Back when i had jobs that had 401k plans, all the calculators said i needed over $1 million to retire at age 70. Meanwhile i was living paycheck to paycheck trying to put something in there. How tf am i supposed to squirrel away 7 figures when i have mever made $40,000 in a year?
this post was submitted on 04 Nov 2025
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And that's just one's savings without kids.
Having kids, and returning to multi-generational homes might be the only way one is retiring these days.
Good luck on that one.
My wife and I have no kids and live with family and we're still dubious on retiring 😹😿
(granted part of this is due to losing all our money*2 during covid when some local businesses shuttered)
My 26 year old son is still living with us, and we are all totally fine with it. We've been an extremely close family all along, and I consider him my best friend, and I'm sure he would say the same thing.
OTOH, I couldn't wait to get out of my parents house. I could deal with it over summer breaks, but as soon as I moved back in after college, it was clear they still considered me a high schooler, and imposed a 10 pm curfew during the week, and an 11pm curfew on the weekends (so understanding). I didn't say No to that, I just ignored it, like any adult would. Imposing a curfew? Please.
Then they called me one Sunday morning and woke me up at my girlfriend's place, and demanded I return home and explain myself ("What do you want me to say? I got laid, like an actual grown adult, which I am").
Got with a buddy, pooled our minimum wages, and got an apartment together. Back then, rent was $300, so it was possible. Even with a friend, I doubt my son could get the money together to get an apartment today. His student loans are going to eat too much of his income for a significant portion of his life. He certainly couldn't do it on minimum wage.
He's welcome to stay as long as he wants.
How tf am i supposed to squirrel away 7 figures when i have mever made $40,000 in a year?
Compound investment is supposed to do a lot of the heavy lifting. At a 7% rate of return, your money doubles every 10 years. So, assuming you set aside $6k of that $40k/year ($500/mo), starting at age 22, you'd have $1M at age 60 and $2.2M at age 70
https://www.bankrate.com/banking/savings/save-a-million-calculator/
But here's the trick... You're looking down the barrel of 40 years of inflation. So, if you're earning $40k in year one (let's say, the year 2000) and you've been on the job for 25 years without getting a raise, inflation has reduced the real value of that income by roughly one half.
On the flip side, let's assume you're keeping up with inflation (and that $500 you're setting aside is increasing at the same rate). Then the math gets more complicated and I can't help you anymore. But the point is you get to $1M sooner, simply because $1M in 2060 is worth a lot less than $1M in 2000.
Had a broker explain that - at my current rate of savings - I'd be looking at a $4M retirement account by age 62. But then he dumped some ice water over my head when he noted "That's only going to be worth around $1.1M in modern dollars by then". Suggested I actually up my savings, because $1M only really feels like a lot until you try to live on it for the rest of your life.
I am lucky if i have $300 in my bank account after all my expenses each month, and i live in a cheap town working a 9-5 job. I have no health insurance and have had to cash out multiple 401k's to cover emergency expenses in the past 4 years. Saving for the future is an absolute joke since i can't even afford to live today.
Yeah, that fucking sucks. In theory, there's a tax benefit to retirement savings. But in practice, it only matters to people with giant incomes to take advantage of the percentage tax discounts.
I guess the other retirement option is just say fuck it and start doing crimes. Clearly, that's now the fast track to prosperity. Find some guy with a loaded bitcoin wallet and torture him in a basement.
That’s why we need to have a conversation about taxing millionaires when everyone yells “tax the rich!”
A million may be more than what a lot of people have, but it’s probably not even a number people can even retire with considering taxes and inflation. Two to 3 million might be a start, 4 million would be ok today, but when people retire in 10, 20, 30+ years from now? Who knows what that will be worth. And before someone quotes some return on 3-4 million with some high rate and says it’s a lot of money… Isn’t that what you want!? Out of all that you’re paying for health care, maybe a mortgage (because who stays one place long enough to pay it off these days?) or rent that you have to pay? Maybe help you with your kid’s crazy college costs? Sit around the house and wait to die now that you’re retired? People might say they could live on less, but doing things is expensive. House maintenance is expensive. Medical is expensive. It’s all getting more expensive.
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Quit with the avocado toast and Starbucks. According to Sociopathic Oligarchs, that seems to have been a bigger factor in their wealth than their multi-generational inheritance.
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Yeah, Burning Man ticket prices are fricken huge
Hey look! We get off the internet and hang out again. And there is pole dancing!
Not the kind of "Dirty Dancing" I was hoping for.
Silver spraypaint doesn't pay for itself.
WITNESS ME!!!!
Yeah, well those same parents are also partially responsible for making that future come to be.
