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The purpose of this post is simply to illustrate that the world of retirement planning and living is vastly different than that of many, if not most, in the HumbleDollar community of writers and readers. No judgement intended.
While we debate, saving, budgets, annuities, investment and withdrawal strategies, the real world, doesn’t or can’t save or invest adequately let alone accumulate wealth.
According to the Federal Reserve, the median retirement savings for individuals age 55-64 is $185,000 and the average $537,560. It is only slightly higher for those 65-74.
We discuss on HD how to use the 4% or other withdrawal strategies, but for most retirees it doesn’t matter much – because 4% of $185,000 is $616 per month possible income. Plus Social Security provides a big chunk, if not most of their income.
The median net worth for those 65-74 years old is about $410,000 and $334,700 for those 75 and older. Given that includes their home and all assets, most seniors have little flexibility to work with – including emergency savings.
According to the Pension Rights Center the median income of individuals age 65 and older is about $29,740 and for households $50,290 which of course, means half have lower incomes.
The SSA reports as of August 2025, the average benefit for “retired workers” is $2,008.31, no median is available, but it is less for sure.
For approximately 39% of men and 44% of women who are Social Security beneficiaries aged 65 and older, the benefits represent 50% or more of their total income. For about 12% of men and 15% of women in the same group, Social Security accounts for 90% or more of their income.
I don’t know about you, but these sobering numbers raise a feeling of guilt. My property taxes and HOA fee are nearly equal to the median retiree income. While most retirees rely heavily on Social Security, we are busy planning how to give our RMD to charity, children and grandchildren.
I can make the case we earned what we have and were prudent with money for 56 years, but so did others and we can’t discount our tremendous good fortune and absence of misfortune.
RQ
thnx for another informative article
I have been lucky in life by being able to save and spend at the same time so the averages have no meaning to me. I also take SS and 100% P&T from the VA with that there is no need to take any money from our Roth and other Mutual Fund which we use for our Emergency Fund. We are lucky to live in a country that treats us fairly
Keep up the good work to make people think……Right or Wrong
This is an interesting topic. There are some who think society should operate so that outcomes for its members are equal, while others think that only opportunities can be equal. I am not sure about either.
At 79, (1946) only about 35% of my birth year cohorts are still living. The amount of my assets is larger than it was 9 years ago at age 70. How much of the length of my life is due to my genes, how much to choices I made as I grew older, and how much was chance or fate?
As a man, I benefited from the higher wages paid to men during much of my working life. In 1972 when I started working for the insurance company where I worked for 30 years, there were no female employees except those employed in clerical jobs.
For men, those who are married and stay married to only one spouse live longer and are wealthier than those who do not.
Before AI, one could expect to earn more with a college degree than without one. And, in the mid-1960’s, a top public university charged less than $1000 for four years of tuition.
Finally, both my spouse and I are children of parents who grew up and were significantly affected by the Depression. Being thrifty is a lot of who we were programmed to be.
Okay, so we are wealthy. It isn’t totally our fault, Nor, is it totally a demonstration of our virtues. All that we can do is to play the cards we still have in our hand.
Your essay points out something important. Retirement savings makes a difference and the less one has, the more important each and every saved dollar becomes. The $616 additional income you cited may be a lot of money if one lives primarily on social security retirement benefits. Every dollar was saved as a conscious act, and it made a difference.
We each live in the real word, but our bubbles are different. There are many reasons why we are each in our own personal financial situation. While our actions and inactions certainly contributed, there is a factor we might call “good fortune” or providence. We are each blessed.
