"a 40-year retirement is mathematically impossible" says a Retirement Studies head

[Paradise]

Just. Wow.

Every hope she was misquoted (yeah, I know it IS from CNBC - sigh) or something. Otherwise, she's a moron.

"To think that you can finance a 40-year retirement is mathematically impossible," said Catherine Collinson, president of the Transamerica Center for Retirement Studies. A Transmerica survey shows that almost two-thirds of baby boomer workers plan to stay on the job beyond age 65—or don't plan to retire at all. "Baby boomers do not envision not working," Collinson said.

Whole article:
http://www.cnbc.com/id/102614392

[Travis]

This one paragraph negates her entire article (which went on a couple tangents):

Working longer is the most obvious solution to the retirement savings problem. Among all of the options available to pre-retirees, it's the one that has the biggest impact on a nest egg, said Judith Ward, a senior financial planning with T. Rowe Price. Working three years longer and contributing 15 percent of income can grow a 401(k) by 22 percent; working five years more can increase savings by 39 percent. Combining more years of work with a bigger retirement-plan contribution (say, 25 percent) has an even more powerful impact.

Her first two sentences say "you must work longer," but then she gives mathematical examples of what happens when you actually bother to save for retirement.  Instead of planning on working five more years, how about I save more than 15% five years early? 

[zephyr911]

This one paragraph negates her entire article (which went on a couple tangents):

Working longer is the most obvious solution to the retirement savings problem. Among all of the options available to pre-retirees, it's the one that has the biggest impact on a nest egg, said Judith Ward, a senior financial planning with T. Rowe Price. Working three years longer and contributing 15 percent of income can grow a 401(k) by 22 percent; working five years more can increase savings by 39 percent. Combining more years of work with a bigger retirement-plan contribution (say, 25 percent) has an even more powerful impact.

Her first two sentences say "you must work longer," but then she gives mathematical examples of what happens when you actually bother to save for retirement.  Instead of planning on working five more years, how about I save more than 15% five years early?

No shit. No time to run the numbers but I wouldn't be surprised if an extra 1-2% starting from the beginning would do exactly the same thing as all that extra time. Compounding works even better that way.

[Sibley]

I do think the comments about what's happening in the work place (generational differences) are interesting. I'm a Millennial, and I do see plenty of instances where older employees aren't current with technology. It can cause problems. Then sometimes companies try to swing so quickly to the latest trend that it alienates the people they're trying to make happy!

I would appreciate a more casual dress code, but doubt that's going to happen in my company anytime soon. It's not incredibly formal at least.

[Travis]

I ran a simple 401k calculator. Working from age 18 to 65 and changing your contribution from 15% to 17% nets a 12% increase in total nest egg by the end of the game which doesn't account for ever getting a raise in almost 50 years.  I was about to do some really complicated math when I remembered MMM did this a long time ago with his "shockingly simple" calculations.  Looking back at that graph the difference between saving 15% and 20% is retiring 7 years earlier.  Since the CNBC article doesn't bother to run the numbers on how much you actually need to win the game it just sticks with "more income is better."  I could just as easily say "If you worked 20 more years you'd have (some huge percentage) more!"  It looks great on paper, but is irrelevant to the discussion.

[Travis]

I do think the comments about what's happening in the work place (generational differences) are interesting. I'm a Millennial, and I do see plenty of instances where older employees aren't current with technology. It can cause problems. Then sometimes companies try to swing so quickly to the latest trend that it alienates the people they're trying to make happy!

I would appreciate a more casual dress code, but doubt that's going to happen in my company anytime soon. It's not incredibly formal at least.

And that had the makings of an engaging article - that had absolutely nothing to do with saving for retirement.

[Scandium]

Working longer will do very little  for your ability to retire if you spend 100%, or more of your salary though. (yeah yeah, except stock market gains). I Which I suspect is more the root of the problem.

[Sid Hoffman]

These are the kind of articles that make me think that the typical financial planner honestly knows less about financial planning than the average MMM forum user.  In fact I'm becoming very confident of that suspicion.