For Many of America's Aging Workers, 'Retirement Is a Distant Dream'
45 comments
·March 19, 2025alkonaut
brg
You should have talked to them instead of assuming it was out of necessity. My parents retired in n social security ten years ago. Most of their friends are doing fine with savings and retirement, but they get bored and take a job at Walmart or Applebees. For the most part they enjoy it.
throwaway4220
So I’m challenging you. Why is it jobs, not volunteering at church or hospitals, where I often see senior citizens in droves
dvngnt_
can only speak for myself but church isn't my thing and hospitals are filled with sick people
itishappy
I could see that, but I think the second half of that statement is pretty interesting too. Why might American seniors enjoy working more than foreign 25 year-olds?
supertrope
Some people’s identity and occupation are one and the same. A portion of these people fall apart in retirement. They don’t have hobbies, pursuits, or pastimes.
eesmith
I friend of mine retired, but decided to do some consulting on the side.
Even though he didn't need the money, he charged his normal rate, because he didn't want to depress the market.
If the friends of your parents are willing to work for birdseed because they don't need the money, then it drives down the salary for those who need a job.
jampekka
I was quite surprised on a Florida trip that there were a lot of old (clearly past retirement age) people doing service work in e.g. fast food restaurants and grocery stores. It's rare to see even middle aged people in those where I'm from. Probably largely due to differences in the pension systems.
Yeul
Yeah usually the only people over 40 working in a restaurant are the chef or the boss.
josefritzishere
Florida has a very large retiree population, that may correspond to a large un-retiree population too.
black_13
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bilbo0s
What's most interesting here is that the promoted solutions are untested. We won't know how well IRA/401k etc works until we get a couple of generations under our belt who use that system instead of pensions. So, unfortunately, I'm thinking the GenX'ers and the Millennials will be the involuntary guinea pigs as they age into retirement. If it doesn't work, there will be little we can do for those generations of retirees.
I can't say whether or not individual funded retirement will work? But just back of the napkin sort of guesstimate at whether a lifetime of saving plus interest can net you 30 years of livable yearly interest or drawdowns (assuming social security) + the necessary medicare supplements/or health insurance? I don't know? It seems unlikely. And again, all that is under the rosy scenario where social security still exists. If social security is changed, the picture is even more bleak.
I could be wrong, but I think people are going to need to acclimate themselves to working through much of retirement. How much will likely depend on how well you did saving. But I suspect a sizable majority of GenX and Millennials will have no choice in the matter.
Watching the current retirees may make us sad, but these scenarios may be nothing compared to what's coming.
cogman10
They are tested and the results have already been a disaster.
People don't save for 401ks. And why would they? The fact is, when you are living paycheck to paycheck, retirement takes a backseat to rent.
And even when they do save, we are currently looking at a market downturn. The last 5 years have been pretty rough in terms of the stock market with returns being much lower than you might count on.
There is an option, it's fully funding social security by lifting the income cap. It's silly that you get a tax break on SS simply by making too much money.
The biggest threats to the average person being able to retire is the government gutting, dismantling, and/or privatizing Medicaid, Medicare, and social security. With those gone, yeah grandma is going to have to work in the Foxconn factory to avoid eating catfood.
It's not completely hopeless, but people really need to be informed on this. We are running headlong into this problem because neither party wants to raise taxes to fund these essential programs.
This is a government problem to solve which is best solved by a government agency. It will be a disaster if private corporate leaches get involved, matching the current state of healthcare for anyone not disabled or younger than 65.
For anyone that advocates UBI. That's what social security is, UBI (with an age restriction).
ryandrake
I know people in my age group (GenX) who have not saved even a penny for retirement. And these guys are in good jobs in tech with access to generous 401ks. They just spend their whole paychecks, and more via borrowing. If these guys (who definitely have the means to) won't save, I don't understand why we think "personal savings" is overall a viable system for taking care of the elderly. There is going to be a huge amount of either 1. misery or 2. bailouts in the next 30 years as GenX and Millennials start retiring.
lotsofpulp
Everyone already has mandatory defined benefit pensions in the US. It’s called Social Security.
triceratops
> when you are living paycheck to paycheck, retirement takes a backseat to rent.
