[mraines]

Originally Posted by MandoMan

Young people and everyone else working should be putting 15% of their income into Index Funds with minimum fees that go up as the market goes up. Yes, FIFTEEN %. This is IN ADDITION to what they pay into Social Security. Then they well probably be able to retire to The Villages someday. Meanwhile, workers and employers should each pay an additional 1% in Social Security taxes. This is such an easy fix, and it should have been done long ago. 1%! (It hasn’t been done because so many legislators don’t count on Social Security to get by when they retire, and they listen to businesses who say that 1% comes out of their profit.

I realize that investing 15% with every paycheck means young people and families may not be able to afford that new SUV or that big house or those restaurant dinners or those fancy vacations or a lot of things. But we’ve all read complaints here from people who live only on the Social Security payments they get. I feel bad for them. But if they had done what I recommend, they wouldn’t be in this situation today. My ex-wife and I scrimped and saved, and now we don’t have to worry. I see young people driving $50,000 to $90,000 trucks and SUVs and buying 3,000 sq ft houses and spending $100,000 on remodeling their kitchens and bathrooms, and I wonder how much they are saving for retirement. And putting it into CDs or savings accounts like my parents did won’t do it. My parents saved for decades but put the money into CDs and savings accounts, so the money they have in the accounts has grown, but always less than the inflation rate. Meanwhile, the money I put into mutual funds has quintupled. (But we still need mandatory social Security contributions.)

Have you ever tried to survive on minimum wage? Some people live paycheck to paycheck and cannot afford to put anything aside. Just sayin. Been there done that.