Originally Posted By: cjcride
Agreed and in Canada stats show over 50% are not prepared.
The message here is that when one can put cash aside for retirement they should.
We are 50ish and my wife is completely obsessed with retirement. She works part time but makes good coin per hour as a CPA, socks away all her income directly into retirement until she's maxed out and I also contribute the max to my 401k. I have always made decent money (except for 6 months looking for a position back in '09) and also had an extended period where I was cashing in stock options on a regular basis for a nice income boost. We own our house and a vacation condo outright and haven't made car payments for at least a decade, buy our vehicles new and drive them for a long time. We also have about 4 years worth of tuition + room/board at a typical expensive East Coast private university saved up for our daughter and still add to this regularly (doesn't make sense to me given that there can be penalties taking money out of 529 accounts for non-educational use).
In short, we don't owe a dime to anybody and have substantial savings.
But, she will still accuse me of threatening her with the prospect of eating dog food in "her retirement" (never ours) when I want a new car that I actually like, new skis or boots, something nice for our daughter, whatever. We should be picking up some kind of car for our newly licensed daughter soon, and I can't even imagine how much she's going to drag her heels and accuse me of dooming her to penury in that process.
In short, she is 100% focused on a future that she will probably also not enjoy and missing life going by her while she still has health and mobility. Plus, she is really making her meal ticket (me) miserable at times, which is probably the biggest threat to her future financial comfort.
I wonder if she can even control this obsession, but I'm getting to the point of "enough". I wanna put some living in before it's not an option anymore.
