Most giving up on promise of retirement

By John Eckberg
The Cincinnati Enquirer

Baby boomers, nearing the age when they should be thinking about a cabin on Golden Pond, are instead resigning themselves to a retirement in a double-wide on the side of a crowded highway.

A bleak report from Towers Perrin, a global professional services firm, suggests most Americans have given up on the quaint promise of retirement.

It is not going to happen, four of five people say, at least not in the fashion so many imagine it: gardening on spring mornings, evenings with a book, trips to the gambling boats to fritter away a Social Security check that is more fun money than greenback, golf and more golf.

Instead, working Americans who must continue to plow money into Social Security have come to believe that retirement is a cruel hoax.

Most of the 2,000 workers, average age 41, who answered the survey believe they will be working well into their retirement years. And, like millions of people today, they won't be working out of choice, but to eat or pay medical bills.

"The Social Security retirement blanket will soon resemble a handkerchief," says M. Scott Boys, 33, a marketing manager for

Intell-A-Pro, a strategic services company based in Amelia, Ohio. "We're less certain that the Social Security and pension promises of yesterday will continue. Gen-Xers have been raised on broken promises."

The survey reveals another troubling development: Twenty-nine percent of the 365 human resources professionals surveyed said their companies had eliminated pensions for new hires, and 27 percent had reduced or frozen benefits for those on the payroll.

Can it get any gloomier? Yes, it can. Forty percent of employers have slashed medical benefits for workers. Another 35 percent are going to cut retirees' medical benefits.

There is a glimmer of good news: Six of 10 workers want national healthcare, something most western European countries offer.

Another silver lining: Workers believe income limits should be imposed on Medicare to separate fairly the haves from the have-nots.