US debt

[JayB]

The savings rate only includes the percent of savings from disposable (after tax) income. Because 401ks are the vehicle of retirement savings these days I suspect the savings rate is a bit higher, but not much. that said, 401ks are woefully underfunded, the average balance is around $2,000 and for 50 year olds it's around a whopping $80k. Good luck with that.

 

Many folks look to their house as their retirement savings account and mortgage up to their eyeballs. Not a good idea.

 

Nope. A house is an asset like anything else. I think that recent rates of return have convinced everyone that home values only go up, but most people who believe that have never looked at the data, and have a very hard time differentiating between real and nominal returns.

Robert Schiller has compiled one of the best - and only - long term data sets that account for inflation, house quality, etc - and it hardly supports the proposition that pouring all of your money into this single asset class and leveraging yourself to the hilt is a surefire path to a secure retirement. It was hard to go wrong in the interval between 96 and the present, but there's certainly no guarantee that this this will always be the case.