GEN X Is not Prepared to Retire

Oh, I got the who ringing in my ear. People trying to put us down talking about my generation. Yeah, I promise. I sing from time to time here on the program and I know I’m not very good at it. Yes, I lip sync at church. Anyway, saw this story about my generation. American dream dies with Gen Xers. My generation. They’re calling it the forgotten generation. About 64 million Americans born between 1965 to 1980. Generation X. They’re unprepared financially for retirement. Dismal Outlook. National Institute on Retirement Security wrote a report that Generation X was the first generation to enter the labor market, following the shift from defined benefit pension plans to 401k style defined contribution accounts. When looking at median retirement saving levels for generation X, it finds that the bottom half of earners have only a few thousand dollars saved for retirement. The typical household has only 40,000 in retirement savings. 40% of the generation have not saved a single cent toward retirement. Reality check, I’m not Mary Poppins, no spoonful of sugar to make the medicine go down. What the hell’s the matter with you? I mean, seriously. What’s wrong with you? Why? Oh, I can’t afford it! And every damn excuse in the entire world. I don’t want to hear it. this survey of income and program participation. Most Gen Xers don’t have a pension plan. They live through multiple economic crises. Wages aren’t keeping up with inflation and costs are rising. The American dream of retirement is gonna be a nightmare for too many Gen Xers. economic crisis, okay, working ages, yeah, you could dot com blow up. Also had the great recession dealing with COVID. These were all, if you were smart, these, these crises should have been great. You’re in your working ages for crying out loud. And if you’re doing what Markowski tells you to do, which is putting money away on a regular basis and dollar cost averaging, guess what? When the markets went down over that period of time, you were doing pretty well. Oh, and I hear the argument as well, I hear this, I say, oh yeah, but the housing value’s dropped. Who the flip cares? You didn’t think your house, the bill for your house, your mortgage didn’t change unless of course you were dumb enough to go out and get one of those adjustable rate mortgages without thinking and got too much of a house that you could afford. Based upon that, I’m sorry people, it’s the United States of America, okay? There’s personal responsibility that’s involved. You wanna move to a country that is cradle to grave and provides for you money during retirement, it’s not much. It’s not much. Ask people over in Europe how much they’re getting in retirement. I mean, France, they’ve been rioting, okay? That’s calmed down to some degree because they’re out of money. They had very, very generous retirement plans there. And that’s, that’s going away. Okay. Demographics will catch up with you after a certain point in time. Um, there was a study here that called Generation X to broke generation. 64% of the respondents said they quit saving for retirement, not because they didn’t want to, but couldn’t afford to, you know what bullshit. Go sum me in a lot of bullshit, okay? I’m sorry airports are full airplanes are full people are traveling Restaurants are full and yeah, I did I See my age out there all the time But again, you know conversation I have often with people that Yeah, I got a safer retirement. I got to start saving for my kids education Okay Start to sit down Start to have a discussion about what you’re doing. Take a look. Oh my Lord, merciful. You’ve got 50, 60, $70,000 in credit card debt. And these same people also have $10,000 timepieces on their arm. They have boats. They’re driving around in $70,000 cars in big houses. But again, their stuff owns them. They don’t own the stuff. That’s a bit of a problem. And if you go to, you know, I wrote up my financial independence top 20, one of my favorite ones on that list. You have more money than your neighbor and they don’t have a clue. Everybody is looking to keep up with the Joneses now. Social media, ooh boy. Yeah, everybody’s gotta take, ooh, I took pictures of myself all the fricking time. Ooh, look what awesome place I’m at right now. I’m sorry people, I don’t feel sorry for people. At this point in time, again, I’m a part of your generation, okay? You screwed up. You screwed up, so you better start making some changes. And that’s the interesting conversation that I have with people. And basically telling them as a financial advisor, guess what? I can’t do a damn thing for you. Because guess what? I can’t show a higher rate of return. I just, you know. Maybe, I don’t know, some amazing crazy bull market year. But more often than not, I’m not gonna show you a higher rate of return than the interest you’re paying on your credit cards. So you gotta take care of that. That means you’re gonna have to start making some changes when it comes to your lifestyle. Well, can’t do that. People might see it on Facebook and the Instagram. Retirement reality. people at some point in time, you’re going to have to start dealing with it. Watchdog on wallstreet.com.