Friday Flix: Can you Afford to Retire?

I was too tired to post this yesterday, but I saw this 60-minute film on Frontline, Can You Afford to Retire?, I think, last year and it is a documentary on how companies used to offer pensions to employees and changed this practice by putting all of the responsibility in the hands of employees by adopting investment retirement accounts (IRA) such as 401k and 401B plans, etc.

I know people who have signed up for these investment retirement plans, have x amount of funds deducted from their paychecks, and do not even check in on the balances to see how funds are performing. Some of the stories are sad, because some of the people interviewed said the company did not educate them enough.

Well, in several cases in this film's footage some employees, when they opted for retirement they still had to take pt or ft jobs, because they lost money in their plans or they did not contribute enough. I asked a friend if she checks to see how her accounts are performing, and she said "no," shrugging her shoulders. I told her "It's YOUR money. You don't care?" She further shrugged her shoulders with facial expressions as if some magical IRA god from the sky would take care of it all and make everything all right.

Anyone with a job should be putting something away, even if it is $25/week, and start in your early twenties, which I wish I had done when I was in my twenties. If you are not eligible, open a Roth IRA account. WATCH DOCUMENTARY

"I would say, unless you're fortunate to be in the upper-income quartiles, that you're probably going to be in for a very rough ride," adds Jack VanDerhei of the Employee Benefit Research Institute (EBRI). "You're not going to have sufficient monies to pay the predictable expenses -- your housing, your utilities, your food -- plus the potential catastrophic medical care costs."---FRONTLINE