When I'm 65 | Full Documentary

When I'm 65 is made possible by the nonprofit Investor Protection Trust and the Investor Protection Institute with contributions from the Alabama Securities Commission, the Iowa Division of Insurance, the Department of Licensing and Regulatory Affairs of Michigan and the Pennsylvania Department of Banking and Securities Since 1993 the Investor Protection Trust has worked with states to provide the objective investor education all Americans need to make informed investment decisions. Do you think you will ever be able to retire from now on? For me, being so young, it's very blurry right now. It seems pretty far away to me too, so I guess I'll be working for quite a while.

Congratulations on the advances in medical science and nutrition. Life expectancy, especially for young people, is increasing considerably, which is very good news, but not everything is great. I know there is always a negative and that is that you have to fund retirement over a longer period of time, the golden years after career retirement, whatever you want to call it, we all face it, we also live longer, well into our later years. 80 years. and the 90s, the golden years that become golden decades, is good news, we are going to live longer, but then we have to recognize that we have to work more or save more and therefore reduce our standard of living.

The retirement age was set at 65 years for social security. current in 1933,

when

retirement lasted, you know, eight or ten years, just this idea that we believe we can work from 22 to 62, which is 40 years, and then support ourselves for at least 20 years, which is the average, arithmetic doesn't work. I mean we're not too far from a day where maybe every year you live you have to fund this year plus another year in the future and I think most people have this view and they'll just keep their fingers crossed and one The day they're going to wake up and you know they're going to be healthy and rich and wise, it's not like you can just show up, you know, at 65 and think, oh, what am I going to do about that in the next 30 years?

You know you need it. figuring it out all the time people don't think about it at all, they're busy with their lives, they focus on other things and then on the other end of the spectrum there are people who just feel overwhelmed by it and don't know what Given the fact that we are saving for something that could happen in 40 years, most of us have no idea what to do and for that we do not want to outlive our money, that is, people have this palpable fear in your eyes for doing that and I don't spend it all in one place things weren't always so complicated most of us remember our parents or grandparents talking dreamily about their pension they're retired people did it

when

I was a kid, but during For 30 years the pension idea has just been that idea, instead employers have offered defined contribution plans for 401ks and IRAs that sound more familiar, I think the shift from a sort of gold watch type pension to People saving for their own future has really shifted much of the burden onto individuals and their families, as pensions are an increasingly endangered species, what we are left with is the do-it-yourself retirement. , a financially secure retirement that begins and ends with the person in the mirror the car analogy is jumping all these parts in your driveway saying here's a manual on how to put it together do it and by the way if it doesn't work it's your problem and you can go wrong at each stage you are responsible whether or not to enroll in a plan how much to contribute what investments to make to increase your savings what size savings you will need what to do with those savings when you move from one job to another and finally when you reach retirement How much to withdraw each year to be able to enjoy living with that money and at the same time not run out of it as long as you continue living?

Is it any wonder that 21 Americans think winning the lottery is their best chance of saving enough for retirement in the old pension system individuals didn't have to make any of these decisions you were automatically enrolled your company set the rate contribution made the investment decisions and at the end of your career they didn't give you a million dollars they provided you with a paycheck for the rest of your life, but things aren't that easy anymore, whether you're ready to retire next year or 40 years from now, each generation faces unique retirement challenges. Boomers grew up in a time of great prosperity. worry-free financially, but it hasn't done them much good because they are not savers at all, they grew up in the era when it was easy to get a credit card, it was easy to get into debt and it was easy to mortgage a second home, so here is a generation with Big aspirations for all the wonderful things they want to do in their retirement, but the truth is that many of us boomers simply can't afford it, Generation X has been taking notes, so they're a little more responsible when it comes to try to save and therefore have also set slightly more modest expectations for retirement, they don't necessarily assume that they are going to retire young and then live comfortably for decades, they imagine that they are going to retire having to have roommates or moving to a less expensive part of the country and then there are the millennials who are watching their own baby boomer parents go through financial hardships and so they're a little more cautious and they survived you know, the economic volatility of the last decade and it wasn't whiplash. as big as the 20th century depression in the 1930s, but it caught people's attention.

