Average Retirement Savings

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

Are you looking for the average retirement savings for someone with a monthly pension, an entrepreneur, or millionaire who depends on their investment earnings for all income in their retirement years? If you are independently wealthy, I really doubt you are reading this!

Are you an 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 a larger portion of the needed income.

Do you have a Defined Contribution pension plan? The majority of pension plans are the 401K type plans... as many Defined Benefit plans have transferred assets to Defined Contribution plans so that the employers future liability is lessened.

The problem is that you may think you've got a lifetime pension there.. but where the Defined Benefit plans never end, the Defined Contribution 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 little 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!)