When I was practicing as a financial planner, it was sad to see so many people unprepared for retirement because they have been counting on SS for so many years. I would constantly meet with people in their 50′s who were ready to start planning for their retirement, and I would say about 80% had less than $10,000 saved for retirement. They came to me looking for answers on retiring only to find out that SS will replace only a fraction of what they were bringing home, and if they were lucky enough to have a pension, they might possibly be able to replace 50% of their income. This came as a tremendous shock to most and their retirement dreams were crushed.

But, I agree, SS was never meant to fund someone’s retirement completely, but people have looked at it as just for for so long. There has been no real pressure to save your own money for retirement, so why would you when you knew you had SS coming your way?

It is going to be a long and painful shift from the mentality of a government sponsored retirement to personal retirement savings and it will be interesting to see how the next 10-20 years play out.

On the other hand, there’s always some jerk with an agenda that turns these discussions into a story about “lack of personal responsibility” and how we’re all getting soft because of Medicare and Social Security. It’s important to note that at one time we had neither Medicare nor Social Security, and someone from that mythical past where everyone took responsibility for themselves somehow thought they were a good idea. Maybe that great era of responsbility wasn’t so great, after all? Medicare and Social Security exist because of Murphy’s Law — what can go wrong, will go wrong, for somebody. Are you willing to let someone live in squalor when it does?

That having been said, *I* am not leaving my future up to Medicare and Social Security — even if the system were sound (it’s not — shame on us), I want to have fun when I’m retired, not merely subsist.

Often times we talk about the “power of compounding interest” when investing but unfortunately it works the other way as well. Making those minimum payments compounds the amount we owe and definitely “keeps taking” away from us.

Where is the personal accountability? There isn’t any anymore. While this article sort of touched on it, it comes down to the mentality of if you aren’t where you want to me or don’t get what you want, it is someone or something else’s fault. Of course, it can’t be because you aren’t trying or working hard enough, it has to be because you are entitled to it, so someone or something is preventing you from achieving this!

But I digress, I don’t want to get too ranty, but in summary I wanted to agree with your comments.

Regarding your comment about Gen X taking responsibility to change the US gov’t's debt situation, I agree. I don’t see any of the currently working generations focusing on it. We hear lots of talk about reducing the deficit in the federal budget, but no talk of maintaining a budget surplus long enough to pay off that debt. The only way it gets addressed now is by maintaining a controlled, moderate level of inflation, which erodes the real value of the debt. A bit of a cope out in my book.

I don’t wish to turn this too political, but I’ll say this much: if we want people to take responsibility, we should take away crutches like Medicare and Social Security. Personal responsibility would become paramount, followed quickly by familial responsibility. After that one’s church and other non-profit orgs. Only then should governments get involved, and then only local and state. The federal government has no business holding our hands with entitlement programs. No one is going to take care of us. Always look out for Number 1! Work our asses off and make it happen — isn’t that the realist American Dream?

Gen X sends.