There’s been a series of pretty pessimistic or otherwise negative articles of late in the personal finance realm that are worth addressing here. There is a thread to construct (or revisit as the case may be) to weave all of them together and then hopefully put a positive view on what reads like a DEPRESSING outcome.
First is that article from the WSJ over the weekend about people pulling down six-figure incomes but being on the verge of, or already having declared, BANKRUPTCY. The article is about two things. One is the struggle for people to figure out what they really need to be happy. A common theme for the people profiled is some sort of unhappiness, lack of fulfillment or esteem issue and they think the solution is buying stuff. That then evolves into various forms of denial about paying off the debt incurred attempting to buy happiness.
A few weeks ago there was a post on Motley Fool titled A Lot of Us Will Run Out of Money in Retirement. It cites some projections that 82% of the poorest among us will run out of money ranging to 13% among the wealthiest will run out of money. Any set of projections will either be right or wrong, obviously, so the issue really is whether you think in your situation it will be possible to accumulate what you need leading up to your version of retirement and then can it generate a reasonable income versus what you need it to generate. What I mean is, if you need your portfolio to generate $10,000/quarter and it safely generates $9800 then you are probably not going to be in a desperate situation versus needing $10,000 and only being able to generate $5300.
Next up is a profanity-laced, top down assessment of the struggles that await “this generation,†the author doesn’t specify Gen-x or Millennials or some other demographic. In and among all the profanity an interesting point is made about a collective lack of demand to drive the economy as a result of “this generation†being worse off than its parents.
