My Generation X friends and acquaintances seem to fall into three groups: One believes they will never be able to fully retire. One has retired earlier than they planned to via lay-offs, their own health issues or the needs of aging parents. The final, somewhat small group, has retired or plans to retire more or less when and how they want to.
It’s not that we aren’t a hardworking, diligent bunch. But it does seem like economic and employment trends have conspired against us.
We were the guinea pigs for financing college and grad school with loans. The promise, that college would give us a financial leg-up to allow us to easily pay them off, turned out to be quite misguided. Our generation still owes more college debt than either Millennials or Gen Z.
We entered the workforce as lifetime employment and generous employer-sponsored pensions were going the way of cassette tapes. And phrases like downsizing, right-sizing and resource action were entering the national lexicon.
We also had the privilege of lurching through the dot-com boom and bust, the post-9/11 recession, a real estate boom and bust, the rise of the “gig worker” and AI, and an economy that has continually seen corporate profits and the stock market soar without employee wages following suit.
Planning Starts Today
But the clock is winding down and retirement will come for us all sooner or later. So there’s no better time than right now to focus on eliminating your debt, or at least reducing it as much as you can, before that time. And as every financial expert will tell you, saving steadily is the most important thing, even if the amount seems small.
My roadmap will help you lay out a plan to slowly and steadily wind down your debts while adding to your savings in routine increments that will hopefully grow as your debt shrinks. However much you manage to save, it will be more than you have today, and it might grow more than you expect if you choose investments with long-term growth in mind.
Don’t forget to consider how staying fit or downsizing to a smaller home can create big savings.
