Is Gen-X Doomed?

Bloomberg did a survey and found that Generation-X does not feel like it will be "financially prepared for retirement."  We, I am on the older edge of Gen-X, also do not think Social Security will provide all that we were promised. It's due to "run out of money" in 10 or 11 years (kind of a moving target) which might lead to some sort of benefit reduction. 

This whole discussion is probably ground zero for a repeated theme here which is that it is up to us to prevent or solve our own problems. Anyone closer to the younger edge of Gen-X could probably benefit by cutting expenses now, the impact of that could compound over the next 20+ years as they approach a normal retirement age. It could be tough to just snap their fingers and have a smaller mortgage with no car payments, I get that but the timeline could work if they could figure out how to do it. 

What about Gen-Xers, or anyone, who hopes they are about 10 years from retiring at some sort of "normal" retirement age? A good decision about their mortgage way back when could see someone in their early 50's paying off a 15 year mortgage (taking out a 15 year being the good decision) and now has $1000 to maybe $2000 a month for additional savings. If that person has car payments, maybe they could not replace their cars when their vehicles are paid off. 

The above falling into place would make a difference but would probably still make for a challenging retirement for someone who is very undersaved. Better, just not completely solved.

It's pretty difficult to give generic advice about how to cut current expenses. Even younger Gen-X has been adulting for a while now and might be well locked in to a mortgage at the fringes of what they can afford and now that interest rates have gone up so much, a downsizing might not actually lower the monthly payment. Take good care of the cars so that when the loans are up, you can still drive them for a good long time. 

If you can accept that those tasked with fixing it, politicians, will either fail or won't fix it to your liking, then the answer becomes each of us individually working on our own resiliency and optionality. No one will care how your individual outcome plays out more than you so it is yours to solve or fix or improve or any other word you want to use. 

The path to enhancing resiliency and optionality is focusing on health and remaining curious. 

As always, the answer from me for health is lifting weights and cutting carbs. Anyone can do this. I have a new client, she is 75 and told me she does resistance training among other things. There is no chronic malady where low carb as a solution hasn't been studied. Plenty of acute illness have also been similarly studied. If you have something you are dealing with, get curious enough to learn about low carb and your issue. This is one way to remain curious. Take ownership, learn and then decide for yourself but I am convinced that low carb is life changing.  Even if low carb doesn't solve your issue, there is no downside to consuming less sugar. 

Low carb and lifting weights is a path to getting off prescription meds (do the research). How much money would you save by not having any prescriptions? Saving a couple of hundred thousand dollars on medication not needed over a full retirement could be game changing. 

If you're healthier and more fit then you have more optionality to do some sort of work in a post retirement career. In your 50's and 60's you can either be very limited physically or look like an action figure able to do anything. Yes, sometimes the difference between those two extremes is a matter of luck but there are plenty of instances too where the difference is habits. Anyone in this age range who can do anything can do anything--the literal definition of optionality. 

It is not an unreasonable scenario for someone in their 60's to be in decent shape and be mortgage free allowing them to "retire" into some sort of post retirement, part time gig that covers the monthly expenses. All the easier for a couple. 

This is another place where curiosity comes into play. Pursuing interests you have, seeking out new interests, making your own opportunity over a long period of time to be there for you when you need it can also be game changing for someone who is undersaved. Try to learn new things and volunteer in places which can allow you to network and create your opportunity (repeated for emphasis) if you ever need it. 

There is simply no way that a cut in Social Security payouts should catch anyone off guard. If it is going to happen, it won't be for ten years +/-, plenty of time to factor that into your math. If you have issues with insulin resistance, there is a good chance that you'll benefit meaningfully in just a couple of weeks (that was the case for me 6 years ago) by cutting carbs so it is definitely not too late on that front. You might not see results from lifting weights that quickly but a few months from now you will, so not too late on this front either. I don't know whether Malcolm Gladwell is correct about 10,000 hours to master something but it's probably few hours less than that to at least figure some things out on a subject and if you have hobbies you've been doing for a while you probably have more than 10,000 hours in and you could figure out pretty quickly whether you could monetize those hobbies or not.

All this comes down to taking an honest inventory of your situation and then solving your own problem one way or another. 

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