re: #428 Hecuba’s daughter

For most ordinary people who manage to acquire a relatively healthy level of assets, it is a combination of working, saving money in the company’s 401(k), and retiring later, rather then earlier. Too many people are gullible when it comes to investments. And too many don’t do the saving step — most because their income is insufficient to save but some because they aren’t willing to adopt a more modest lifestyle.

I’m nearly 40. The “financial advisor” pane on my retirement account reports the average 401(k) savings for people my age; it’s barely $40,000. That strikes me as woefully inadequate, given that retirement accounts are fairly volatile, and also that there are only ~25 years to the nominal retirement age, with probably a good 20-25 years of life beyond that at current life expectancies.