Look - both my husband and I work (God knows I'd much rather be with my children than here) to set money aside. I don't know what this guy's issue is. But I do know that I will not be 81 with no savings with the working assumption that my health will never fail. And I bet you don't either. And I bet you have a good 30 years ahead of working life (if you choose to do so).

There is a huge difference between being 81 and having saved nothing over a lifetime, and being 30 and at the beginning of your working life.

Anyhow, you don't have to agree with me, it's what makes a horse race.

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Sometimes I think people who are well-off and have a good deal of disposable income have a very difficult time identifying with people who are struggling. And MOST people are struggling in this nation. There is ALWAYS something that ends up eating that meager savings and most of the time its unavoidable. The kids need braces or the furnace breaks down or the car needs new tires or you have a fender bender and opt to pay the $1500 for the new bumper instead of hitting insurance. It doesn't take very much for many of us to go broke.

I said this before - 81 years old is a LONG way from braces. We are talking 40 years of active working life - with no savings. I have only JUST started (past few years) savings, after 15 years of working life. It is very hard and we don't go out and do much. But I will flip burgers on weekends in addition to my job if it means I am not depending on my kids (or the government) People lived GENERATIONS without it.

Everyone's different. It was hard to imagine saving a few years ago, but we're doing it now. But I (we) would have to know more about the guy's situation for me to have more empathy for 40 years (with ownership of his own cash-tips business yet!) and 0 savings.

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Our heater went out over the weekend. So my hubby went up on the roof and banged on it until it started working again. Loose wire.

My advice to young people besides saving money and skipping the luxury goods is to learn to fix things that break. I'm not joking here. Our dishwasher is slowly falling apart, but we keep it going. It's not falling apart in an energy wasting way, just little annoying things have broken. We've fixed it twice with what would have been 100s of dollar of repairs ("so we might as well get a new one") and saved big.

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[research.stlouisfed.org]

Starting 10 years ago, the number dropped hard and stayed there. It has only been the past couple of quarters (not years) that people have dialed back their personal consumption. I believe it is a return to the mean (that it will rise back up to 5%-8%), but a few quarters don't make up for a decade of real free-for-all spending.

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It is counted as (from the U.S. Commerce Dept.):

"Personal saving -- disposable personal income less
personal outlays"

And from CNN Money:

Americans have stopped saving for a rainy day.

Instead, they are living paycheck to paycheck, depending on credit cards to get them through emergencies, and hoping that the rising value of their homes will give them a retirement nest egg.

This personal economic chasm is showing up in the national savings rate, which has been declining for years. Tuesday, the Commerce Department reported that the personal savings rate fell to zero in June, the lowest since a one-month buying binge in the aftermath of the 9/11 attacks. The United States is on track to record a savings rate for the year below 1%, which would be the lowest since the depths of the Great Depression, when the rate turned negative.

Alarms
The nation's paucity of savings is raising alarms from the Federal Reserve to consumer watchdogs, who worry that the nation is counting on foreign savings to maintain a spendthrift lifestyle. Some groups are cranking up advertising campaigns to try to remind Americans that they don't need to participate in every sale.

And there are now high-level suggestions that the tax system needs to be changed to encourage savings instead of spending.

"In two generations it seems that we've lost the culture and habit of savings," says Nancy Register, of the Consumer Federation of America "There's so much marketing pressure to spend and buy and have instant gratification. And if you can't buy it now, put it on your credit card."

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One of my best friends has an alcoholic dad. She is always paying his Con Ed bill or his heating bill, because otherwise his heat and electricity get turned off. But meantime - he is spending money on booze.

So you have older people bankrupted by medical bills - but maybe that is because they didn't save for the proverbial rainy day. In the "old days", that is what people did, you had to plan for the possibility of medical expenses, period.

Today, most people think making it to the end of the month with no need to borrow or revolve credit card debt is "successful household management". I think people have to be made to save more.

8% (now down to 1%) U.S. savings rate on an average $45,000 median U.S. income = $3,500/year. Multiply that out by 25 years of employment. That's $87,500. That is before appreciation/dividends/coupons, and it pays a LOT of bills.

My husband adn I have watched a neighbor spend the past few years - fancy vacations summer & winter, fancy cars - now they have 0 saved and his firm isn't paying bonuses. If they have a big medical expense - do I the taxpayer pay up?

Anyhow, Social Security should not get paid out until age 70 (at a minimum), and people need to work longer to get it. The earlier you start taking it, the less you get - and most of these people were taking it AND working, so they were above their means.

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There is no easy answer to the problem. Up until now, it's been to take more and more from the young and the rich. But someday it has to be about accountability, about deferring consumption for the life you expect to lead in retirement during the life you lead beforehand. Beyond that the questions extend to the philosophical, the meaning of extending life after our bodies have ceased to be useful. I can't answer those - I'm just responding with my frustration with the dynamics as they are.

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Can't happen anymore. You have to work longer to get your benefits, and you'll get less of them.

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"Mr. Dase, the unemployed bartender, knows. He spent 40 years working at Pittsburgh taverns and at his own bar, never receiving a pension. Over the years, when the $1,625 Social Security check he and his wife receive each month didn't cover prescriptions or other medical costs such as supplemental Medicare insurance, they used their charge cards. Last year, when their credit-card debt reached $29,000, they took out a $26,000 home-equity loan to pay off most of it. He still owes $5,000 on one credit card, and needs to come up with $363 a month for eight years to pay off the home-equity loan."

So for 40 years, he did not save? They planned on $1,625 being sufficient, and when it was not, they started borrowing? The last 40 years, esp. the 80s, 90s, 00s, the U.S. economy has been very successful.

We can be humane, but people do have to take responsibilities for their lack of savings.

(and what was he doing in his 20s and 30s? By my reckoning, he didn't start his bar until age 40. He had NO PENSION = you must have your own savings).

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The worst part is, he was charging that card with no expectation of repaying it. It's one of the dirty little secrets about credit card default. The elderly love to rack up debt with no intent to pay. Then, their loved ones face an armada of collection agencies that try to shake them down for debt that gets discharged upon death.

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We just paid off our credit cards as part of preparing for my hubby to retire. We are now living month to month on what he makes and saving more money, too. But we have one big luxury which is that we own and board out two horses. Worst case I guess we can eat the horses.

I'm not so much worried about us as our daughter who has really been struggling. She works hard but just relocated and jobs have been scarce. She got one and is working to keep it but she gets no health insurance, no sick time, no vacation as far as I can tell. And because she works in food service they can just tell her to go home if they're not busy. We pay health insurance premiums for her with some unimaginable deductible.

When I was her age I worked more than 25 hours a week at a job that gave me health insurance (not great health insurance, but still), paid vacation and I think some paid sick days. What a huge difference in a standard of living that truly is!!

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We are blessed that my husband has a good and relatively secure job and I'm inching toward claiming my "retirement funds" at age 62.

We have invested in other stuff for retirement besides my husband's retirement plan and social security and have watched it just get wiped out.

Rice is cheap. With a little cat food mixed in, couldn't be that bad, right?

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But when MOM dies those other 6 kids and their spouses will show up aqt the house and try to take anything that moves and will want her bank account...what there is of it divided absolutely equally.

Don't rely on your kids.

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