Mel Abraham explains how we inherited a broken retirement system. Pensions used to guarantee lifetime income. Now we're on our own with 401(k)s and IRAs, but nobody taught us how to make them work, and earning more money won't fix it.
We are raised with industrial age thinking still, and that industrial age thinking is this: go get a job, go build a business. In other words, go earn money. Just make money, make money, make money. That will solve all your problems. No. See, they tell you that you're going to make money. Now, there was a time in our lives where they said, work for this company for 30, 40 years and we'll give you something called a pension. Pension. Lifetime income. They took care of us. We started living longer, and the company said, "Wait a second, it's too expensive. Y'all living too long." So what do they do? They give us 401s. They give us IRAs. They give us all these other accounts in different countries or different things. But what they did is they dumped it in your lap with no explanation, no training, no nothing, and made it your responsibility to create lifetime income. And the problem is, is we think we can solve that problem by earning more.
