[IamSam]

I think younger workers are certainly going to have a more difficult time figuring out how to live in retirement than workers in my generation and our parent's generation had. Retired workers who are now in their 70's and above probably had it easier than many. They had the advantage of working and saving in those prosperous American decades right after the end of WWII.

It seems to me that retirement planning was worth doing up to around the time of Reagan. Every since the financial Bonzo tricks that were introduced back then, it's become ever more difficult to figure out sane financial plans for a life of full retirement at age 65.

As a boomer who entered the work force full time after I got my degree in 1980, I joined the rest of my generation with the country and the economy already under-going a retreat from the halcyon post war era.

These days we get to wonder if and how much of what the government promised us from all those nose to the wheel payroll taxes will ever actually materialize. The large boomer generation paid out a considerable sum in social security taxes that allowed the pols to play fast and loose with money that belonged to all of us taxpayers - NOT the rapacious members of Congress with their pet wars and pet military bases in the old home district and pet tax subsidies to their pet special interest groups.

We have been lied to by the government at every turn. No surprise there, but the lies have become more and more egregious, so that people in their early sixties and younger must worry that Medicare will be seriously tampered with - maybe even vanish. We have no idea what will become of Social Security, either. Halliburton may decide that baby needs a new pair of shoes and those of us who are in the unenviable position of depending on Social Security may end up living in chicken coops again. Worst of all, we might have to move in with one of our kids - probably the one who happens to have a fold down ironing board hanging over the kitchen door - almost as good as a Murphy bed!