Baby boomers saw their 401k plummet, courtesy of the 2008 crash, and now they have. Little time to catch up with the often cynical members of the generation who have seen so many market declines that, true to their nature, they are skeptical of the whole damn system and, for millennials, many are joining the workforce at a time when it is difficult to find employment. By historical standards, they also have crushing student loan debt and severe distrust of the market. Any savings they have is in cash and probably in the mattress, but with our current retirement system we have no choice but to use the market to try to maximize. our savings to achieve a financially secure retirement.

I think the boomers saw the rug pulled out a little bit and I don't think it's too late to make decisions and get going, but again, you have to be more aggressive than you ever dreamed. I mean a lot of us were hoping to retire soon and I think we probably won't retire the same way or as quickly as we had planned it used to be when people retired. Oh, they could. I could do this. I can do it, it doesn't work like that anymore. I'm not doing as well as I should be, but I want my kids to do a lot better and I want them to think about their retirement because that's nothing I've thought about.

These are big. questions and for the most part our decision as a society has been to say well, let's hope people think about them, but it's questionable how much we are able to think about them in 2013, the average household approaching retirement had one hundred and eleven thousand dollars . in 401k and ira balances it sounds like a lot what it means is less than four hundred dollars each month to supplement social security Americans are dramatically ill prepared for retirement and it's really a crisis, it's scary, it's problematic and we have to do something about it Regarding retirement, many Americans find themselves behind the eight ball.

How are we falling behind? you know where you're going all you need is a little advice and a lot of planning there are many human irrationalities one of them is the belief that people have in our ability to make decisions behavioral economists like dan ariely study how we, as human beings, actually we make financial decisions for better or worse in style economics we think of people as perfectly capable people they can think of all options think long term and always always always always make the right decisions the behavioral economics perspective is a bit sad we are all fallible we don't know how to make decisions we get confused easily it's a sad view of human nature but the fact is it is a more accurate view of human nature, evolutionarily our brains are programmed to run away from a bear or a lion, without planning for the distant future, oh man, I love Northrop government and it turns out that stress and emotions cloud our decision making abilities, what the hell is going on down here? the more decisions we have to make, the worse we do yes, okay, in the long run, many complicated decisions stress the emotions, sound familiar with our current retirement system and our genetics.

Retirement planning is the perfect disaster. It's pretty much game over for everyone else. This is probably the hardest thing for us. why people do it is about now versus later and now versus later is something we fail at all the time right, it's about overeating eating is fun now is not healthy then exercising is not as fun now is good for later and retirement is not just now versus later it is Now, much later, not only are we unable to plan for the distant future. Human beings are also very susceptible to temptations. In the now, we have all these calls to our attention right now, all these things that grab us and make us want. do it now, spend money on the new car, spend money on a slightly bigger house, a nicer appliance, etc. and by the way, each of those things feels more emotionally exciting, more exciting than the idea of ​​saving money for this long period of time.

In the future there is one more element that is very important to understand and that is that the environment we are part of is actually fighting against us imagine that life is a battle in your wallet every store wants something from your wallet every coffee shop wants you spend money on every ad while you spend some money and they care about your retirement no, they want you to spend now the idea that people can make the right decisions about retirement to me is equivalent to the idea that I will give you donuts, sausages, bacon and whatever you want every day and expect yourself to resist all those temptations, it's just not going to work.

America resisted very few temptations in the early 2000s thanks to cheap credit and rising home values ​​that we used as ATMs back then. There came a big wake-up call, the market crash of 2008, I mean, this is volatility that we haven't seen, of course, since long before you and I were born, so there's a big quote, just when the tide we see who has been swimming naked. and I think that's really evident with the financial crisis, once interest rates went down a lot, when it became harder to borrow money, then it became more obvious who was in a good situation and who wasn't, it was already difficult for Our caveman brains scrimp now for the distant future, but in today's economy the battle in your wallet is often not for luxuries but for necessities, it's aw

full

y tempting to say well, you know, I need all my money today for my dental bills. the kids or to fix the car or something like that, you know?

That extra money for the future when needs are important today is really difficult for many workers, so although it is very tempting not to save now, that is probably one of the biggest mistakes an individual can make now that they do. need. Think about other approaches to help people save for retirement because without that there would be devastation and it would be too late to fix anything. Behavioral economists not only look at how we make decisions but how we can be pushed to make better decisions and now when to say better decisions means better in terms of what someone says they would like to do, but doesn't do it often, so they want to do more. diet, want to save better, why do people make these types of decisions?

