Yesterday I mentioned an article on Seeking Alpha where some of the comments seemed to be taking to heart some of the same things I've been writing about in terms of how the concept of retirement is evolving, evolving quite rapidly I'd say. I was encouraged by the tone.

Then on an article of mine on SA a whole bunch of woe is me comments popped up about the difficulty to save enough and live within you means and getting growth from the stock market is a sucker's game. Oh boy.

I attribute the sentiment to several different factors. Part of the equation could be a weariness from the stock market's poor result over whatever recent time period you want to look at except for the last twelve months. There is no doubt weariness, reasonably speaking, over the state of the economy and everything else that goes with it. I also believe that in the specific comments I am talking about there was a lack of comprehension that retirement will be completely different for most people over the next few decades when compared to the last few decades.

My belief that social security and medicare will not be there could obviously be wrong (to be clear I am not changing my mind on this) but I think most people agree it is on shakier ground than it has been on in a long time. Many pensions are also on shakier ground than they have been on.

The possibilities with this creates the need for more reliance putting savings into something that offers the chance for growth like the stock market. Of course the US market was down in the last decade and there are some serious structural threats that we collectively seem to struggle to understand let alone find the will to make the difficult sacrifices needed to have a shot at getting things back on course.

We know that wages in real terms have stagnated for many years now (I think at least a decade), we know that the savings rate in the US has been lousy (not sure why the government numbers on this exclude 401k contributions) and we also know that many people have used home equity products to spend money to make up for the consequences of the lack of wage growth. A byproduct of this of course is people not living within their means.

All of this is unfortunate but it is reality at least for some large portion of the population. Apologies for sounding harsh here but if any or all of this applies to you or someone you care about you (or they) can either have pity party or you (or they) can get to work creating your (or their) own solution for how to overcome this.

Most of what I write about here pertains to portfolio management and my aim in that regard has obviously been to increase foreign exposure but minimizing exposure to countries that appear to have the same problems as the US. There will be plenty of foreign markets that do just fine in the new decade even if the US does not. I would suggest that anyone not real comfortable with country selection figure a way to get comfortable with it.

As far as the stagnant wage-saving rate-living within your means issues; this is all very subjective. I think the easiest thing is getting the overhead down. The frequency of car purchases can be part of the solution here. Driving a car for ten years instead of five should save plenty.

It is easy to say pay off your credit cards but I don't know how indebted people really are or how difficult this really is, we've not had a credit card balance since 1990 (we started using a cash rebate card two years ago). When I worked in an office I used to take my lunch every day. In the 90s this was good for $100 per month it would probably save more now. The solutions for reducing overhead depend on each person's own situation and requires some very tough decisions. This could require some serious changes in behavior. Obviously reducing overhead means more can go into savings.

I am a big believer in some sort of income producing activity in "retirement." If you are not in a job you enjoy enough to stay with past 65 I would make a priority of figuring out how to make some money when the time comes. One commenter on the SA post lamented the difficulty in finding work and while I do not doubt that the context here is not wait until you retire and then try to find something only to end up signing receipts at the exit of a Costco (my wife worked at Costco in 2002 for about two weeks and hated it).

How many years until you want to retire (assuming you want to)? That is how long you have to figure out how to draw an income with something you enjoy doing. I've mentioned plenty of ideas in this regard over the years. This is not solvable over a weekend it requires an investment of time and creative thinking. Hopefully the starting point is things you are interested in doing. For my wife it would be what she does now with animal rescue for me I already make a little with the writing, other possibilities would be related to wildland firefighting (there are patrol shifts available during fire season), sports related (we have a couple of minor league teams here and maybe one day we'll have minor league baseball) or seasonal work of some sort at one of the National Parks nearby. Before anyone adds one plus one and gets eleven I love managing money and have no plans to give it up. There are endless possibilities but they probably will not come looking for you.

As this post was kind of a downer I'll wrap up with what is hopefully a positive anecdote. I ran into a neighbor at the gym yesterday. He told me he just started working out there. He had recently stopped is routine of walking, he didn't tell me why, and ever since then he can barely do a half day's work without getting tired let a lone a full day's work. He said he went snowboarding recently and it tired him out more than it should have which specifically was the reason for him to join the gym. He was on the treadmill going at a fast pace for at least 20 minutes and then he spent some time in the weight machine area. Did I mention he is 82 years old?

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