Some of us have spent time bouncing along the bottom and I was one of those. At the age of 49 my “net worth” was $10,727 and decreasing. I was broke and with overwhelming financial obligations. The children were living in college and that is where the funds went. Cash flow was negative. Discretionary spending and junk food took on a new meaning. My monthly discretionary spending was $0 and my food budget $25. This meant there were no funds to pay for such as potato chips, cookies, soda or juice. I relocated and was living in a $670 a month apartment. There was no air conditioning. When some of my neighbors decided to go to a movie to cool off, I didn’t because I could not afford it. There were no funds for true essentials such as medical, dental or eyeglasses. When the frame broke, I taped and glued it. There was no retirement savings plan. That’s the way it was. When my future spouse met me, she thought I was an odd, but interesting duck.
Over a period of three years my net worth bottomed at $848. Bankruptcy was an option I didn’t take. I had my spreadsheets and a plan. I chose the more difficult path. After six years of this, at the age of 55 I had finally dug my way out of that particular financial hole. My cash flow improved and became positive. I upgraded to a $700 a month apartment. It was time to save for retirement, yet again. Throughout all of this I did have a career and worked the equivalent of two jobs. I sometimes worked for 32 days continuously at 12 hours per day, with time off to sleep, eat and do laundry. There were evening business meetings, too. With the completion of one project the cycle began again. I had put “volunteering” aside. That was for those with resources I did not have. I think I built two lives with the equivalent of two financial lifespans. The first began at age 17, the second at age 53.
I’ve never had guilt about my personal situations, but there was a price to pay beyond the financial. There are always decisions to be made about how to spend the time and resources we have been given. This may be difficult or uncomfortable. For some the situation occurs as an abundance. For others, it will never be enough. When my spouse and I were dating as adults and I had a couple of spare dollars we would go to Dunkin Donuts, purchase a small tea, a small coffee with donut combo, and split the donut. We each decided we had an abundance, even if it was only that half a donut. The joy of sharing made up for the missing calories. Every crumb was delicious.
I consider myself to be extremely fortunate. It was difficult to be positive in the darkest days. I was once asked how I managed. When I was exhausted, I would tell myself “I’ll sleep tomorrow.” Sometimes that tomorrow and a good night’s rest was a few days away. Metaphorically speaking, if I couldn’t run, I walked. The point was to never stop and to keep moving toward the goals. If there were breakdowns I shifted. In sailing “tacking” is a method to sail against the wind. This is possible in many aspects of life. Eventually the future will become today. We can plan and prepare for it. Or not.
As someone with one foot in the grave I can honestly say I could have done better and been better. My doctors have told me that my life’s experiences, including dealing with a lot of adversity strengthened me in many ways and that is one of the reasons I am amazingly, impossibly, alive today. For a little while longer, anyway. While I do have regrets, I don’t have guilt. That’s a luxury I prefer to leave for others.
Norm, I can somewhat relate. I had to restart at 36 when I lost my TV news job and the local Rhode Island economy collapsed (the savings and loan scandal) while my slender savings were locked up in the likewise-collapsed First Capital. My little condo’s value plummeted to 20% upside down and I couldn’t sell it. I missed a mortgage payment, then another. My net worth was negative.
Then, very suddenly, my dad died.
I inherited his car, some furniture and just enough cash to clear my debts and cover the condo sale. I flipped the bird to Rhode Island and drove to California (no motels, slept at rest areas in my dad’s car) on the vague promise of some freelance newswriting jobs. Sometimes I worked 3-11pm at Channel 4, drove to Channel 2, took a nap in the back seat and started another shift at 1am. Didn’t take a day off for months. And slowly rebuilt myself at $21/hr.
It was much easier for me than for you because I didn’t have kids in college to support, and I had some phenomenal luck along the way, but like you I learned survival lessons that served me well later when my health took a bad turn. And like you I take pride in the memory.
I wish you well.
Thanks for sharing. I feel exhausted just reading about some of your challenges, let alone actually living through them. Glad you made it!
I wonder how this compares to 1925, 1825 and 1725, I’ve got a sneaky suspicion there’s been a lot of progress over this 300 year period.
Retirement was not much of a thing back in those years, not many people made it that far.