Is there a way that we can go in there and potentially change the decision-making context or change the decision-makers. We can also think about how we design the world for people like us, not for hyper-Russian people. The key to saving lies in understand human behavior, our aversion. to making decisions and taking advantage of our natural inertia one of the things we have learned is that when people are faced with a decision, especially if they think it is an important decision and they don't know exactly what course of action to take, do nothing, They say, well, you know, I'll decide on this on Thursday and Thursday never happens.

One of the biggest problems with the 401k system is that people just don't sign up, maybe you start a new job and don't do it.You're sure what the budget is going to be, so you put off making that decision, but then inertia takes over and you never get it signed Almost a decade ago, David C. John and his colleagues introduced a policy to harness the power of our natural inertia. Automatic 401k for employers who offered it meant that employees would be automatically enrolled in a 401k plan and the impact of the automatic 401k is striking on traditional 401ks where you must choose to participate 20 will enroll in the first year and three years later line 65 percent you are enrolled in the automatic 401k you are defaulted to the 90 program or enrolled from the beginning and three years later participation rises to 98 percent unless you decide not to save you are in the program people actually participate recognize they need to save recognize they need orientation and started saving earlier than they otherwise would have, otherwise employees are still offered the same options to save or not, but framing the option that you are saving unless you decide not to participate rates They increase from 65 percent to 98 percent and with retirement savings it is crucial to get people to the table and save as soon as possible.

An important ingredient in growing your investments is time, so The sooner you start saving for retirement, the better the magic of compound interest will be, letting time do the work by investing as soon as possible, let's say a millennial saves money for retirement starting at age 22 and stops contributing to 22 years. 30 years. Compare that to a Gen would benefit if the millennial had continued contributing after age 30. The bottom line is that the sooner you start, the less you'll have to skimp to reach your retirement goals. A 25 year old can get away with contributing 10 per year. A 35 year old young man, 15 and waiting.

Until you are 45 you will have to save almost 30 of your salary, we are not made to think 40 or 50 years from now and, unless as a society we build structures that force that conversation and make it easier to act accordingly, We will never solve this problem. Automatic 401k plans have brought many Americans to the table and saved sooner than they would have on their own, but for half of the American workforce saving for retirement is still out of reach, so We still have a substantial proportion of the population that does not have the opportunity to save in one way or another and that is a very serious problem as it stands. 75 million Americans lack access to a company-sponsored retirement savings program and the data is completely clear, less than five percent of people who lack a work plan go out and open a plan on their own. percent most are literally not saving who make up the 75 million self-employed small business employees and part-time workers 53 million Americans today are self-employed or self-employed these people are often on their own, but for small business employees there have been some attempts to bring them to the table to offer all Americans access to an auto rage at work so they can save at work just like everyone in this chamber, can auto rage bring a simple low cost system for small businesses for whom the 401k plan may seem too expensive and complex.

Both Senator McCain and then-Senator Obama included auto anger in their 2008 presidential campaigns, and each year President Obama includes it in his federal budget. It's a simple proposal but it's a great thing Despite the support the automatic anger is still just an attractive idea languishing in the halls of Congress the federal government is the right place to do this and for a while I think state governments were just waiting for the federal government at some point We got tired of waiting and felt it was time to act in early 2015 with State Senator Daniel Biss when his primary sponsor Illinois became the first state to enact the Illinois Secure Choice Automatic IRA law enroll small business employees by default into IRAS through payroll deductions giving them access to an affordable retirement savings account and the behavioral benefits of automatic enrollment.

This is a bill that addresses long-term problems and allows people now to start saving for later, and that creates some urgency: We have a crisis. Today any solution will literally be implemented over decades and just so you know when you are in that situation you need to act fast and this is just the beginning in 2015 30 more states are developing their own versions of the states of the automatic anger are recognizing that it might be in their financial interest to address this issue head-on, they recognized that if they had a substantial population of people who are just retiring on social security or social security and not much more than that, We have a lot of requests additional for taxpayer-funded expenses for health care, housing, libraries, home health care costs, things along those lines and whether we can fix our retirement security system so that people are independent, live safely with dignity and not They depend on the state which is not. it's just the right thing to do for the people, which it is, but it's also hugely beneficial to the state's bottom line, something that happens very rarely in today's political landscape.

