저자: 미상 · 외국인
요약 보기
미국 은퇴 저축 격차가 약 14조 달러로 추정되며, 미국인 5,700만 명이 저축·연금이 없다고 주장. 확정급여형 연금에서 확정기여형(401k)으로 바뀌며 은퇴 책임이 개인에게 넘어간 것이 원인. 사회보장연금은 2034년 이후 전액 지급이 어려울 수 있고, 평균 수명 증가로 은퇴 자금 부담이 커짐. 은퇴 연령 상향 등 공론화 필요를 제기하며, 자동 저축·분산투자·세제혜택 계좌 활용·부채 상환 등 개인 대비책을 제시.
다듬은 글
People are working longer; should we make it easier? Should we raise the retirement age for Social Security? Did you know that a $14 trillion crisis is brewing in the United States, and until now, almost no one has paid attention? In the most extreme scenario, this crisis could leave tens of millions of Americans struggling to make ends meet every week.
I'm talking about the retirement crisis currently unfolding in the United States. The American retirement savings gap is estimated to have reached $14 trillion and continues to grow daily. Larry Fink, CEO of BlackRock, the world's largest asset management firm, is sounding the alarm. Listen to what he said.
This is a slightly different letter from the one you have before. The retirement crisis: Give us your diagnosis of the problem now. Well, this is something I've been writing about for years, but I emphasized it in that letter. You know, all my letters have been based on long- term problems, and let me be completely honest about it.
My letters reflect my conversations with clients over the past year. I've heard more and more about the retirement crisis in many parts of the world, from developing countries and the middle class to developed countries. The problem is acute here in the United States, and we still have 57 million Americans who have no savings or retirement plan.
Social Security is a fantastic foundation for retirement, but if it's all you have when you retire, you'll live in poverty, below the poverty line, because it's simply not enough. It's supplementary, but it's not meant to be everything you have in retirement. And the whole concept of aging—we're all living longer—I think one of the big narratives I had to reflect in 2023 was the miracles of medicine.
When we talk about drugs like OMEC and all the different weight-loss medications, how they prolong life, then came kidney and liver disease, heart disease, and joint disease, and now there are new drugs for... Dementia prolongs life, so if you think about that, the miracles of technology and how it transforms our lives and extends our lifespan, there's no dialogue in America, or in most places, about being able to afford that longevity.
Our entire retirement system was based on statistics that were created 50 years ago, when most Americans retired between 60 and 62, but most Americans died then at around 67. Today, statistically, in a healthy 60-year-old couple, one of them will live past 90. So the other question is, should we re-evaluate how we work and how long we work?
Because we all need a purpose in life, and in most places, most people find purpose. Obviously, maybe with their grandchildren, their children, their community, many people find purpose in their work. And the idea of retiring at 60 with another 30 years, or 30 years of life ahead of you, we need to have a dialogue.
We need to Having a conversation, you know, I 'm optimistic. I'm very optimistic about the long-term vitality of our markets. I'm optimistic about capitalism. The reason I 'm optimistic is that when I read the newspapers every morning and listen to Bloomberg and other news organizations, it's full of scary things.
We talk about problems. We talk about all of life's problems, but we solve problems through conversation. And the one area where we don't have a conversation is retirement affordability and the entire concept of retirement. We need to start a global dialogue, and especially a national one. As crazy as it sounds, nearly 50% of Americans don't have a single dollar saved for retirement.
This means that the dream of a life without work at an advanced age is likely to be out of reach for the majority of Americans. By the way, make sure you stay until the end of this video because we're going to discuss some secret wealth-building tips that you can use to make sure you're not one of those people.
It's clear that the retirement system in America is fundamentally broken, but as You are about to see that things haven't always been this way. The origin of this problem goes back decades. To show you what I mean, let me go back in time and introduce you to John. We are in the 1960s in the United States.