It's not boomers vs. millenials, it's billionaires vs. commoners/workers/have-nots. Don't let them divide-and-conquer you.
It's that Boomers have participated in, and been behind the wheel, of most of the stupid, enabling moments of the 20th century. They built this world and got pissed when inequality they built to lock up money for themselves wasn't sustainable.
Then they blame everyone else because they have no self-reflection due to lead levels in their blood causing cognitive impairment and aggressive behavior. My favorite was a meme all over facebook saying "Back in my day we didn't have plastic soda bottles..." Yeah, who TF changed it, genius? YOU ALL. Sure wasn't me running all that stuff when I was 6 years old.
Again, you are conflating age for wealth. Lots of boomers did no such thing, and were as poor and powerless as you are. The powers that be got you good with the generational strife propaganda, so you don't focus on the actual class war problem.
Most of Boomers did said such thing. How tf you think Trump got in power, magic? You ever check out what Facebook looks like? You are confused as the people you are screeching about.
Trump isn't just popular with boomers. Plenty of younger people are MAGAs, or just don't vote.
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Not at all. Owning a home and a car didn't used to equate "wealth" in the 60's. But the middle class and lower middle class certainly perpetuated things like Red Lining and segregating communities. Sure, they got fucked by the Vietnam war, but they also got a Constitutional Amendment to vote starting at age 18 in 1971 and elected fucking Nixon in 1972! Boomers were the fuel for the socio-economic disaster of the 1980s.They invented "greed is good." They gave up on the dreams of the Hippie movement and sold out.
Sure wasn't me running all that stuff when I was 6 years old.
Yeah we didn't go to the trophy companies at 6 years old and demand they start making participation trophies, Deborah. Our generation didn't start that shit.
Boomers have supported, and voted for the status quo and these billionaires for decades upon decades at this point. And are still supporting the dictator Trump.
So yeah your take is bullshit. George Carlin had it right, sorry not sorry.
Younger generations aren't much better. Look at the age distribution of Trump voters: https://navigatorresearch.org/2024-post-election-survey-gender-and-age-analysis-of-2024-election-results/ (IDK if this is a good source, feel free to provide one that contradicts it if you find one. But it's consistent with pretty much every poll I've seen on this topic, even in other western countries). The gender split is a lot more pronounced than any generational split.
90% of my millennial friends have been voting for the status quo for decades too. We'll see how progressive they are once they're the most conservative ones in the room, and they aren't oh so painfully forced to vote for the status quo.
Clarification: I'm saying that they're currently being dishonest about supporting progressive values, not that they'll change.
We'll see how progressive they are once they're the most conservative ones in the room
Ah yes the popular myth of becoming more conservative as you get older. It used to be true because you would get a job, have a family, and retire. Suddenly your biggest concern became lower taxes so you could spend that money elsewhere. Rest of the country be damned.
Except now significantly less people are doing those things because they have a lot less money than their parents did.
All growing old has done is made me way more left. I can see and understand so much more about how the world is fucked up.
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This oversimplified dichotomy is asinine. No group of people are some monolithic Borg mind. These types of tribalism are toxic useless. Russians would call it convenient idiots. It is tribalistic dogma revealing poor fundamental logic skills typical for a culture derived from the inbred Puritan penal colony European rejects.
It's because America uses "first past the post" voting. Look it up. If you immediately realize that no honest intelligent person would support that, you'd be right.
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On my way to the bank to get a loan for pizza rolls.
Buy fuel, I guess ?
Gasoline is only good for about a year before it starts to degrad even with fuel aditivies. You use non-ethanol gas but you're maybe at absolute best getting 3 years out of it before it will begin to gum up your engine, disintegrate your fuel lines, etcetera.
The Mad Max future is not going to last long
Afaik the mad max future they refine their own fuel.
This is why I'm buying crude oil and investing in small scale refinement
Ah yes, the Waterworld strat.
buy non-petroleum-based-fuels? what's the going rate on uranium anyways
You know what they say.
If you gotta ask, >!you can't afford it!<
And windshields/screens.
As well as tires, lubricants, tools, etc I guess. People tearing around the desert in vehicles with flawless glass is maybe the most unrealistic part of that image for me.
"WITNESS ME!"
Put aside some *antibiotics.
The "much effects, less story" version of a "much story, less effects" film.
Make sure you put some OIL aside for the future.
"What... you mean like salad oil?"
And my work here is done, I am OUTTA HERE!
"Wait! Did you mean like olive or peanut oil or...?"
(crickets(forever))
That's why I don't save money who knows when a war will break out
Invest in Aqua Cola
I do this!!
The future is tomorrow right?
....Right?
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