Knee-jerk rages are gaining ground in both red and blue states, which is why we have conservatives and liberals coming together. and recognize that at least in this small area of ​​public policy we can get along and move toward practical solutions. Some people will say, "Wait, where does that money go from my paycheck?" and we will opt out and that's fine, but the vast majority of people will say okay, I'm saving for retirement now, good news, but what about the 53 million independent workers and freelancers excluded from the auto world Anger, who make up one-third of the American workforce and the growing Generation percent of millennials are self-employed or self-employed and I think one of the things that we're all starting to feel and what we're seeing is that we're feeling insecure, we're seeing that all the risk is being taken on by the workforce in terms of having these similar jobs, but we have to start thinking about what are going to be new ways that we can protect people from taking this kind of risk if workers with company-sponsored retirement plans have a hard time overcoming their caveman brains? and saving for retirement, what chance do the self-employed have with 40 of millennials working for themselves and growing this generational cohort? transforming the financial services industry through the best way they know technology.

I think millennials are very used to doing things quickly and there is an app for that. Financial technology is making it easier for us to stay on top of our finances, from online banking apps to budgeting apps to even checking how your savings compare to your college generation, and I think that's really reshaping financial services in a big way. extent. What you're seeing is it starts with millennials, but that kind of trend continues. To Generation in assets and the financial industry that themselves We are looking at marketing promises ready to help you increase your savings. We all know that the retirement you want is coming, but choosing the right investments is often complicated and risky.

Most of us have no idea. I mean, we hear about all kinds of things. but we also hear all kinds of dangers and frauds and things like that, when it comes down to it we don't have a crystal ball, the main thing that works is diversifying your risk, there are single funds for everyone. Known as diversified target-date funds tailored to their age and risk tolerance, some workers try to cobble together their own diversified retirement plan, but for many, diving into the turbulent waters of the stock market is stressful enough and so they abandon investment decisions. investment in the hands of a financial advisor when I was 22 when I started I wasn't saving I worked for a company that had a pension plan and I didn't even know I was aware that I was working working for money I didn't think about retirement at all but It has happened to many people from generation x and baby boomers.

Tom's company terminated his pension benefit and collected his pension in a lump sum, so he went from knowing that the company takes care of you and you don't even have to. Think about it to transition to now. I really have to think about it, so I went to my financial advisor and said here's my money, where should it go? And he put it into managed funds. All my friends were like, Well, I'm in good shape, I've got this guy who can help me, and my blood pressure starts going up. Investors are faced with a very confusing variety of people and most of them look alike, sound similar, however, that is not the case at all.

Investors need to understand those who are product sellers, they are almost like your corner butcher, they will have many opinions and sell meat all day long, unlike your nutritionist who exists to give you advice on what is best for your health products seller or an advisor who helps guide your Investment advisors are known as fiduciaries by law. They are supposed to have your best financial interests in mind for product sellers. The standard they are held to is called suitability, which means that the product seller cannot make investments on your behalf that are grossly inappropriate. given your financial profile, otherwise product sellers are free to pursue what is best for their bottom line rather than yours, people are dealing with the wild west, dealing with very unregulated professionals and what that advisor of investments he wants to do is get his money into the accounts for which they earn a commission for tom bell, he began to notice that his savings simply were not growing as he had expected or expected true to his gen x nature self-sufficient and skeptical of the experts quote unquote tom took the DIY approach and started doing research on his own.

I started reading and learned about fees and how much managed funds paid compared to how much index funds paid, but not once was anything mentioned about fees and I didn't think it didn't. know to look at the fees or not to look at the fees, you know, I just saw that mutual funds are mutual funds, this is your job, tell me what to do, high fees do not necessarily lead to higher returns and sometimes they can lead to the opposite, as currently established by law. Stand advisors are not required to disclose any conflicts of interest, which means they can, and often do, steer you away from lower-cost, higher-return funds toward products that earn them a commission.

What we sometimes think is true: the more you pay, the more you get. The exact opposite is true when it comes to investing, the more you pay the less you get, these high fees come out of your savings and over time what could have been a big savings can be reduced to a small one, that small portion. what they are taking year after year after year will be how much by the time I retire. It's maddening, it is what it is, and this bad advice stemming from conflicts of interest costs Americans approximately $17 billion a year from their retirement savings. and there is no regulation that prevents them from directing you to accounts that meet your needs and those of your company and do not meet your needs.

