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Last night on CNBC I watched a program discussing the Baby Boomer retirement predicament. Several analysts were guest of the show and they spewed some interesting statistics regarding Boomer demographics, net worth and retirement issues. I’ve written about this issue before in Synthetic Financial Disaster – Baby Boomer Armageddon and after watching the show I decided to revisit the issue.

Here are some startling statistics from the report from SIC:

Nearly 44% of American households were not saving at all and only one-third of U.S. families were saving enough to maintain their standards of living in retirement.

The 2004 SCF shows that both the number and percentage of households that owned a retirement account of any kind – whether an individual retirement account (IRA), a 401(k) plan, or other employment-based plan – fell from 2001 to 2004. In 2004, 56.3 million households owned at least one retirement account compared to 56.9 million households who held at least one such account in 2001.

Among the 79.6 million households that included a worker under the age of 65 in 2004, 33.3 million, or 42% did not own a retirement account of any kind.

(This particular stat confirms a suspicion about the new pension bill I wrote about yesterday).

Those Americans born in 1946, the first of the “baby boomer” generation, are turning 60 this year and many will retire by the end of 2008, well before their 65th birthday in 2011. …The median household in the top income quintile, with an income of $162,948 and net worth of $2.2 million, is on track to a comfortable retirement…..For the median household in the second quintile, the future is not so certain We estimate that a comfortable retirement would require 80% replacement of pre-retirement income, and by this measure the median household is far behind.

(the report only gets worse from here).

Oddly, the report states that today’s seniors are saving similar amount to other retired generations in the past but today’s living expenses are radically different than those from the past. I can easily think of all the cascading expenses today’s seniors will have vs. those from generations past.

Some other interesting stats quoted from the GAO included:

  • 10% of boomers control 66% of the retirement wealth
  • 5% control 52% of the stock market

The report confirms some alarming suspicions I’ve had for a while about the future of the U.S. with its top heavy retirement population. I’m glad that the media is focusing more on the issue and I was pleasantly suprised to see a primetime show focused on the problem. I can only hope that everyone out there is preparing their own strategies for successful retirement.

Sources: Securities Industry Association, GAO