Actually not quite true. Life expectancy statistics in the 19th century were sharply skewed by high childhood mortality rates. If you made it to age 5, you could reasonably hope to live into your 70s.
In 1845 if you made it to age 40 you might live another 28 – 29 years if.
Not much time life to a long retirement.
Thanks Mr. Quinn for an important perspective.
I agree that it’s easy to feel guilty, or somehow unworthy of your financial comfort.
I’m trying to turn that into gratitude and recognition of our good fortune, which in turns prompts us to be generous with donations, support for family etc. I was thrilled when my wife offered to pay for painting of her sister’s house recently.
We took our kids to Disney World, and I’m sure credit cards were involved. I’m unapologetic about that. But when I’ve done income taxes the last few years at Goodwill, I have experienced some guilt when I compare my husband’s and my income to that of many of the clients. We did work hard, got lucky when I started reading Jonathan’s WSJ columns, and then followed his advice. But I can’t rationalize our good fortune as “we deserve it.”
Perhaps you earned it.
I think the country provides opportunities for success. I think biases exist that make it difficult for some to succeed. I think that broken families make it hard as well. Many deal with physical and/or psychological issues. And of course many suffer self-inflicted wounds.
I get a bit rankled when I read about some CEO’s compensation and the lousy pay and working conditions of some workers. However I feel no jealousy of those who earn more, and no guilt for what good fortune and hard work has provided for me.
When you get rankled over CEO compensation keep in mind that in most cases 60-70% of it is at risk equity compensation that workers probably don’t want.
In addition, if you divide the compensation by the number of workers, you will find the value to each worker is insignificant.
Workers are not affected by CEO compensation, but shareholders are.
increasing that lousy pay means increasing prices for customers. A 10% pay raise means quite a bit more in actual cost increases.
Guilty, I used to negotiate executive compensation contracts.
The argument that workers wouldn’t want the degree of variable pay that senior execs get is ludicrous. I suspect most workers would be more than happy with that risk if they were already being paid at a base pay level that covered all their core lifestyle needs.
Back on the core point – no need for anyone to feel guilt whether they’ve reached their position through fortune or personal sacrifice. But perhaps also less need for handwringing and/or fomenting worry for those who do actually make it work on lesser means.
Ludicrous? I negotiated many union contracts with different unions in different organizations and I can tell you, they want the cash in hand, even reluctant to trade a portion of a raise for a profit sharing or bonus arrangement.
I seriously doubt hourly workers want any significant percentage of their pay in company stock, stock they can’t even sell for several years in most cases.
Generally speaking, we prefer higher hourly rates to profit sharing plans. Many UAW members now have profit sharing. They love it in the good years, not so much when times are tough.
That’s the problem. A two sided coin that workers assume will always land heads up.
My point was when you’re earning $40k then yes every penny counts. When you’re earning $500k base you can afford to be a bit more relaxed about the variable pay on top.
To attempt to present a picture where execs claim they “deserve” high if slightly variable incentives because of the risk they are taking is IME disingenuous, particuarly where the drones take all the risk of “downsizing” or restructuring and the execs have feather-bedded severance arrangements.
I didn’t say anything about deserving. I have no doubt there are executives who don’t deserve their compensation, but that is on the shareholders and the BOD. CEO pay has nothing to do with worker pay.
Keep in mind there is a limited pool of potential CEOs which means competition and also consider without some job security who would take the job. There are a very limited that level job to be had.
500 K base salary? Per AI the median base pay for S and P 500 CEOs in 2024 was approximately $1.3 million in 2024, according to analyses from ISS Corporate and Pearl Meyer.
With with the median total compensation reaching $17.7 million in 2025 for the first 100 S&P 500 filers, up from $16.1 million in 2023. The median S&P 500 CEO total compensation was $17.1 million in 2024, according to a study from the Associated Press.
