My work switched the company that manages our 401K plans. The new company held a series of seminars to educate us about their 401K (theoretically). As their opening slide, they posted the number 43,800 and asked us what we thought it was. Of course nobody guessed. They triumphantly announced that it was the number of meals a couple would eat during 20 years of retirement and then pointed out dramatically that if the couple *ONLY* spent $5 PER PERSON PER MEAL, they would have to have save >$200,000 just for MEALS! Egads! The horrors! LOOK AT HOW EXPENSIVE RETIREMENT IS!! AHHHH!!!
Two of the people sitting next to me work in the financial management department--you know, the one that deals with charging people money, projecting revenues, looking at timelines, that sort of thing. Many of them have MBAs and degrees in finance and business management stuff.
I rolled my eyes and made some joking comment to them about the dreaded $5 scenario was and made a sarcastic retort about the 401K company's scare tactic. Meanwhile, I back-caculated that their estimate would result in this hypothetical couple spending something above $10,000 per year just in food costs, which comes to about half my annual spending (although I didn't say that last part out loud).
MBA-type #1 looked at me with wide eyes and said earnestly, 'But sometimes you spend a lot MORE than $5 per meal! Wow! That's a lot of money!'
Later, the MBA-type #2 approached the finance people to ask about investing in the 401K. Which, if this made them think about getting their finances in order, I guess... good. But do I want these people in charge of the financial management of my company? Eek!