The Importance of Saving for Your Retirement

Saving for retirement pays. The only people who would disagree with this are either rich or delusional. Living each day without cutting out a sliver of it for tomorrow is the wisdom of a fool. One can go on about the value of today's dollar and speculate about it's worth in 40 years. Other people will tell you that living for today is how we were intended to live.

The hard, simple truth is that if we don't want to burden our family or eat cat food in our old age, we need to do something about it. Even animals in the wild plan ahead. Bears store fat for the winter. Squirrels stash away food, too. Obviously, we can't just save food for our retirement years. The stench would be unbearable (although Twinkies would probably hold up pretty well). We need to prepare in a different way than our animal bretheren. We do this by storing up cash. Bears and squirrels don't pay a mortgage, gas bills or tax, at least not yet. We upright bipeds do however, pay a mortgage, gas bills and taxes and those guys won't take food as a payment (nope, not even Twinkies).

That means that the money we save for our old age represents our stored fat and stashed food. It also represents a roof over our heads, decent food on our plates, and medical care. There are government programs out there that will help us in our Golden Years. They're not designed to completely take care of all our needs, just to subsidize them a little. Social Security will give enough to keep you alive (maybe, if you've paid enough into it). There are also various other programs designed to help the poorest of us. None of them are enough to do much for us, though.

I guess the answer to this question really depends on what you want your retirement to be. If you want enough freedom to relax and enjoy the fruits of a lifetime of work, then I suggest you save a little for that rainy day that will inevitably come. If you like the thought of eating cat food and selling your plasma for rent money, then don't bother saving a dime.