Millennials and retirement

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kingdragonfly

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#257232 21-Sep-2019 09:31

Millennials seem depressed about retirement prospects.

At least Kiwis will have better prospects than their American counterparts. Kiwis will still have to live in a van next to a seawall, but at least they'll have healthcare.

Millennials are taking to Twitter to roast their own retirement plans, which include hoping their kids become millionaires and buying oceanfront property once the sea levels rise

The hashtag #MillennialRetirementPlans was trending on Twitter this week.
Millennials used the hashtag to jokingly ponder their financial future, questioning whether or not retirement is even plausible.
While funny, the tweets shed light on how millennials feel about the widening generational wealth gap caused by astronomic student-loan debt and skyrocketing housing costs.

“Work yourself to death and you won’t have to worry about retirement,”

https://www.businessinsider.my/millennial-retirement-plan-hashtag-joke-fear-financial-insecurity-2019-9/

Also

#MillennialRetirementPlans Is the Saddest, Truest Hashtag on the Internet Right Now

You know what they say: If sky-rocketing college tuition, housing prices, and healthcare costs combined with stagnant wages makes you feel completely helpless about your financial future, the best thing to do is tweet about it.

Ok, ok … so obviously no one says that.

But thousands of millennials on the internet are leaning into the whole, I’d-rather-laugh-than-cry-strategy with #millennialretirementplans, a hashtag that zeroes in on the systemic financial challenges their generation faces.
...
http://money.com/money/5655262/twitter-millennial-retirement-plans-hashtag/

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#2321850 21-Sep-2019 09:43

Americans do well enough with things like 401K plans that are far more tax-efficient savings vehicles than anything on offer here in NZ, with better employer contributions etc. British people get tax relief on pensions and also have tax free savings vehicles like ISAs and so on.

For those not familiar with the 401K

"In the United States, a 401(k) plan is the tax-qualified, defined-contribution pension account defined in subsection 401(k) of the Internal Revenue Code.[1] Under the plan, retirement savings contributions are provided (and sometimes proportionately matched) by an employer, deducted from the employee's paycheck before taxation (therefore tax-deferred until withdrawn after retirement or as otherwise permitted by applicable law), and limited to a maximum pre-tax annual contribution of $19,000 (as of 2019).[2][3]

Other employer-provided defined-contribution plans include 403(b) plans for nonprofit institutions, 457(b) plans for governmental employers, and 401(a) plans. These plans may provide total annual addition of $56,000 (as of 2019) per plan participant, including both employee and employer contributions."

For those not familiar with an ISA :

"How ISAs work

There are 4 types of Individual Savings Accounts (ISA):

cash ISA
stocks and shares ISA
innovative finance ISA
Lifetime ISA
You do not pay tax on:

interest on cash in an ISA
income or capital gains from investments in an ISA
If you complete a tax return, you do not need to declare any ISA interest, income or capital gains on it.

Putting money into an ISA
Every tax year you can put money into one of each kind of ISA. The tax year runs from 6 April to 5 April.

You can save up to £20,000 in one type of account or split the allowance across some or all of the other types.

You can only pay £4,000 into your Lifetime ISA in a tax year."

In NZ the only way to save tax-free is to buy property...so we get over-invested in houses and lo and behold - not enough houses etc.

So there are ways to save; the questions are about whether the individual is actually saving and whether they make the correct choices at school and university etc to ensure a well-paid job down the line. Americans also get some other helpful things like 35 year fixed rate mortgages etc.