> Not just in America. I don't have any saving at all, and a lot of people around me neither, and I'm in France.
The situation is fundamentally different though.
Unlike what happens in America, in France you are already paying the pensions of currently retired people. Which means you aren't supposed to save yourself, as future workers will (in theory) pay for your pension once you retire.
In practice, we know that it might not happen this way, which is why you might want to have savings, of course. But the current system means saving for your own retirement ends up representing twice what an American would need to save, since you have to 1. fund current pensioners 2. fund your own future pension. Americans only have to take point 2 into account.
In theory, according to the French system's design, not having any retirement savings is completely fine and is even the intended situation. Transitioning from our general contribution system to a personal savings system might be good in our period of stagnating population growth, but the transition itself is hard precisely because it means one generation will have to both contribute for others and save for itself. And it looks like it might be going to be ours. But it's a very different situation from what happens in the US where people just can't save, but they have no other way of getting a pension anyway.
Unlike what happens in America, in France you are already paying the pensions of currently retired people.
Actually, that's exactly how Social Security works in the US. You and your employer collectively pay 12.4% on your first ~$130k of salary, which goes to support all the current recipients of Social Security.
I think it just depends if you are okay with what the social security benefits pay out. Currently if you retire it is $2,687 a month. This is the max though. Most may get less.
The situation is fundamentally different though.
Unlike what happens in America, in France you are already paying the pensions of currently retired people. Which means you aren't supposed to save yourself, as future workers will (in theory) pay for your pension once you retire.
In practice, we know that it might not happen this way, which is why you might want to have savings, of course. But the current system means saving for your own retirement ends up representing twice what an American would need to save, since you have to 1. fund current pensioners 2. fund your own future pension. Americans only have to take point 2 into account.
In theory, according to the French system's design, not having any retirement savings is completely fine and is even the intended situation. Transitioning from our general contribution system to a personal savings system might be good in our period of stagnating population growth, but the transition itself is hard precisely because it means one generation will have to both contribute for others and save for itself. And it looks like it might be going to be ours. But it's a very different situation from what happens in the US where people just can't save, but they have no other way of getting a pension anyway.