What You Can Do about America's Retirement Crisis

What is behind America’s retirement crisis

Find out what you can do about America’s retirement crisis on this episode. Then download your FREE Queer Money Kickstarter, a 9-step Guide to Kickstart Your Journey to Financial Independence.

How changes to America’s retirement system is causing a crisis

40 years ago, the US changed its approach to retirement. However, those changes shifted the risk from the government and corporations to individuals. And now, nearly half of middle-class retirees will be downwardly mobile into poverty or near poverty in their golden years. So, what can we do to solve the retirement crisis in America? Teresa Ghilarducci is the nationally recognized labor economist behind the new book Work, Retire, Repeat. After an illustrious 25-year tenure at Notre Dame, Teresa joined the New School for Social Research in 2008. She has spent her career advocating pension reform.

On this episode of Queer Money®, Teresa joins us to discuss what’s behind the retirement crisis in the US and explore what we can do to secure a dignified retirement for all. Teresa explains why raising the retirement age isn’t the answer, exploring how the current system creates more inequality and harms low-wage older workers.

Listen in for insight on how life cycle disparities affect LGBTQ individuals and learn how Teresa’s Gray New Deal will help solve the retirement crisis in America.

Listen to get insight on America’s retirement crisis

Topics covered on America’s retirement crisis

What’s behind the retirement crisis in America and its political implications
The risks associated with a pension-only retirement program
4 levers we can pull as voters, consumers, investors and workers to secure a dignified retirement
Why raising the retirement age shouldn’t be the sole solution to the retirement crisis
Why academics and politicians are arbiters of the ‘work-longer consensus’
How changes to the retirement system create more inequality and harm low-wage older workers
How life cycle disparities impact LGBTQ individuals and other marginalized communities
2 key tenets of Teresa’s Gray New Deal and how it would help Americans in retirement
How economic security is even more important than equality
What listeners can do to support the adoption of Teresa’s Gray New Deal

Connect with Teresa Ghilarducci

Teresa’s Website

Resources on America’s retirement crisis

Retirement Savings for Americans Act
Gray New Deal
Hyperbolic Discounting on Queer Money EP494
How to Retire with Enough Money by Teresa Ghilarducci, PhD
Work, Retire, Repeat by Teresa Ghilarducci, PhD
The Art of Being Audio CD by Erich Fromm
More Perfect Union.us
Deaths of Despair and the Future of Capitalism by Anne Case and Angus Deaton
Queer Money Kickstarter
Capital One Auto Navigator
Wealth Builder’s Pyramid
CreditWise

Connect with David and John

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We’re David and John Auten-Schneider, the Debt Free Guys (www.debtfreeguys.com), and the Queer Money® podcast hosts. We help queer people (and allies) live fabulously, not fabulously broke, by helping them 1) pay off credit card debt, 2) become part- or full-time entrepreneurs and 3) save and invest for retirement.

What You Can Do about America’s Retirement Crisis