The baby boomer generation did not save enough money to retire.
And now, as they entire their retirement years, their net worth is plummeting.
The average boomer household will have a net worth of merely $113,268 in 2009, down from $150,113 in 2004.
(Not that they'll get much chance to spend it -- health care and insurance costs for retirees are exploding year after year.)
From the MarketWatch article:
The picture gets even worse if real home prices fall more. If prices, adjusted for inflation, fall 10% by 2009, the median household would see a 35% drop in wealth compared with the same age group in 2004; and if prices fall by 20%, there would be a 46% difference.
...
Further, after deducting 6% for real-estate transaction costs, almost 14% of homeowners in the middle wealth group examined in the survey would have negative net equity after selling their home, even if prices don't drop more.
...
"Unfortunately, we had this huge cohort of baby boomers and they really weren't paying attention," Baker said. "People who should have been saving for their own retirement weren't."
Right.
And we had a government that relied on cockamammy private account schemes for guaranteeing retirements funds for seniors, instead of studying and investing in ways that we could provide secure, dignified and safe retirement years.
And a corporate culture which depleted, stole and ended the pensions programs that provided retirement money to millions of Americans of previous generations.
Well, Wall St. got rich anyway!
I guess we're going to spend the next thirty years or so begging for tuna can donations at the local senior center.
Sometimes I read these retirement calculators, with their outlandish "personal stories" -- I'm on my way to saving $3 million before I retire!
The reality is that almost no one in the country has been able to amass the amount of personal wealth required to fund a private retirement in the age of drowning America in a bathtub.
Like most economic journalism these days, those stories and retirement calculators are worthless fantasy. Real Americans are living in the world -- not of $3 million nest eggs -- but of $5.00 gas, declining home values, declining wages, skyrocketing prices of essentials ... and they can barely save a dime.