General Discussion
In reply to the discussion: Do you have 1 million saved for retirement? May not be enough. [View all]Violet_Crumble
(36,385 posts)Sorry, I'm not an American, but I'm gathering from what I've read that things are very different in the US to here. Here it's mandatory for employers to contribute a percentage of their employees wages into a retirement fund (we call it superannuation), and the employee can choose to contribute a percentage on top of that. Also, for low income workers, the government puts in a percentage on top of what the employer does. We can either retire at 65 on a govt pension (for a single it's around $20,000pa) or for someone like me who's in a defined benefit fund, have a self-funded retirement. I'm planning on retiring at 61 on a pension of $70,000pa, and I consider myself incredibly lucky that I fell into the right job at the right time when DB's still existed. Many others are nowhere near that lucky, and it sucks that they'll be forced to work till they drop...
Telling people who for the most part are struggling to make ends meet and can't cut back any more than they have, while well meaning, is understandably not going to be taken well. What would work better would be telling yr govt and employers that they need to step up and help ensure financial security for older folk who shouldn't be working in their 60s and 70s unless they choose to do so...