Many Americans are feeling pessimistic about their retirement prospects, and with good reason.
Previous studies have shown that many households are drastically unprepared for their golden years because they haven’t saved enough money, and now comes another showing that we rank 19th worldwide when it comes to retirement security.
That puts our retirees in a worse position overall than countries including Israel, Japan, Slovenia and the Czech Republic.
A Life Inc. post this week on the relative quality of American retirement got many readers talking about their own retirement prospects, or lack thereof.
More than 7,000 readers took our poll, and about 39 percent said they are not at all confident they’ll be able to save enough for retirement.
“Retirement? What's that?? My gracious employer has gutted its pension plan and 401-k match, and gave us a 10% pay cut,” one reader wrote.
Still, not everyone was so gloomy. About 29 percent said they were somewhat confident they’d be able to sock away enough money, and another 21 percent were feeling very confident.
Their secret? Many said they had sacrificed luxuries and goodies along the way with an eye toward the delayed gratification of not worrying about money later in life.
“I actually save unlike most Americans and I do not plan to depend on Social Security or Medicare,” one reader wrote.