There's nothing to stop them from doing so if consumers ever needed protection for something through federal regulation, our retirement savings. It seems like a no-brainer what fees they are paying for the services, as well as whether there are any potential conflicts of interest regarding the investment services. The Labor Department tried, but financial industry lobbyists nearly killed the proposal until it gained approval. attention of the white house, you should have peace of mind knowing that the advice you are receiving to invest those dollars is sound and that is what this new rule would do and, for advisorsprominent financiers, levels the playing field so they can do what they know is right, putting their clients first, although this is not a law, there is movement on this issue that advocates see as a great benefit to the American worker preparing for a financially secure retirement, with its many obstacles and pitfalls.

Feel like you are living inside an arcade game and if you can survive you will reach retirement age with a big pot of gold and for most Americans this is the biggest pot of gold they have ever seen, I think we have We've spent a lot of time, policy-wise, getting people to save and figuring out how to do that, and we've spent almost no time thinking about how to help people when they really need to withdraw money for retirement. with What could be more money than you ever had in your life and people don't recognize that this becomes income and has to last the duration of your retirement?

We don't know how long we're going to have to stretch this money. If you know your number, the problem starts early in setting your retirement goal as achieving a giant lump sum of liquid funds. What we're finding is that that's actually a little problematic because people see a number like 200,000 and think that's a huge number. amount of money that seems like enough to fund retirement, but when you start breaking it down in terms of how much it will actually give us month to month in retirement, it no longer seems so good to see your retirement account balance as a lump.

The sum may entice people to dip into that account before they retire—it could be to pay for important things like education or healthcare—but sometimes it just goes to waste. I personally cashed out a 401k plan when I was 30 years old. Like hello, but you think, oh. You know I really needed it at that moment. You know it wasn't much, so I didn't think there was any harm in collecting it. I think that happens too often. Weakening those savings, especially from a young age, can lead to Compounding Losses While you nickel and dime your retirement savings, today you're also missing out on all the growth that the magic of compounding brings, cheating your future self out of thousands of dollars in retirement savings at the time these withdrawals may seem like small amounts. of a gigantic lump sum of cash, but when explained in terms of affecting your monthly income during retirement, the difference is stark, many financial institutions are beginning to see the merit of restructuring retirement account funds in this way and Reporting both your balance and an income stream, this is just a simple disclosure that can have a huge effect on people because it reminds them that this is the true purpose of retirement savings: not to have them.

This monstrous lump sum is to have Income security towards the end of your life - that's the goal of retirement savings, after all, to maintain an income stream that sustains you for the rest of your life - but it's also the next challenge that can be. It's hard to predict how much you'll need to live on in retirement, and since people are living longer these days, it's even harder to know how long your money will have to last if you keep your portfolio in stocks and bonds that you're constantly guessing about yourself. longevity. How long will I live?

That is a question that many people ask and you know it is a difficult question to answer. There's a lot of buzz around the old four percent adage: Your savings is supposed to continue growing at more than four percent. percent, so if you keep your withdrawal percentage a little lower than the total return you get on the money still in your retirement account, you'll be fine, you won't spend it, but getting a four percent return is not It is not as simple as it once was and with today's anemic interest rates it almost requires you to keep funds in the stock market, exposing older people to risks they cannot handle, you must own stocks, the simple fact is that If you are going to run out of money it will be towards the end of your life and this is not the time to make incredibly complex financial decisions, especially given the fact that by definition you don't have much to deal with, consider the pool often. called The Silent Generation, the cohort before the baby boomers, they enjoyed a pension and with a pension, this group did not have to make all these decisions about where to invest or how much to withdraw, nor were they given a million dollars, but they lived the silent generation your golden years receiving a fixed salary for the rest of your lives social security works in the same way that you are paid a guaranteed benefit for the rest of your life, so we could reason that the ideal would be to apply the salary of pension system model most prevalent for 401k and IRA pensions today, but requires another product of the financial industry: annuities, an annuity that you purchase for yourself as you approach retirement or at the beginning of your retirement, It's like an instant pension plan for you in its simplest form, an annuity is an insurance product you take a certain amount of money and give it to the insurance company and the insurance company gives you a paycheck every month for as long as you live, the funds are outside the stock market and unlike the traditional four percent withdrawal, your savings are safe from fluctuations in the market, you don't have to check your investments, you know, by looking at the market Every day, I think about how much I will be able to withdraw so as not to run out of money.

