I mostly blame myself. When I was in my twenties, thirty years in the future might as well have been three hundred years. I’m pushing 50, but I’ve only had a 401(k) for ten years and I’m currently contributing 14% and the company matches me at 65% or 75% (I think) of the first 6% of my contribution. Right now I’m in good financial shape in that I have no debts save for a mortgage and one car payment. My hope is to have my house paid off ten years and to perhaps retire or go into semi-retirement after that. I don’t want to be a bummer, but my father died when he was fifty and while I can’t point to any particular problems I wonder if I’ll even make it to retirement.
Mostly myself, although I’ve spent my whole career working for small companies who up until about ten years ago weren’t required to enrol me in a pension plan, so I was reliant on paying into a personal pension, which is never anywhere near as good, and lean years when I was freelance meant not paying in at all. Thankfully my wife has a good pension.
I’m also hoping I can downsize when I retire and live off some of the capital.
However, what I really think is lacking is financial education. All those maths lessons we endured at school, and they couldn’t give over a chunk to teaching us about pensions and investments??
I retired just before COVID hit, and if we’d had to rely on my pension as a Fed retiree as well as our SS, things would have been a lot tighter for us. But we’d been smart and worked with an advisor at our credit union - he set us up with a couple of annuities using our 401k money. So we’re fine, tho not as happy as we might have been due to rising prices.
I voted Myself - it this as in many other things, I think it’s foolish to rely on anyone else to plan one’s future. No one cares about you as much as you do. I wish we’d realized this a couple of decades earlier than we did, but, as I said, we’re fine. The kitchen remodel I’d love to have ain’t gonna happen, but we tucked enough away that we can help with our grandson’s preschool costs, and that’s more important than new cabinets.
I votes Something Else, because it’s the fact that my parents have been retired for 30+ years, so I want to make sure my money lasts that long. We plan to retire in the next few years and we have some major home improvements planned so spending up our “fun” savings before retirements is a bit stressful. We have 3 pensions, both 401Ks, and SS so we’re pretty well set, but I want to make sure it all lasts for a long time.