Alicia Munnell Quotations

Most people are going to arrive at retirement and not have adequate money. This is serious. None of us are good at doing our own retirement savings.

People will be scrambling at a time when they should be secure.

We're on a downward trajectory here. The traditional pension is not coming back.

God knows what people will do if they're handed $60,000 at retirement.

I worry about the Fed using up its ammunition.

With public employees, the day of reckoning is more in the distance.

It looks like we're doing as well as we've always done. But in fact, the world has changed. And it's for four big, real obvious reasons.

Everybody is having a terrible time. Nobody is enjoying much in terms of growth in net worth. No one has enough to support themselves in retirement for 20 years.

The aging of the population may put employers in a tight situation.

It's an entirely new phenomenon for healthy companies to freeze their pensions.

They will no longer be able to rely on a rapidly growing group of younger workers in the future. Increased employment of older workers seems like a natural solution, but employers will have to change their hiring and retention policies if they want to attract these highly productive older individuals.

The implication is really clear. People need to have more saved than they did in the past.