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It used to be that saving for retirement was a relatively easy task. The company you worked for from your early years till the retirement years matched your weekly personal 401k contribution. By the time your golden years arrived, you’d have more than enough cash to live in.
But with many companies no longer offering 401k plans or, for that matter, an old-fashioned pension, Gen Xers’ and Millennials are having a hard time saving up for that time when they are supposed to kick back and relax.
On the positive side, there is some good news for those retirees 62 and older who’ve owned their own homes for decades and paid on the mortgage religiously. It’s called a revised mortgage, and it allows you to tap into all that equity you’ve been saving up since you were young.
You can take your proceeds in a one lump sum, or you can receive monthly disbursements. But the important thing is that you’ll never need to pay another mortgage payment again so long as you stay in the house. To find out how much cash you could qualify for, consult this online reverse mortgage calculator.
But what about working people who do not own family homes or choose the apartment life? How will they make up for the deficit in their financial future? According to a new business article, many Gen Xers and Millennials can’t think about retirement right now.
One fifty-something father with a son in college says, “I just don’t have the bandwidth.” In other words, he’s burying his head in the financial planning sand.
The experts agree that many volumes have been written on why working people fail to adequately plan and save for their retirement as if it’s never going to happen. Here’s why.

Literary Argument

The “literary argument” goes something like this. Many working people simply do not understand and/or lack the financial literacy required to plan, save, invest, and to completely understand “the miracle and magic of compound interest.”
People have a hard time envisioning what life will be like in what is seeming, a distant future. These types of people would prefer purchasing a new Range Rover for themselves now, rather than save for the future. So they say to themselves, “Hey, only go around once.” Or, “It’s only money. You can’t take it with you.”

Rising Cost of Living

Today’s rising cost of living, which includes hyperinflation and skyrocketing energy and fuel prices, end up getting in the way of living comfortably, much less saving even small amounts. Rising housing/renting costs, new/used vehicle prices, child care expenses, burdensome college loan debt, rising food prices, etc.
Taken altogether, the cost of living in the 2020s is making saving anything an impossible dream for too many Gen Xers and Millennials.

“Attention Economics”

While the cost of living continues to undermine, if not ravage, most working people’s savings programs, there is said to be another big reason why retirement isn’t weighing heavily on the minds of those Gen Xers and Millennials who are “approaching peak earning and saving years.” Unfortunately, it’s something retirement observers and even the best economists overlook.
It’s call “attention economics,” or what others might refer to as “pure economics.”
Say the experts, working folks do not have time to pay attention to economic issues, the problems, issues, and decisions they must make daily. The analogy of a trucker driving the highways applies aptly to this situation.
They are forced to pat strict attention to the road since every distraction can detract from your ability to navigate and operate your vehicle safely. For example, cell phone texting, drinking, eating, or even playing your vehicle’s radio at full volume will divert your attention.

Pay Attention

In these highly stressful and uncertain times of COVID-19, spiking inflation, and war in Ukraine (plus talk of nuclear war), it’s easy to tune your financial future out. But financial experts agree that before retirement planning, goal setting, and investment decision making, there must come “attention.”
Attention is said to be one of the rarest asset classes since it can’t be grown, manufactured, mined, or pumped from out of the ground. At this moment in history, Millennials, Gen-Xers, and Boomers born in 1963 and 1964 have entered “their peak work, family, caregiving, community, and personal relationship years.”
Geopolitics, COVID-19, and now spiking inflation are draining what little attention working people have leftover for planning for a solid, financially sound retirement. And that’s a financial shame.