In our story, John has just entered his prime working years, like many people of his generation. John foregoes college, joining the workforce right after graduating high school. John gets a job in manufacturing at a local factory in his hometown—let's call this company ABC Company. After only a few weeks of training, John is up and running in his position and is a productive employee.
In addition to a salary, he earns a lower wage to support his young family. John also receives what is called a pension for working at the company. For those of you who are not familiar, a pension is a retirement benefit that a company provides to its employees. I will spare us all here the complex details and intricacies of pensions.
However, what you need to know is... The thing is, with a pension, the employer essentially guarantees a certain monthly income to the employee once they retire. How much this monthly income will be depends on various factors, but most often it is largely determined by how long the employee has worked for the company.
The longer the years of employment with the company, the larger the monthly pension payment in retirement. The fact that the employee knows exactly how much they will receive each month in retirement makes pensions what is called a defined benefit program. This defined benefit pension program has had two impacts on John: first, he doesn't have to worry as much about saving for retirement with a pension; it is the employer who is responsible for ensuring the employee has a monthly income when they retire, not the employee.
The second impact is that John will want to stay with this employer for a long time. The longer John works at ABC Company, the larger his monthly pension check will be. In John's generation, it was relatively common for employees to work their entire careers at the same company. Years pass in our story, and our character John has Finally had a child named John Junior.
Quite the creative name. John Junior became a young adult in the 1990s. Instead of joining the workforce right after high school, John Junior went to college first. By the time Junior was able to join the workforce, manufacturing jobs were much less common than when John Seor was a young man. Automation and globalization had eliminated many manufacturing jobs in the United States.
Just like his father, John Junior joined ABC Company. However, instead of working in the factory, he worked in the company office as an accountant. There was another big difference between John Junior's job and his father's: instead of a pension, John Junior had what is called a 401(k). A 401(k) is considered a defined contribution plan, as opposed to a pension with a defined contribution plan like a 41(k).
The burden of saving for retirement no longer rests on the company. The responsibility for saving and investing for retirement is transferred from the employer to the employee. The employee must allocate a portion of their Paycheck to a retirement account, how much the employee contributes to retirement savings is now entirely the employee's decision.
While the shift from defined benefits to defined contribution may seem subtle, it has contributed massively to the current retirement crisis in the United States. Here's how Larry described it in his annual letter: the real downside of defined contribution was that it removed most of the responsibility for retirement from employers and placed it squarely on the shoulders of the employees themselves.
With pensions, companies had a very clear obligation to their workers; their retirement money was a financial liability on the company's balance sheet. Companies knew they should write a check every month to each of their retirees, but defined contribution plans put an end to that, forcing retirees to trade a steady stream of income for an impossible math problem because most defined contribution accounts don't come with instructions on how much you can withdraw each month.
Individual savers must first accumulate a nest egg and then spend it at a rate that will last them the rest of their lives, but who really knows how much? In time, this will simply be put into practice. The shift from defined benefit to defined contribution has been, for most people, a shift from financial certainty to financial uncertainty.
As Larry Fink just explained, the shift from defined benefit to defined contribution has fundamentally changed the way retirement works in the United States, ultimately contributing to the retirement crisis the country is facing. However, things are about to get worse. Listen, Larry is thinking of talking about why.
Another thing you mentioned was our life expectancy, which has increased substantially. We all benefit from that. That's a good thing, exactly. No complaints. At the same time, should we encourage people, as you suggest in your letter, to work longer? Should we make it easier? Should we frankly raise the Social Security age?
It's not for me to make a decision, but I think we need to have a conversation. Look, you and I are the same age. Okay, we work longer. We find purpose in what we do. Bloomberg founder Mike is still working, I believe. I believe for those who can, and find purpose in work. My God, work as long as you do.
You can, if you find blessings, if you find purpose in other things, do that, but I believe we need to discuss these opportunities. I don't think the average citizen knows, you know, the extent of how long we're going to be able to live. You know, the beauty and the miracle of medicine have allowed us to live 10, 15, 20 years longer than two generations ago, and so on.
