When we began our quest to save enough money for our eventual retirement, we did so with an expectation of having a wonderful and carefree retirement. The thought of needing supplemental retirement income never crossed our minds. We knew that most companies provided their employees with a fine pension and full healthcare benefits for their retirement. Most employers at the time could be trusted to keep sacred our jobs and our future and that they would never outsource our jobs, lay us off, or �downsize’ just to increase their bottom line.
There has been a tremendous and terrible change in the corporate culture in America over the past 40 years or so! As attention to the stock market became more intense, it seems that corporations found themselves under incredible pressure to make higher and higher levels of earnings to satisfy their shareholders. To accommodate their owners, corporate executives found many ways to squeeze more and more profits out of their operations, often sacrificing the dreams and plans of their loyal employees.
Gone are the days when a company would provide a fully paid retirement or pension plan. With Medicare arriving in 1965, it was easy for companies to eliminate retiree healthcare, and increasing offshore competition caused them to outsource millions of good jobs out of the country. Caught up in the �need for greed�, many of these corporate �leaders� saw a way to divert some of their profits to themselves and others created schemes to make their companies look good � at the sacrifice of their employees, their retirement plans and their stockholders.
Of course, along the way, our culture had some terrible changes also. It became OK, if not fashionable, to have loads of credit card debt and interest rates once considered usury are now standard. Peer pressure caused us to buy bigger and more expensive homes than we need, more and better cars than we need, as well as all sorts of unnecessary toys.
All of these factors have left more Baby Boomers with a shortfall in their savings for retirement. The U. S. Census Bureau estimates that 70% of those turning age 50 today have less than $25,000 in net assets! This does not bode well for the future retirement of the bulk of these 78 million people!
The new saying is YOYO. You’re On Your Own! That’s right; it is up to each one of us to take care of his or her own self and to provide for your own retirement. This all should have become apparent some years ago when IRA’s and 401k’s came into play to help us save for retirement in a tax advantaged way. Of course, not everybody was able to take advantage of these wonderful plans.
In order to secure your retirement, you need to think more and more about some sort of supplemental retirement income. In fact, you need not wait until you are ready to quit work to begin. You can easily establish some passive streams of income right now, in addition to the income you have coming form other sources. This can be done without really affecting your current day to day lifestyle. Regardless of your age or status regarding retirement savings, you can setup some small income streams on the internet to help fund your retirement saving or to provide that needed supplemental retirement income if you are already retired and finding it difficult to make ends meet.
It only takes a little time and effort to learn the various income opportunities that are available without leaving your home or spending much cash. Why not do a little research to day and learn about these methods to insure your dream retirement?
YOYO – You’re On Your Own!