Even if you can't afford to save for retirement, you really can't afford not to.
> There is an option, it's fully funding social security by lifting the income cap
That's kinda correct. The income cap on Social Security is effectively a regressive tax. But it won't help fund retirements into the future.
By law, Social Security only invests in Treasuries. This can't provide the returns needed to fund retirements unless the worker-to-retiree ratio massively improves.
Social Security should be allowed to invest in VTI or some other broad-based investment vehicle. This aligns the incentives correctly. We don't want current workers paying for retired workers. We want rising productivity in the economy to do that.
> It will be a disaster if private corporate leaches get involved
+100 company 401k plans are effectively leeches that suck away returns. Detach 401ks from employment and make them like IRAs instead. Cheer as Vanguard drives away the parasites who charge high management fees.
raymondgh
My iOS Stocks app says S&P 500 is up 146.23% over the last 5 years. But isn’t that much too short an interval to evaluate in the first place in consideration for retirement?
dmoy
That doesn't even include dividends. It's more like 166% after dividends
But also yes it's too short of an interval for retirement savings
dmoy
People definitely don't save enough for retirement under the current system. The median household entering retirement right now has like $150k, which translates to very little on top of social security. So now without pensions, people's entire retirement strategy is social security and maybe selling a primary residence.
Elder poverty is already high, and will get much higher in the future
> The last 5 years
The last 5 years were freaking amazing for investments. Even including the current small downturn, s&p 500 total returns are up like +160% in the last 5 years.
After factoring inflation it's more like +80% or so? Which is over 10% real returns per year, which is wayyyyy above historical average (closer to 5-7% real returns).
UncleEntity
> For anyone that advocates UBI. That's what social security is, UBI (with an age restriction).
That's nothing like what a UBI is, you have to "invest"[0] into social security while a UBI is just money from the free money tree or wherever.
The fact that the government turned it into a ponzi scheme by raiding its assets, thanks Reagan, doesn't mean it doesn't have qualifications beyond being a certain age, they send a letter yearly, I believe, which details your contributions and expected benefits.
[0] even though, by their own calculations, you are better off financially by putting your money in a literal mattress it is still an investment
Kirby64
> That's nothing like what a UBI is, you have to "invest"[0] into social security while a UBI is just money from the free money tree or wherever.
Except - just like most progressive taxes, social security costs more for those who make more money and less for those who make less (beyond the income tax, but that's an aside). The only difference between UBI and social security is that, in theory, UBI would require no contributions what-so-ever to earn money out whereas social security requires contributions. The only difference is this makes UBI more progressively taxed than social security.
mandevil
I have two thoughts.
A) Retirement creates a better equilibrium, for the economy as a whole. Not just because you flush all the people who have lost a step and yet have enough social/economic power to hide it out of making decisions, but because it clears the way for ambitious younger people who are getting blocked out of advancement opportunities because the generation ahead of them just isn't #%@#$ leaving. Not that I have any experience with that, obviously. You can have a equilibrium where everyone works until they physically can't any more, but that's simply a worse one, for almost everyone.
B) If we're going to have retirement, it is a better equilibrium for our economy as a whole to do it through some sort of enforced group savings plans rather than individuals. The big risk with retirement is outliving your money. If you have a group of a hundred thousand people, you can statistically infer that X% of them will be dead at age 75, and X+Y% of them will be dead at age 76, etc. (1) So you don't need to save as if everyone is going to live to be 90, only some percentage of them. But if retirement is entirely individual responsibility, then everyone needs to save as if they are going to be 90, which leads to an unnaturally high savings rate and that leads to weaker current economies (2) and giant pools of money seeking high returns(3).
1: Yes, improved medicine might change the exact distribution here, but that is projectable, with a small fudge factor you can basically ignore it.
2: That money is saved, not getting spent and turning into your neighbors income!
3: This is what caused all of those boom/bust cycles in our economy over the past 20 years.
jonkho
So you are proposing… social security?
mandevil
Indeed I am!
