Average Retirement Savings

What does "Average Retirement Savings" mean? Average for whom?

Are you looking for the average retirement savings for an entreneur or millionaire who depends on their investment savings for all income in their retirement years? If you are independantly wealthy, I really doubt you are reading this!

Are you a regular, every day, employee who is lucky enough to still have a Defined Benefit pension plan? (Public employees and some private employers still have these lifetime pension plans that the last generation assumed everyone would have). If you do have a pension, that means that you have a lifetime income -- and need savings to supplement your income (pension and Social Security) instead of provide the full income.

Are you a regular, every day, employee who has a Defined Contribution pension plan? This is the new type of pension plan available to folks nowadays.. many DB plans have transferred assets to DC plans so that their future liability is lessened. The problem is that you may think you've got a lifetime pension there.. but where the DB plans never end, the DC is only good as long as you have funds left. If you use your funds in the first 20 years of retirement, and live another ten years, you live on Social Security alone late in life...

Do you have no pension at all? That's true of many Americans. Many of these folks also have litle or no savings... so they make do, living from month to month on Social Security alone -- but there are lots of community resources (and let's pray that the government continues to fund these resources as millions of boomers funnel into retirement during the next decade!)