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From the September 2009 issue of Boomer Market Advisor • Subscribe!

Decades of warning signs

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September 1, 2009 • Reprints

We can't blame the stock market entirely for boomers' poor investment showing. As MSNBC's John Schoen reminds us, the retirement pitfall "has its roots in a decades-long shift in the way retirement is funded. As recently as 1988, the primary source of retirement income for more than half of American workers was a traditional 'defined benefit' plan that paid a guaranteed monthly income for life. Those pension plans were developed when the average life span after retirement was counted in single digits. But increased longevity gradually created a much more expensive proposition for employers offering guaranteed lifetime income."

"It's not reasonable to expect you could have a system that would fund 20, 30 or 40 years of retirement living when it was really designed to fund five or 10," John Carl, president of the Retirement Learning Center told Schoen.

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