Everything about your financial life seems so much harder these days, doesn’t it? I’m sure you’ve wondered why it is so difficult to save money and retire comfortably. We’ve come to treat retirement as a given in our society; a sacrosanct stage of life. But let’s not forget that retirement is a relatively new concept. The idea has really served only a generation or two— most of us, our parents and grandparents. Before their time, folks generally worked until they couldn’t. Until they died.
Do you remember your history? When was Social Security invented? It was created under Franklin Delano Roosevelt during the Great Depression, when there was no social safety net for old and sick people. And “old” was a different concept back then. The average life expectancy in the United States was 62 years. That’s all! And Social Security retirement benefits were supposed to kick in at age 65, so not everybody was expected to collect, or at least not for very long. In fact, Roosevelt himself didn’t live long enough to cash in on his benefits (not that he would have needed them). He died at the age of 63.