You know this, which is why if the market is down, it causes a lot of anxiety. If you buy the annuity, you know that the problem is solved for you in a world of economic instability and no guarantees. This is what you can count on. Still, consumers remain skeptical about annuities, a financial product. This can seem frustratingly complex and requires a long commitment. I think people are afraid to save money because they think they don't have enough in the first place. If I have one hundred thousand dollars at the current exchange rate, I will get approximately fifty. five hundred maybe six thousand dollars a year so it's five hundred dollars a month and people look at this they say one hundred thousand dollars five hundred dollars a month what happens if I walk in front of a bus tomorrow?

Went well? What if you live until? You're 90 and you don't want your kids to have to pay for you, so there are plenty of good reasons to do it, but you know people don't do it as much as they should, annuities are a controversial topic and like all investment vehicles , they have their pros and cons. You never annuitize all of your retirement investment income, but you want to use that annuity for guaranteed income to supplement Social Security. Look at how much you will need to live on your basic family budget. How much are you going to spend? come from reliable annuity sources like social security and then purchase an annuity that will provide you with a monthly income to fill that gap and with that you will have created your own pension designed as a paycheck for the rest of your life insulated from fluctuations in the stock market and let's face it, we are going to have more economic crises in the future, they are a reality, just like hurricanes, so doing something like this would make a lot more sense than the current system of just hoping things will work out for you.

For many, especially for baby boomers, it is simply too late, they have saved what they have saved, it is not enough and they have little time to get it back, so what else can we do? Social security is today and has always been a theft. the principle of paypal is a ponzi scheme we are heading towards a fiscal cliff here every one of those programs is going bankrupt i have never seen an area where there has been more misinformation and misunderstanding than social security social security is not going away it is here now It will be here for millennials in 30 years.

It will not disappear, but with pensions practically gone. Social Security and its guaranteed lifetime benefit plays an important role for most retirees, but they face a long-term funding problem, like most Americans. rely on that benefit it needs to be reinforced if we do nothing today we can pay all benefits as promised until 2033, at which time benefits would have to be reduced by 25 This is the most important component of retirement income for most people, so I think we need to maintain current benefit levels, which means we need additional funding. Social Security wasn't meant to fund a 20- or 25-year retirement, so it's no surprise the system is in financial trouble, but fixing the financial strain on Social Security is actually very, very easy if you locked up 15 congressmen in a room for an hour you closed the door a lot of coffee without going to the bathroom they would find a financial solution for social security in about 45 minutes everyone knows what would do it is simply a matter of political will in a sense To get more money It is simply increasing the tax rate by increasing the social security tax by one and a half percent on both the employer and employees.

Full benefits can be paid for the next 75 years. The profit limit could also be increased. Taxable at this time, the Social Security tax applies to income up to approximately one hundred and eighteen thousand five hundred dollars. Any income above that is simply not taxable for social security, they are not contributing to the system, it would increase the wage base. to which the social security fica tax is applied is immediately solvent, so social security can be set for a price if the political will exists, those approaching retirement may also have the opportunity to get more out of this benefit government-mandated life insurance, most of us know that at age 62 we can claim social security, but did you know that the longer you wait, the greater the benefit?

The numbers are staggering if you take it at age 70 instead of 62. Monthly benefits are 76 higher. People who start receiving benefits too early when they are in good health are reasonably well off and could wait until age 66 or 70. They are leaving behind higher lifetime benefits than they could get if they waited a few years after age 62. And I hope you all look into this and find out more about it. because this is one of the most important retirement decisions anyone can make and a lot of people are not doing it right and for many delaying collecting social security means delaying retirement, I think what has happened in terms of considering retirement Nowadays, especially for boomers, it's that You know you used to have social security, you had your own personal savings, and maybe you had a pension.

Whatever now work is part of your retirement. It is a work retirement. Many boomers want to continue working, but may be ready to ditch their 40s. Phased-out retirement programs allow workers to gradually reduce hours before

full

retirement, making it easier for many to work longer. Federal employees now have this benefit and several private companies are doing the same, allowing companies to retain decades of institutional knowledge while the phased retiree can reduce hours but maintain stable income and health benefits. I have worked at Hermann Miller for 33 years. It can be quite a physically demanding job. You are in constant movement.

