Or you know, a country with actual pension plans, like most of Western Europe at least.

Oh, plenty of people have government pensions. It's just that when city & state governments made those promises, they were lying. It is the will of the people of Illinois, for example, not to pay retired government workers what they're owed, and we'll see that enacted shortly. Social Security will similarly implode when the total needs of Boomers surpass the total income-producing capability of Millenials in the next couple of decades.

Having a pension is not in any way, shape, or form an excuse to not have private retirement savings. Other people can and do routinely decide to render pensions worthless, and there's nothing you can do about it.

If you aren't the sole signer on the account where it's held, the money isn't yours. If anyone has the ability to pilfer it for their own purposes, they will, and you should act accordingly.

Accepting a pension in lieu of additional income is a staggeringly bad idea that no one should ever under any circumstances dream of considering. You wouldn't accept salary in a way that can be retroactively withdrawn, you shouldn't accept retirement savings that way either. As long as we live in a world where Republicans are allowed to exist, trusting a government to pay you is phenomenally stupid.

It's extremely good news that the US has mostly discarded the idea of giving out pensions.

Or you know you could setup a pension system where this hardly happens if at all by ringfencing the funds, allowing limited risk exposure and making sure the plans are well-funded. Countries in Western Europe indeed have managed to do this.

As an example, the Dutch "pension fund for government and education" aims to have 128% coverage. They still haven't fully recovered from the 2008 crisis, because they currently still have only 102,5% coverage.

Modern Western European pension systems are largely post-WW2 so haven't been around that long. Sure based on performance so far, there are fair reasons to think you'll be able to extract a liveable pension in say 2050, but it's not really guaranteed.

Which countries are you talking about? Finland certainly doesn't implement mandatory govt pensions well.

Do you mean like in uk where you get 159.55£ per week after you worked for at least 35 years and you are at least 68 (if they don't postpone it again) ? I hope that I don't have to explain what kind of life you can do in London with that ridiculous amount.

640/month is probably more than a lot of working people have left over after they've paid rent/mortgage, childcare, commuting costs. Not that it's an exorbitant lifestyle, but it's "moderately" comfortable (assuming you own your own home and qwualofy for all the relevant support).

Even if you own your home you need to pay the service charge. In my house is ~1800/year = 150£/month. The council tax is pretty cheap for my house, it's only ~100£/month. Other bills let's say 100£/month. To eat at home, unless you want to eat sh#t, it's 400£/month. Total: ~750£ So if you don't do absolutely anything at all apart from surviving and eating at home you are already spending 110£ more than your pension. And this is if you already have an house. I would not call a final income of MINUS 110£ moderately comfortable.

If you're genuinely spending £400 pcm on just food then you really need to sort your budgeting out. Especially in retirement, when you've way more time to cook big meals and freeze stuff.

400 / 2 people / 30 days = 6.6£ a day. Can you please share the secret on budgeting out? I think that if you don't want to eat shit 6.6£ a day is the bare minimum I really can't see how can you spend less. You have something like 3£ for lunch, 3£ for dinner and 60p for breakfast.

I checked my shopping for this week, we spent 54.35 on food for two for the week (well, 6 dinners, and 7 breakfast/lunches). We also had £6.10 of that on toiletries this week, so 48.25 on food. Our breakdown is: £20 on dinner for 6 nights, £10 on lunches for both of us for 7 days, and breakfast is £12 for 7 days. There's a bit of a crossover between the breakfast and lunches in there, as there's yogurt, fruit, beans and bread in there, that servers as parts of two meals. We also have £7 on snacks/luxuries (chocolate)

Not everyone pays a service charge (or factoring fee). My building doesn't have one

I pay council tax of 120/month. 400 a month is far too high for 2 people - according to the ons [0] the average for a family of 4 is 56.80 (which seems a little on the low side to me, but is definitely enough for 2 people) - we spend a little less than that on breakfast/lunch/ 7 days, and dinner 6 nights for 2, and that includes our non food shopping expenses (e.g. toiletries, cleaning products).

Not to mention, if you're feeding two people, then the second person in the house presumably has an income. Presuming a pension, that now means your income is 1280/month. Remember that you get free travel, discount on heating (which reduces your £100/month bills)

A family of 4 does all the grocery shopping with 56.80£ per month in London? I can't really imagine what they're eating with 47p a day. From the prices that I see around they can probably afford 1/2 pint of milk a day and not even a yoghurt. I am quite curious what they eat for lunch and dinner. I like to eat properly, for sure I don't buy the cheapest shit that you can find. Fresh fish at least once a week, some sirloin steak, chicken, cheese, vegetables, fruits, some proper beer. My wife won't have a pension so it would be only my pension for 2 people.

I don't know m, in only quoting the statistic from the ONS - https://www.ons.gov.uk/peoplepopulationandcommunity/personal... (apologies I forgot to put it in the last post). Alcohol is separate to food spending. I posted a breakdown of my shopping this week below. You don't have to eat the most expensive meat or drink the most expensive beer or wine to eat and drink well. On the point of 47p and a pint of milk - I don't know any families of four that buy their milk by the pint. They buy it by 4 pints, which in my local supermarket is 1.00 for 4 pints. Similarly, not everyone is buying their eggs organic by the half dozen, changes are a family of four is soending 1.60 on 15 free range eggs instead

Based on your comments in this thread, I can only assume that you like to indulge, and part of that indulgence is in price (seriously, 400 quid a month is exorbitant for 2 people), and that's perfectly fine. What's not ok is projecting your inability to live without sirloin steak, fresh fish, imported cheese on to everyone. You come across like an elitist snob.

Hardly any country in Europe has a decent pension plan. The Netherlands has one, Australia, and I guess Norway.

France for sure, and I suppose Germany.

You can live indefinitely on way less a million. :)

http://www.mrmoneymustache.com/2012/01/13/the-shockingly-sim...

MMM is about voluntary acceptance of a poverty lifestyle. I don't disagree that you can live indefinitely on very little, if you are willing to adopt extreme asceticism.

In what way is it a poverty lifestyle? It's about maximising the quality of life to money ratio.