While the story called “You’ll Need HOW MUCH Money for Retirement?” may be too technical for the lay reader, the points are worth noting.

To put my spin on it, I’d summarize and re-interpret as follows:

  1. Retirement projections and calculators produce wide variations in results.
  2. Start with income from third-party sources, like your Social Security income and any pension you may have.
  3. Add to that, future guaranteed income that your current savings can produce today.
  4. Set an income goal, and repeat steps 1, 2 and 3 each year to see if you’re moving closer or farther from the goal.

In other words, what I’m advocating is for individuals to update this calculation each year rather than have a calculator do it for them.

Another article I read was in the Boston Herald, and talked about how “College bills hit as parents are about to retire.” The timing certainly does pose a challenge to funding a successful retirement.

I believe there’s a solution for this generation and future generations of retirees faced with college debts incurred by themselves or their kids.

For their kids, we need to enable the college student to self-fund an education through an earnings-based repayment system.

For the debts retirees incurred that are still outstanding, I believe they have to take a hard look at how they generate retirement income and when they can reasonably retire.

Retiring later and using all of the available resources and financial products can make a huge difference in your retirement income.

The bottom line is: New problems require new solutions.