Best, most comprehensive piece on savings, pensions, and Social Security for the layperson that I have seen in some time, from Megan McArdle: Sorry - One way or another you will never be able to count on retirement.
There is great risk in that life plan. I often remind people that being put out to pasture is a quite modern invention. Originally an ideal of European Socialists, in the US it did not become a plausible plan until the Depression when it seemed politically useful to take "mature" adults - "seasoned citizens" - out of the labor force to reduce unemployment.
I have never understood what is so ideal about being unproductive and useless with a life of recreation, errand-running, and lawn-mowing. In my experience, people thrive on productivity and responsbility (while bitching about it of course) and frequently decay without it. If Heaven entails floating around blissfully on clouds all day, I have no interest in it. Anybody who wants that can have it today. It's called heroin.
Still, people pursue a degree of economic security, because constant worry is no fun. Except for the most ambitious and talent-driven, it seems to me that most people will be as resourceful as they need to be to try to construct whatever life they desire. I just hate to see people seduced by phoney pop-cultural dreams of lying in the hammock or farting into the sofa for 25 years.
