Quote Originally Posted by civic95
Everyone needs to start a 401K, or contributing to an IRA asap. Every company used to provide a pension just about, but now they've almost all switched to matching a small portion of your 401K contribution. If you don't contribute you don't get that small benefit.

This is really scary to think about. Your relying on people to take the initiative or be intellegent/deligent enough to realize how much they are going to need this in their future. Sad thing is a lot of Americans don't even understand what it is, much less contribute to it. We are the nation that lives off credit. A lot of people will be 70 with 0 savings in the near future. The government needs to start enforcing that everyone contributes atleast 2-3% when they get hired, and leave them with the option of putting in more or its going to be bad for a lot of people.
I'll give you another way to think about things:

Say on average, people that are reading this thread are 25 years old and on average, the retirement age is going to be 65. Everyone only has 40 years to save enough money to last them 25 to 30 years of retirement. Doesn't seem like so much time now, does it?