I am trying to make the case that something like social security is economically efficient even setting aside any moral case for taking care of vulnerable people. I believe social security pencils out as a huge positive to the overall economy, and that it is emotional "I don't want to help them with my taxes" nonsense that leads people to oppose it. As an example, look at all of the hard work, documented by Katznelson in _When Affirmative Action Was White_ and _Fear Itself_, by lots of racists to keep African-Americans from benefiting from Social Security when that program was created.
srdesigner
Good comment. I would suggest if you get to the point where you want to really analyze your probability of success, you try one of the retirement modeling apps (I use and really like Boldin).
It was VERY eye opening for me in a good way. I have verified my results with several other sources. Its no guarantee of course, but I got some peace-of-mind from doing this.
lotsofpulp
> Or perhaps they were on track to quit at 65 until the stock market took a dive.
[and they liquidated all their assets at the bottom of a market against all mainstream advice]
Jtsummers
This happened to several senior colleagues of mine circa 2008. They were overinvested in stocks (for their age and retirement timeline) and when the market took a nosedive several made rash decisions to sell rather than wait. While they may not have recovered within their desired timeframe, they would have been better off waiting and getting something back instead of selling near the bottom.
lotsofpulp
It only took 6 years for SP500 to return to its peak. If they were planning for a retirement longer than 6 years, they would have gotten a ton more back.
All you have to do is hold bonds or treasuries for the next few years worth of expenses, and then let the federal government take a few years to pump up the markets again. If that doesn’t happen, then you have bigger things to worry about than your 401k balance.
Gothmog69
20 an hour USD is what a dev makes in Canada. Crazy he couldn't save up enough in America to retire. Also crazy to read a sob story about the working poor in America and think... "must be nice"
badc0ffee
I don't think that's quite true. When I was working for a large/stable/boring company in Calgary, the lowest paid green devs made more than C$56k/year.
Jtsummers
Assuming full-time work (40 hour per week, 52 weeks a year with paid leave and holidays), that's about $27/hour CAD or $19/hour USD. If they work more than 40/week then that effective hourly rate drops quickly.
badc0ffee
That's what I mean, I was converting US$20/hour to C$/year and assuming 2000 hours/year. None of these people were paid hourly.
I think a starting rate for devs in a software shop is probably closer to C$75k/yr = US$26/hr, at least in this market. Still lower than I expected, but not US$20.
intelVISA
Wow, at that rate I'm surprised we don't see more Canadian startups. Solo SaaS could make 10x that, maybe they don't have many devs that actually ship value?
WorkerBee28474
That's a junior dev rate, and a low one. A good job for a new grad would be USD 30/hour.
cytocync
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black_13
# Why No One Touched This Post on Economic Insecurity in Aging America
I just read a sobering TIME article about America's aging workers who can't afford to retire. It profiles 69-year-old Walter Carpenter, working physical jobs despite peripheral neuropathy, bad knees and hips - one of the growing percentage of Americans 65+ still in the workforce (19% today vs 10% forty years ago).
Here's what's interesting: This shouldn't be partisan. The systematic dismantling of retirement security (shifting from pensions to 401(k)s, stagnant wages, rising costs) has created a reality where people work 55 years and still can't stop. As someone who's 59 and facing this reality myself, it's deeply personal.
The most telling quote: "What will happen when, as a friend so aptly put it, I become 'too frail to work and too poor to live?'"
I suspect this post got no traction because:
1. It's uncomfortable - forces us to confront the human cost of our economic system 2. Doesn't fit neatly into tech-optimism or "just learn to code" narratives 3. Reveals the failure of the meritocracy myth many in tech believe in 4. Lacks an easy solution (auto-IRAs are mentioned but too late for current older workers) 5. Hits too close to home for many in their 40s/50s who fear the same fate
The discussion we're avoiding is: what happens when a lifetime of work doesn't guarantee basic security in old age? And what does that say about the system we've built?
Jtsummers
> I suspect this post got no traction because:
It's been up for an hour and is still on the front page. Seems a bit early to declare "no traction".
That was the biggest shock to me when visiting the US. Not seeeing tip choices 15,20,25 or bars with parking lots, it was seeing people clearly over 70 working jobs you rarely see anyone over 25 doing elsewhere. Even physical and/or poorly paying jobs (mailmen, cleaning, fast food).