Retirement Funding Quotes

The only reason there is a crisis about Social Security in the US and pensions in Europe and Japan is that you cannot maintain a "Ponzi" scheme indefinitely. We have collected from today's young to pay today's old and counted on tomorrow's young to keep doing so. That was a fine scheme as long as the number of young people was rising faster than old people. When that ratio comes to an end, such a system also has to end.

Since Social Security faces a large gap between what it promises younger workers and what it can afford to pay them, private savings will likely need to play a larger role in retirement planning for younger workers.

My firm has 25,000 high-net-worth clients. A typical account would be that of a couple aged 65 and 60 who need their money to last the rest of their lives, 25 to 35 years.

If you can't even acknowledge that you have to fix Social Security, that's not a very good starting point.

The myth is that people get their money back from Social Security. Not true. You get somebody else's money back. This is an intergenerational transfer.

One of the reasons that Social Security is in so much trouble is that the only funding stream comes from people who get a wage. The people who get wages is declining dramatically. Most of the income in this country is made by people at the top who get dividends and - and capital gains.

The Social Security Trust Fund should not be trusted and it is not funded.

At the heart of Erisa is the requirement that plan fiduciaries act with an 'eye single' to funding the retirements of plan participants and beneficiaries. This means investment decisions must be based solely on whether they enhance retirement savings, regardless of the fiduciary's personal preferences.

What should we do with this projected surplus? I have a simple four-word answer: Save Social Security first.

When you pay social security taxes, you are in no way making provision for your own retirement. You are paying the pensions of those who are already retired. Once you understand this, you see that whether you will get the benefits you are counting on when you retire depends on whether Congress will levy enough taxes, borrow enough, or print enough money...

But I'm saying we are loosing the people who are going to pay my social security. And that bothers me.

As I think all Americans understand on both sides of the aisle, the Social Security system as it is structured today is a pay-as-you-go system.

I know that plenty of folks have issues with Social Security, but I'd urge them to confront it on its own terms. Calling it a Ponzi scheme is misleading and does more to cloud the issue than it does to illuminate it. And yes, I do know that unless changes are made, the current system is unsustainable. But that doesn't mean it's fraud.

Some calamities - the 1929 stock market crash, Pearl Harbor, 9/11 - have come like summer lightning, as bolts from the blue. The looming crisis of America's Ponzi entitlement structure is different. Driven by the demographics of an aging population, its causes, timing and scope are known.

Unlike other loans, a reverse mortgage doesn't have to be repaid until the borrower moves out of the home or passes away.

We must work to stabilize Social Security. We must not gamble with our nation's social insurance program, one of our most popular and effective federal programs that has remained dependable and stable for the past 70 years.

Social Security represents an $11 trillion unfunded obligation. And when I say unfunded obligation, I mean we have to come up with $11 trillion at some point to make the system whole.

All the Social Security Trust Fund Money Is Gone!

Social Security is a social insurance program - it is not designed to be the same thing as a 401(k).

The real Social Security crisis is that the government does not have the money to redeem its IOUs.

Social Security is something that we need to deal with, because people who are working today, who will retire in the future, people who are retired today, they have a right - and it's part of the compact that they can depend on their benefits. We should fix the long-term funding problem of Social Security because that's the right thing to do.

It's not 2038 that Social Security is bankrupt. It's now.

We must level with the people and explain to them that Social Security will first face funding problems in 2042 that can be fixed now with changes that do not undermine and ultimately drain from the entire program.

The Republican candidates are talking about ways to transition this program and it is a monstrous lie. It is a ponzi scheme to tell our kids that are 25 or 30 years old today, you're paying into a program that's going to be there. Anybody that's for the status quo with Social Security today is involved with a monstrous lie to our kids, and it's not right.

There is a kind of fear, approaching a panic, that's spreading through the Baby Boom Generation, which has suddenly discovered that it will have to provide for its own retirement.