42% of Americans Have Less Than $10,000 Stashed Away for Retirement [???]
March 6th, 2018Can this possibly be right?
Via: CNBC:
At this rate, retirement is more of a fantasy than a reality for many people in this country.
About 42 percent of Americans have less than $10,000 saved for when they retire, according to a study by GoBankingRates released Tuesday.
The No. 1 reason most people cited for not stashing more away was because they didn’t earn enough to save, followed by the fact that they were already struggling to pay bills, GoBankRates said. The personal finance site polled more than 1,000 adults online in February.
Yes, it’s possible, but probably not true. To know for sure, we’d have to know a lot more about the people who were polled, the questions that were asked and how the answers were analyzed.
“42% of Americans”, as the headline reads, sounds like it means 42% of all Americans. But only adults were polled in this survey. Adults (aged over 18) are 73% of all Americans. Take out the children, and only 31% of American adults who don’t have $10,000 saved up are left.
Also, 21% of Americans are on welfare, and 15% of them are adults. If you wouldn’t expect adults on welfare to have $10,000 in savings because welfare can give them an income for life, then we should subtract those people from the pool of possible savers. Now we are down to 28% of adult Americans lacking the $10,000.
But we haven’t subtracted illegal immigrants yet, assuming they would answer a poll about savings by saying they don’t have any. (I would, if I were in the country illegally.)
Nor have we subtracted the 11% of adults aged 18-42 (millenials) who apparently are so wealthy (trust funds?) that they don’t need any retirement savings, according to the article. Or the adults aged 18-25 or so who are just starting out and who save but haven’t piled up $10,000 yet.
Obviously, if I want to get a shocking big number from a survey, I will count everybody I can find, whether they truly should be counted or not. This survey got 42%; but, from my numbers, I estimate the figure closest to reality to be 20% or less.
Now, why would anybody be using fake data like this to try to convince us that almost half of American adults don’t or can’t save? Who paid to have this survey done and get this big percentage? Maybe they are setting the stage to promote a universal income (universal welfare) which will take money away from me (via higher taxes) that I worked to earn and save some of, then give a little of it back to me and the rest to whomever, including thoseillegals, the rich, people already on welfare…