Your Retirement at 62 Didn’t DIE. They KILLED It.

In 1975 the average American worker retired at 62 on a pension check for life. One paragraph in a 1978 tax bill created the 401(k) and ended it. Here is who killed the American pension, what happened in 1983, and why 1 in 4 people over 50 now say they will never retire. Plus 5 free moves you can make tonight: your Social Security earnings record, the claiming age lever, your employer match, lost 401(k) accounts, and the fee hiding in your plan. SOURCES 103,000 pension plans in 1975, the 1983 peak of 175,000, and the fall to 56,000 by 1998 https://www.dol.gov/agencies/ebsa/researchers/statistics/retirement-bulletins/private-pension-plan-bulletin-historical-tables-and-graphs The shift from defined benefit pensions to 401(k)s, charted by Congressional Research Service https://www.congress.gov/crs-product/IF12007 ERISA, the 1974 law written to protect pensions https://www.dol.gov/general/topic/retirement/erisa Ted Benna calling what he built "a monster" https://www.cbsnews.com/news/401k-founder-my-creation-is-a-monster/ How few private-sector workers still have access to a pension https://www.bls.gov/news.release/pdf/ebs2.pdf Median retirement savings for households aged 55 to 64 https://www.federalreserve.gov/econres/scfindex.htm 1 in 4 over 50 expect never to retire, 1 in 5 have nothing saved https://www.aarp.org/press/releases/2024-4-24-new-aarp-survey-1-in-5-americans-ages-50-have-no-retirement-savings.html Older Americans working later, 1985 to now https://www.bls.gov/opub/mlr/2016/images/data/hipple-fig11.stm Why a benefit at 70 is 77% larger than at 62 https://www.ssa.gov/benefits/retirement/planner/1960-delay.html $2.1 trillion sitting in forgotten 401(k) accounts https://www.hicapitalize.com/resources/the-true-cost-of-forgotten-401ks/ The government's free lookup for lost retirement accounts https://lostandfound.dol.gov How 1% in fees cuts a lifetime of savings by roughly 28% https://www.dol.gov/sites/dolgov/files/ebsa/about-ebsa/our-activities/resource-center/publications/401k-plan-fees.pdf