The typical American couple has only $5,000 saved for retirement

[MissB]

110. We save a ton.

I've stated this so many times before. DH and I are both engineers. His degrees were paid for; I took out student loans for mine. He bought a house not long after graduation (for the low price of $56k in Portland, Oregon.)

We've both worked for single employers for our careers. I have a pension; his company switched to a 401k over 25 years ago. He's always put away the max in the 401k. With market fluctuations, we tend to lose YEARS of contributions depending on how far the market drops. The gains are better than that. I contribute separately to a 457. Our kids have 529s.

We sold our original house and bought another one in Portland in a much better district. The house is nearly paid off. We have no car payments.

Know what? We are freaking lucky. And privileged. Our kids are healthy, we are healthy, we've never had a job loss or a reduction of income (except when I stepped out to raise the kids for a few years.)

I call it less hard work and more blind luck. It doesn't take a lot of effort (once the degrees are earned) to set aside the maximum pretax when you are working in a good paying field. Buying/selling a house at the right time is also damned lucky (that $56k house would sell for over $800k now; our current property would go for much more than that.) It is a privileged position to be in. I can't frugal my way to a better financial state- I started in a good financial state and added a dash of frugality.

Kids these days spend $25k-$30k a year for a typical state university. That's a six figure education. How much of a hole do kids start out in nowadays? Luckily for them, they can only borrow a total of $27k total for undergrad through the federal gov.