This report on MarketWatch has some troubling statistics about Americans and retirement planning.

“roughly half of all working Americans don’t participate in a retirement plan or don’t have an employer-sponsored plan in which to participate.”

“retirees are living on roughly one-third of their preretirement income. And that’s a far cry from the 70% to 80% income replacement experts suggest Americans need to maintain their preretirement standard of living.”

If the only retirement strategy you have at this point is a plan to live off of social security, you and many other Americans are in big trouble.  With the baby boomers expected to bankrupt the social security system sometime in the next 20 years or so, subsequent generations must be especially cognizant of their retirement planning.

Even people who are actively saving for retirement aren’t saving enough.  Healthcare costs are rising so astronomically it will be difficult to maintain a reasonable standard of living as you grow older. 

However, you still have time before the end of the year to contribute the maximum allowed for both your IRA and 401K plans.  For individuals over 50 years the IRS has a provision to allow you to “catch up” on retirement that allows you to contribute an additional amount over the normal allotment for retirement accounts.