How Social Security can help you play catch-up on retirement savings

….

Americans aren’t saving for retirement

It seems like every day a new survey is released that concludes Americans aren’t saving nearly enough for retirement. Google “percentage of Americans who haven’t saved for retirement” if you want to engage in some schadenfreude. My search suggested that fully a third of folks have saved a big, fat nothing! Scary.

There are many reasons for this. In my dad’s case, he never had a job that even provided retirement programs he could contribute to until he was in his 50s (let alone a job that offered a match from his employer). In fact, if I recall correctly, he never even had a job that offered health insurance until late in his career.

Since he was raising two children and caring for a disabled wife during many of his working years, retirement was always one of those things he thought he’d have to deal with later.

….

via How Social Security can help you play catch-up on retirement savings.