So Will You Go Along With the Rest “Down The Tubes” Or Will You Take Action?

Posted by RP

October 18, 2008

Here’s a really heartening (NOT) piece I just read:

Washington - Stock gyrations and a slumping economy are battering a generation’s hopes for a comfortable retirement.

The current financial crisis has destroyed more than $2 trillion of the wealth held in retirement plans, according to Congressional Budget Office estimates. Even before that loss, Americans weren’t saving enough to maintain expected standards of living in their senior years.

Now the bad news from broker statements may be confronting workers and retirees with brutal choices. Pay the mortgage or keep up the 401(k) contributions? Buy groceries or leave untouched a nest egg that shrinks by the day?

"Many people are making quick-fix decisions that put their financial future at risk," (my emphasis) says Jean Setzfand, director of financial security at AARP, in a recent analysis of the state of US retirement security.

The good news for retirees is that the bedrock of the US retirement system, Social Security benefits, remains untouched by the crisis. On Oct. 16, the Social Security Administration (SSA) announced that beneficiaries will get a 5.8 percent cost-of-living increase in their checks next year. That’s the largest such rise in a quarter-century.

The average retiree will get an additional $63 per month, according to the SSA. (Wow! Don’t spend it all in one place!)

A majority of retired Americans get more than half their income from Social Security…. full article on Why You really Have No Retirement System here.

And this is not a big, really big area of concern? Folks, no matter which dunderhead who is currently running for president happens to win, Social Security is on the skids to disaster and both candidates have plans that will drive it further to the brink. If Social Security is a linchpin of your retirement plans, you better read on.

Although I am currently enjoying a generous Federal retirement plan … so generous it was discontinued for those who came on board in the past 20 years … they can never taste of it … I have come to believe that retirees like me, and the huge ground swell of slightly younger folks now starting to join the retirement ‘club’ needs to do something other than hang around waiting to see which polical (I accidentally misspelled this and when I ran the spell checker one of the suggestions for a replacement word was “polecat”. How appropriate ;-)) candidate will ignore us most.

It does not matter if you are 8 or 88-. If your eyes (or ears) are good enough to read these words, you can do something, starting right now, today, to empower your retirement.

I write about that very subject here frequently … and one of this blogs “sister sites, Talar Profit Systems, where I cover the mechanics of making an honest online living in more detail.

Today is the first day of the rest o\f your life. The plans (if you can even dignify them as that) of both McCain and Obama, quite frankly suck when it comes to ensuring your retirement. So will you lay down in the gutter and die, will you turn away from this question to the TV to watch another Sex in the City re-run or will you act like an American and actually take action, right now, today, to empower yourself?

Related posts brought to you by Yet Another Related Posts Plugin.

Enduring to the End, Retirement Planning

Did you enjoy this post? Why not leave a comment below and continue the conversation, or subscribe to my feed and get articles like this delivered automatically to your feed reader.