Twitter is constantly working itself up about something. But it’s rare that something is the unsexy world of personal finance. That’s is precisely what transpired last week when personal finance personality Jean Chatzky tweeted the following:
By the time you’re 30, aim to have 1x your annual income set aside for retirement. At 40, 3x; at 50, 6x; at 60, 8x; and by retirement, 10x.
— Jean Chatzky (@JeanChatzky) November 1, 2017
The tweet garnered an inordinate response. Typically, Chatzky’s tweets receive a few dozen likes, retweets and responses. This one had generated nearly 7,000 engagements as of late yesterday afternoon.
The general consensus was that Chatzky’s advice was laughably unattainable, and it was mocked accordingly. One respondent wrote that the real key to retirement was to win the genetic lottery and be born to wealthy parents.
https://twitter.com/The_Best_Smart/status/925768084270518272
Others said we were better off assuming the end of the world and thus spending freely.
My hot tip for retirement saving is to assume humans will be wiped out in 50 years and therefore you should spend all your money now. https://t.co/Jcghdf50Te
— Tits McGee (@Scientits) November 1, 2017
Some turned Chatzky’s “30 … 40 … 50 …” construction on its ear…
By the time you're 30, aim to have 1 moth fly our of your wallet. At 40, two moths. At 50, find a button at the bottom of your wallet. At 60 https://t.co/1ficdoOGrr
— Alex Zalben (@azalben) November 1, 2017
https://twitter.com/TeenWolfToo/status/926439714407829504
…or made self-deprecating admissions about the woeful state of their own bank accounts.
I'm 31, and like everybody I know my age, I'm just one bad month away from homelessness https://t.co/KAffGpBsJS
— Big Evil Corporation (@Big_Evil_Corp) November 1, 2017
Some even used the tweet to mount calls for political revolution.
https://twitter.com/OmanReagan/status/925911023445467136
By the time you're 30 aim to have an established affinity group, at 40 capture & smash institutions & at 50 full communism will be ours https://t.co/Hu0nCPKzaL
— S̶̷̲̅ᴘ̶̷̲̅ᴏ̶̷̲̅ᴏ̶̷̲̅K̶̷̲̅ɴ̶̷̲̅ɪ̶̷̲̅ɢ̶̷̲̅ʜ̶̷̲̅ᴛ̶̷̲̅ (@theshiteknight) November 1, 2017
But amid the humor was a surprising amount of earnest vitriol. Many people seemed personally offended by Chatzky’s statement, which is odd (not to mention unfair) considering all she did was lay out the financial benchmarks one should strive to hit if they hope to retire comfortably.
The ire Chatzky received illuminated two salient points, however:
- There are an alarming number of people who have saved nowhere near enough to consider retiring.
- They get very defensive when you remind them of this fact.
Talks of a so-called “retirement crisis” have circulated for years now, with some saying the concerns are overblown and others maintaining that the current generation of working adults is headed for a financial cataclysm.
Members of the latter camp point to a confluence of factors — e.g., longer lifespans, low interest rates, the disappearance of pensions from the modern workforce and the 50 percent of workers who don’t participate in an employee-sponsored retirement plan — as proof that there’s a troubling number of people who aren’t saving enough to reasonably expect to retire on time. In fact, about half of today’s households won’t be able to maintain their current standard of living in retirement, according to data compiled by the Federal Reserve’s Study of Consumer Finances. That’s twice as many as in 1989.
But Chatzy’s advice wasn’t all that extreme — many personal finance experts advocate for having the equivalent of one year’s salary saved by the time you’re 30. And high earners should’ve saved more than one year’s salary by that time.
Still, many people said Chatzky’s goals are unrealistic for most Americans.
Also, really? Can anyone do this in America?
— Danna (@drDannaB) November 1, 2017
Perhaps they’re right. It’s increasingly difficult to thrive in the modern economy without a college degree; meanwhile, the cost of attending college continues to skyrocket. Combine that with the fact that most people are never taught how to handle money, and you have legitimate grounds for indignation.
At the same time, their frustration proves how emotional a topic money is for most people. In a society as superficial and capitalistic as America’s, where status and social worth are often measured by wealth, hearing you haven’t saved enough money for retirement can be a major blow to a person’s psyche. It can also make you want to give up on it altogether.
This is the advice the scares millennials away from financial planning. Financial planning is out of touch with today's young people
— Kris10 (@k_rizzzaye) November 2, 2017
That’s a bit of a cop-out, though. Chatzky offered tangible advice on retirement goals; to dismiss it as unrealistic doesn’t help. What does help is to actually work toward saving for retirement—even if you can’t save that much.
One of Chatzky’s haters sent the following, for instance.
https://twitter.com/a_frances34/status/925743802177945600
But scaling back your dining-out budget and putting that money in your IRA is actually an effective retirement strategy.
So laugh all you want at Chatzky…
https://twitter.com/LaurenceMallows/status/925802527181991936
… but it won’t do anything for your 401(k).