I was not able to find the article on the most recent retail sales report but I read something like the top 10% of incomes was responsible for about 50% of retail sales. In my opinion if this continues the economy is going to retract eventually. You need better pay to drive consumer purchasing to drive profits. Companies will not be able to sustain profitability with these numbers.
It’s important to make sure who we are talking about when referring to CEOs. There is a huge different between the SP 500 and all other CEOs in smaller companies where most people work and where CEO compensation is more in the $400,000 range.
Dick, I understand the math, I truly do. And I could have written your remark for you. Still, I’m heartened when I come across a company like Costco who brings value to the consumer while treating their employees well at the same time.
PS: I didn’t red arrow you, we don’t have to agree on everything.
Everything I’ve read about COSTCO is they have a unique business model. Very low margins, high volume and the bulk of their revenue from membership fees. At the same time they seem to understand the value of treating employees as people, not so much pay but just the work environment. They have figured out the advantage in low turnover.
If you are unaware of it Google the grocery store we shop at, Market Basket.
Here’s s summary of what occurred:
The Market Basket protests were a six-week work stoppage and customer boycott in the summer of 2014, triggered by the firing of CEO Arthur T. Demoulas by his cousin and rival, Arthur S. Demoulas. Thousands of employees walked off the job, refusing to restock shelves, while customers boycotted the stores in solidarity (we did not step foot in one during the work stoppage). The protests ended when Arthur T. Demoulas bought the controlling shares of the company for $1.5 billion, regaining control and restoring the company’s culture of employee and customer loyalty. What we learned from this event is Arthur T knew his employees and treated them well both financially and personally and yet their prices are the lowest. Many have worked there for years and worked their way up to higher level jobs.
The board just fired him again😞
No reason to feel guilt. You didn’t take anything from anyone. In fact, you, more than most worked at trying to get people to save.
But, as you said, they either can’t or won’t. I don’t know if we’ll ever fully understand why. Those of us who have worked hard at saving were foregoing immediate pleasures for the hope of a long-term payoff.
We didn’t spend our money when our friends, neighbors and relatives did. And now we reap the rewards. Perfectly just result.
True, our grown children still remind us we never took them to Disney when they were children while all their friends went. There just wasn’t money back then.
Connie and I have always been obsessed with not buying anything we didn’t have the cash to pay for. We saved for a year toward our annual family vacations.
My late husband was a self-employed consultant in the mid-1990s who produced excellent content that Disney wanted to license. I still remember his apoplectic reaction when reviewing Disney’s contract, basically stating, forget about first rights and copyright, Disney would own his work in ‘every form’ now available and in the entire universe in the future. He refused to go to Disney World on principle and told the kids why (not that at the time they understood except that they knew their dad was infuriated). I however did take them once when my godparents lived nearby and had season passes – much less expensive 25 years ago with family in town.
Our children went to Disney once. We had a savings “thermometer” to show them our progress towards the goal. My working playoff games as an Athletic Trainer was the primary funding source. It took years and when they were about 9 and 12 when we saved enough.
Ironically my daughter lives in Orange County, and in October the family, all grown up, is going to Disneyland in October to celebrate her 40th birthday.
I have experienced similar thoughts when perusing such data, however I do not feel guilt, but I do feel gratitude. I think its wrong for me to feel smug about my success and scorn for those who are not as secure, because its easy to discount or overlook my good fortune and relative absence of misfortune. Many were not as lucky as I.
I think young folks would benefit from analyzing this data, which emphasizes the vital importance of starting early, and aiming for an affordable lifestyle which allows for a sufficient allocation to their future retirement savings.
It’s a life lesson for sure. But seeing past the present is not easy for many, perhaps most people. Connie accuses me of being too concerned about the future and I guess at our ages she has a good point, but it’s a lifelong habit I find hard to break.
We humans are genetically predisposed to worry about survival today. It’s a different “breed” that breaks the bond and sacrifices the present for future gain.
great