Follow up on the retirement thread

[Huntingfool]

this is just my opinion after over 40 years of doing financial planning. There was a HUGE transition a few years back concerning retirement in the USA

Baby Boomers most all had pensions built into their jobs - the corporation they worked for provided them lifetime pensions once they retired.

Those day are all gone ........ Companies pretty much do not provide pensions (other than teachers and municipal/government jobs)

What companies offer now days is a 401k match but they leave the savings for retirement up to the employee - the problem with this is that most folks will not even contribute enough to receive the free match much less put more into their 401k -

So somewhere down the road (in my humble opinion) when these folks reach retirement age they will have nowhere near enough money to live a decent retirement - the majority will only have social security to live on -I will be dead and gone but I truly believe long term this is a huge issue for our country - I pray I am wrong

[PYBUCK]

I put the max into my 401K since day 1. After I turned 50 I put the allowable extra in as well. My investment strategy was to be aggressive while I was under 50, buying mostly company stock and some mutual funds. After 50 I started being more conservative. If you increase your contribution every time you get a raise by the raise amount, you can get up there fast.
I tell this to my kids and hopefully they listened. I retired very comfortably and to this day still have over 90% of my retirement fund

[Huntindad]

A friend, well my son's friend...who I gave a spot on my deer lease... In his his late 20's was asking me about savings.
He is a captain on the pilot boats in the port A, corpus ship channel. I told him to match what the company puts in and add some if he could.

Told him it may be difficult now, but will pay dividends later in life.

[Huntingfool]

I put the max into my 401K since day 1. After I turned 50 I put the allowable extra in as well. My investment strategy was to be aggressive while I was under 50, buying mostly company stock and some mutual funds. After 50 I started being more conservative. If you increase your contribution every time you get a raise by the raise amount, you can get up there fast.
I tell this to my kids and hopefully they listened. I retired very comfortably and to this day still have over 90% of my retirement fund

I did the same - instead of saving a certain amount I always saved a percentage of my income - when my income went up then so did how much I saved - worked out well

[glen]

I have not given kids any gifts for Christmas or Birthdays for many years. Put $$$ into an investment IRA. When they both started getting pay checks I put the $$$ in Roth accounts. Hopefully they see the benefits early in life and keep funding their Roth’s. Figure if they do at least that for 40 years they won’t be flat broke

[AntlerCollector]

I’m lucky to work for a company that still has a pension. They also will match 401k up to 10% each paycheck.