The US has a public pension scheme called "social security," which guarantees at least a minimum level of income in retirement to all citizens (although, not enough to live on IMO).
This is intended to be supplemented with private investments via 401k & IRAs, which are actually relatively new programs (created in the late-1970s, but nobody even talked much about them until the 90s).
So while most millennials understand they need to be saving privately in these vehicles (r/personalfinance has 15 million members), there's a huge forgotten generation in the middle who slipped through the cracks between the transition from industrial-era corporate pensions to personal saving.
These are the folks who will unfortunately bear the brunt of the retirement crisis, having to get by only on Social security.
This is intended to be supplemented with private investments via 401k & IRAs, which are actually relatively new programs (created in the late-1970s, but nobody even talked much about them until the 90s).
So while most millennials understand they need to be saving privately in these vehicles (r/personalfinance has 15 million members), there's a huge forgotten generation in the middle who slipped through the cracks between the transition from industrial-era corporate pensions to personal saving.
These are the folks who will unfortunately bear the brunt of the retirement crisis, having to get by only on Social security.