Dealing with the New Realities in Middle Class America

In a recent entry on one of my other blogs at http://unsustainabubble.com in an entry called "Going Down with the Joneses", I wrote about the paradigm shift that is taking place in the American Middle Class. Specifically the difficult, disruptive and very painful adjustments that are being made in saving, spending and consumption and over all life styles, accelerated by the current economic crisis and rapidly expanding unemployment. In a future article I want to discuss the key factors in our financial history that have brought us to this point and the strategies we can use going forward to best create sustained abundance, regardless of the external environment.

One of the ways people will begin to rebuild wealth once they have dealt with their debt and created an emergency fund, will be to increase the amount of contributions they make to their retirement plans. As you will see in my article, Americans are woefully unprepared for a self sufficient retirement. Less than 2% of retirees will be independent.  Everyone else will either continue to work, depend on children or the charity of strangers, or live below the poverty level on a shaky Social Security Check.

Since this is a longer article with charts, I have made the full document available and if you click on this link http://www.box.net/shared/cfje9z2vpv  you can view it and download it to share with others.

As always, I welcome your feedback, negative or positive and encourage you to share your thoughts with me.