We can walk more than 20 thousand steps per day. Miller, the legendary furniture company, began offering a phased retirement program three years ago. Sally Meyer, a divorced mother of six, was able to reduce her work to 20 hours a week as you get older you get a little tired, it's nice I don't have to work a full week, Herman Miller, however, I may be the only one among the companies that offer a phased retirement program to employees on the manufacturing floor. If I were to retire right now I would be a little worried, but being able to continue working for a few more years I can postpone collecting my social security so it will be a lot better plus I can add a little more to my 401k plan and then I will be in a very good position to fully retire, but for many I will still work longer in their career.

It's just not an option Alfreda Diggs worked for 39 years in the juvenile justice system at age 61 she was hurt on the job an injury that forced her to retire early and at first I thought, well I'll get my retirement money. Well, don't work like that. I started living off my retirement money in two years. I didn't have a cent. She was broke at 63 despite her injuries. Alfreda looked for work and, like many older adults, she had difficulty finding it. Back in the workforce, I even went to the officeemployment and submitted an online application. I never heard from them at the time, she didn't know what she was going to do while she was at a food bank, Alfreda saw a brochure for the senior community. csep service employment program a job training program for older adults offered by state agencies and non-profit organizations in the case of alfreda at the detroit area agency on aging so when I came here and applied about A month later I received a phone call and then within the next week I was working in the CSEP program, Alfreda took computer classes and finally signed up to become a Certified Home Health Aide through the Red Cross.

The money I earn now supplements my social security and I am not rich at all. I know by any stretch of the imagination, but I'm surviving, I don't have to go to the food pantry anymore and I thank God for that, don't worry, I put it with my stuff, it's okay, I want to keep working as long as . as I can and I plan to start saving some more money. I know I won't be able to save the amount of money I saved but I will still put some money aside but what if you can't continue working or have just had enough here is another option for most Americans, especially for middle-income people, the greatest source of wealth accumulation is the home they own.

I think the house is an important retirement asset. The problem is that today people have not used it, they basically keep it. I think their house provides them with some security in case something goes wrong later in life and I think they implicitly want to leave it to their children as well, but with the current shortfall in retirement savings many will have to start looking to take advantage of the value housing liquid to close the gap. In retirement savings, we've all heard of downsizing, but there's another option: reverse mortgages. You deserve to enjoy life again with a reverse mortgage.

They had a bad reputation after some people were scammed, but with new government protections reverse mortgages are back. I think this is going to happen. To be a central part of how we approach the retirement partner first, the home is the largest asset the typical American family has at retirement and is something that can make a difference in helping people, so that you have to look for important things, that is one of the reasons. That reverse mortgage sounds interesting, here's how a reverse mortgage works: Your house has equity, well, you can tap into that equity with a monthly payment at a fixed rate, like a social security check, or you can take a lump sum or obtain a line of credit in a time of need take advantage of your home to stay home for the rest of your life used sensibly makes a lot of sense yes it can be abused yes it has been abused but properly regulated and monitored they play a role in Making retirement more comfortable for someone who owns a home with substantial equity but staying home alone is not the goal for some.

I have no choice but to grow old and had watched my parents pass away in nursing homes and as a divorced, single woman. without kids i thought what will happen to me marianne kilkenny was looking for ways to downsize her house and an alternative to senior housing is probably one of the biggest costs anyone out of pocket and say how can i take that same amount of retirement money and use it, some boomers were attracted to community living in the 1960s and now the arrangement looks attractive again as people retire. I think cohousing and seeing how far our money goes in retirement is definitely one solution and the other part is I feel a lot safer here than when I lived and it wasn't like it was a bad neighborhood, but I also lived alone.

The benefits of shared housing go beyond finances. People check in to see how you're doing. I mean, there's a lot to say, you know, someone saying, how's your day going? Something as simplistic as that. One of the things about getting older is that we often wish we had help with many of the things we used to do relatively easily, whether it's shoveling snow. rake the leaves be able to read something from a package do you know where that help comes from is the question in my eyes says is it okay for women like marianne where can the help come fromliving in a shared house with one in three baby boomers growing old single in the community is a growing trend that many will consider huge.

