Retirement no longer feels like a finish line. It feels like a tightrope. For decades, people counted on a three-legged stool: Social Security, a pension, and personal savings. Today, that stool wobbles. Pensions have largely vanished from the private sector, leaving workers to shoulder investment risk inside 401(k)s while headlines scream about market corrections, inflation spikes, and looming shortfalls in Social Security.
The stakes feel higher because they are higher. Workers must now navigate complexity that previous generations never faced, and they must do it while markets swing harder and longer than anyone likes to admit.