But we have n't changed our retirement system or our social security system. So the most important thing we need to do, David, is to have a conversation, and through that conversation, I think most people will choose to do things— maybe work longer or choose to be more involved—and how they put their money to work for retirement.
In the United States, there was what was called the three- legged stool of retirement. This analogy was created to show the three most common sources of retirement income that retirees relied on for financial security. First, you had Social Security. Social Security is essentially a government savings program in the United States that replaces a percentage of a person's pre-retirement income.
The second leg of the pension, based on a worker's lifetime earnings, is the pensions we covered in more detail earlier in this video. The third and final leg of the retirement stool is the individual's own personal savings accumulated during their working life. Combined, these three sources of income helped provide a stable monthly income for a retiree for the rest of their life.
However, over the years things have changed. As we discussed earlier, pensions have essentially become a relic of the past for private sector workers. As we can see here, 63% of workers received a pension in 1988; by 2007, this number had essentially been halved to 32%. This number has continued to decline, with only 15% of private sector workers having access to a pension in 2024.
Given the decreasing prevalence of pensions, we can put a big red X across this leg of the stool. Things are only getting slightly better for retirees regarding social security. A recent report found that, given the current trajectory of social security, from 2034 onwards retirees will no longer be able to receive their full benefits.
It is very well documented that it is only a matter of time before social security runs out unless major changes occur. Given the instability of social security, let's put a big bold question mark over this leg of the stool. Suddenly, the so-called three- legged stool of retirement only has one leg to stand on.
This means that in retirement, the only source of income people can rely on to support them is their own personal savings. As the clip explains, this single source of retirement income will have to stretch even further as people live Longer lives, as we can see, mean that the average life expectancy in the United States was 68 years in 1950.
Medicine has increased to nearly 80 years by 2024. Given all the scientific breakthroughs related to medicine and healthcare, this trend is expected to continue. The United Nations estimates that by the end of this century, the average American will live to nearly 90. While this is obviously excellent news for society, longer lifespans mean that retirees will have to stretch their savings even further.
One solution I think is proposing is to raise the retirement age in the country. Here's what he had to say: It's not just that more and more people are retiring in America; it's also that their retirement is getting longer. Today, if you are married and both you and your spouse are over 65, there's a 50/50 chance that one of you will receive a Social Security check until you reach 65.
At 90 years old, all of this puts the American retirement system under enormous strain. The Social Security Administration itself says that in 2034 it won't be able to pay people their full benefits. What's the solution here? No one should have to work longer than they want, but I think it's a bit crazy that our idea of anchoring the retirement age to 65 comes from the time of the Ottoman Empire, while the situation is serious.
I want to conclude this video with some practical steps you can personally take to help you be as prepared as possible for retirement, especially if your goal is not to work well beyond what is currently considered the typical retirement age. The first thing to do is automate your savings and investments.
Many employers offer retirement plans that allow you to have a portion of your severance pay automatically deducted. This is incredibly important because it makes investing automatically part of your monthly budget. In addition, many of these plans allow you to automatically increase the percentage of your income that you invest for retirement each year.
You can therefore start by investing 8% of your income, and this automatically increases by half a percentage point each year. The goal should be to invest at least 15% of your income for retirement. The second thing to do is diversify your retirement savings. Don't just put all your savings into one type of investment, like company stocks.
Instead, spread your investments across a different basket of investments, such as international stocks, bonds, mutual funds, and exchange- traded funds (ETFs). The third thing to do is take advantage of tax- advantaged accounts as much as possible. Talk to a professional to see if you qualify for supplemental retirement accounts.
Finally, the fourth and last thing to do is eliminate your debt as quickly as possible. Having consumer debt, such as student loans, car loans, or credit card balances, can seriously hinder your ability to save for retirement. Start by paying off your high- interest debts first, then work on eliminating the rest.
So, although the retirement landscape may seem bleak, there are steps you can take to prepare for the future. Financial security sometimes comes down to informed decision-making and small changes that make the biggest difference.
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