2005年NPR美国国家公共电台八月-Do Something Un-American: Save Your Money

On Friday is the Business Report, focuses on your money or in this case, your lack of it. Most Americans simply are not saving anything. The savings 1 rate fell to zero in June which is the lowest level since October of 2001. Now it's commonly said that you should save at least 10% of your income for retirement 2 but Jonathan Clements says even that is not enough anymore. Clements is the personal finance columnist 3 for the Wall Street Journal.

People have heard for years they must save 10% of their pretax salary, if they do that, they'll be able to retire in to comfort, but here is the problem , I mean,the 10% percent rule came about in a world where a lot of people are getting institutional company pensions. And so essentially 4 they're looking at sort of three sources of retirement funds they had, social security, they had their company pension and they had their personal savings. But what's happened the last 25 years? Well, a lot companies got rid of these traditional company pensions, and so suddenly people are just looking now at social security and their own personal savings. So with their own personal savings, what they need to do to compensate 5 for the loss of the traditional company pension is to increase the amount of their saving every year. I would argue that people should really be looking at saving 15 or 20% of their income every year.

15 or 20% before or after taxes if I can ask?
That's a pretax amount.

Oh, (so)and does that apply to people that make 200 thousand dollars a year as well as people who make 25 thousand dollars a year? Is there a difference there?

The higher your income, the more you ought to be saving. The reason is this: social security is gonna replicate 6 a whole lot more of your salary if you are at the lower income level. But once you get up into, you know, hundred, two hundred thousand dollars in annual income, I mean, social security's not gonna go very far in replicating 7 your current income, and so as a consequence. You're gonna have to do most of that replication. Add your savings, that means you really need to be saving a heck of lot of money every year.

Now your warning is that we should save a lot more than 10%. uh, statistics will suggest that most of us aren't even getting the 10%.

Yeah, you look at what's happened to the US savings rate, starting the early 1990's, I mean the US savings rate just collapsed 8. I mean just when people ought to be saving more, they are saving less.

How you're saving for retirement, Jonathan, you are 42?

Every which way I can, you know, the first thing that I do, and the first thing that anybody ought to do is to max out on their employers 401K plan, I put in every dollar I possibly can, and the reason is this. You get that inital taxed deduction 9 , Dow Jones and company where I work, you get a matching contribution from your employer, and you also get the tax/ defered growth. But the best thing about this 401 K plans, is that once you've signed up for them, they are on order part, I mean the money comes straight out of the paycheck. You don't have to make a decision. You never see it. You never miss it.

Do you have in mind and we are looking 20 or 30 years into your future. Do you have in mind that you'll be retiring around 65 or will you work longer?

My notion of retirement is that actually I'd like to retire or at least be able to scale back starting in my 50's. I don't wanna leave the workforce 10 entirely 11 but I'd like to have the freedom to maybe go off and do something totally different.

Are you already kinda in that category barely working there in your 40's?

You know, Steve, I'm sitting here bagging out two columns a week, and in my spare time and I work wandering over the NPR studio.

Oh, Jonasson Clements ,thanks for wandering over this morning.

It's my pleasure.

Jonasson Clements is the personal finance columnist for the Wall Street Journal for as long as he can last and he is also a regular guest of this program.