we were told to put X amount into our retirement. Oh, and X amount into our Social Security. Oh, and live your lives. That might have worked, but as time progressed, they also did things like, "Oh, you can take out portions to buy a house. Oh, you can take out parts to pay for your child's college." And those numbers depleted quickly. The idea behind the 401k was the employers would no longer have to put money into pensions, but they would help subsidize the retirement by adding to the 401k.

[00:22:16]When I worked for a certain financial company in around 2001, they put in 9% and then they matched anything that you put in up to 12%. My son's company puts in 3% now. If my employer was putting in so much money into my retirement, then why don't I have enough to retire?

[00:22:32]Because we got caught up in what was the AI of the early 2000s, our jobs got outsourced. And that's when I became self-employed and became a real estate agent. I just sold this house. And that's until 2022, I did this 20 or 30 times a year. Now I average six to eight sales a year. So we don't get the retirement that our parents got. We don't have those pensions. Our 401ks are depleted. Only 14% of us have enough money to retire. So welcome to humble town. Humble town means that we are learning from our kids and our grandkids how to make side gig and I want to just kind of add or talk about this woman's clip here, and I think she's actually or she's absolutely right. I remember back in my 20s, I worked for a company, and like when you were 30 years old, they put in 15% of your gross salary, and then it went up to like your 50s, and then they were putting in something like 22 or 25%. I mean, it was a lot that they were contributing, and I think years of service had a little bit to do with it, but just the amount the companies used to contribute was much more. I mean, it was crazy. I remember back in the day. Not Not I shouldn't say crazy, but it was definitely more. I agree. Maybe my circumstance is just me, you know, just giving my my opinion on on what I saw, because it's not as high today, and I think a lot of smaller companies, it's definitely even lower.

[00:23:53]Entrepreneurs, small businesses, they get not you know, pretty much nothing, or they have to match themselves, but it's not like the big corporations where you're able to get maybe like 6, 8, 9% a match like that like they do for a lot of these corporations.

[00:24:10]>> worked hard all your life with the promise that retirement is going to give you a little bit of relaxation and a little peace.

[00:24:19]And maybe give you the opportunity to do some things that you wanted to do.

[00:24:24]But here's the real truth.

[00:24:26]Retirement can feel very stressful, especially when money's tight.

[00:24:31]You know, with health care costs, car repairs, and normal cost of living, all of that adds up. And I know, I've been there.