The fact that we talk about shared life as something new seems funny to me because it really isn't. one thing new is how families lived for centuries and now we say it's something new, it's just that we are with a chosen family boomer generation xer millennial thank you all, maybe it all starts with accepting that one day we will be 65 years old. It's such a strange thing, right, because we have, you're still right, it's a version of you like that, you'll eventually know what skin you'll eventually get into, it's kind of dependent and now it's up to us to make sacrifices. that they can be taken care of so that they can potentially live a better or worse life depending on what we do now, we know that there are all these moments where we make sacrifices for other people, so we make sacrifices for our children for our spouses and for our parents older people and what my colleagues and I have tried to suggest is that our future selves should be considered in similar dimensions to those people.

Hal's research has shown that we don't actually feel emotionally connected to our future self, it's too abstract. and so we don't think of our future selves as someone to care for, but his research has also looked at ways to foster a greater emotional connection with our future selves. In fact, we have shown people images of themselves at advanced age, now it is like that. emotional, so we've found that seeing these images of ourselves as we age makes us feel more emotionally connected to those distant beings, but it's also seen from an anecdotal perspective when I showed these images to our research participants, they say. things like my god who looks like my grandmother or who looks like my grandfather, it seems to be a kind of emotional experience for people when they see these images, so the bottom line is that if they are emotionally connected to us, then we will be more motivated to make sacrifices today to ensure their later well-being years ago, maybe our grandparents were 65 years old, 65 year old people generally looked old thought they were old acted old, they weren't old today, you know, I mean the Average age of the Rolling Stones is 70 years old.

Know that you are older than our Supreme Court. True to the nature they advertise, baby boomers are blazing a path for the generations behind them, showing what self-initiated retirement can look like and exposing the fractures in the system throughout the way baby boomers are. a generation of firsts, you know as women, we went to work first, the first big group of people who looked at retirement and said, do I have enough money? We did a lot of things, not all of which were all positive, but we are the First, we are at the forefront of making some really significant changes.

They consider it a time when they have more freedom, but it's not necessarily freedom to sit on the beach and read a book, it's freedom to participate in their community. It's freedom to start a business It's freedom to work a part-time job you've always thought about It's freedom to pursue hobbies and interests you've never had time for This is where we all want to live a financially secure retirement with the freedom to live whatever our own vision of retirement is. I think the word retirement won't be this big wall that you know, you jump over it and you know you're done and people don't see you anymore. and you're in retirement country, it's really been an opportunity for people to change and say, you know what I'd really like to do, and particularly for boomers, people in their 50s and 60s, it's a moment when you want to say you know what life is about what will give meaning to my life at 60 you might be doing something completely different for the next 15 years you can start over in a new career 60 year olds we are the new middle age and I plan to be here until I am old so I do what I have to do even if I retire I would still volunteer to help an elderly person or if I can help some young people , I would. successful pitcher retirement for me, no mortgage, no debt, I have three kids, one now lives in Minneapolis, I don't know where the next two are going so I want to be able to travel from city to city without much worry of just being able to do maybe one trip a year to see each of them I don't plan on getting bored I just want to keep my lifestyle the way it is now and with the annuities I have I will cover what my paychecks have been of course there will be no raises or anything for style, but that's what I guess my social security will be.

The last 30 years of this DIY retirement experiment have been a difficult journey, but understanding our behavioral economics and advancing public policy. you are helping us get there we are seeing this as a global phenomenon we are seeing literally on every continent in the world governments recognize that people are living longer and that they need to deal with this problem after a lifetime of hard work you should be able to make us retire with dignity and a sense of security we have a big task ahead of us to do this well and we have to do it well.

I'm cautiously optimistic that this is not a scientific problem, we know how to solve it, it's an engineering problem and it's always good to know that you can solve it. 65 may be some blurry destination in the distance or something approaching with greater clarity very soon, but with luck in planning or both, many of us can get there and enjoy our own vision of a successful retirement. So When I'm 65 is made possible by the nonprofit Investor Protection Trust and the Investor Protection Institute with contributions from the Alabama Securities Commission, Iowa Division of Insurance, Department of Licensing and Regulatory Affairs of Michigan and the Pennsylvania Department of Banking and Securities since 1993 the Investor Protection Fund has worked with states to provide the objective investor education that all Americans need to make informed investment decisions.