Born-Again Savers

Wednesday night’s Daily Show blast of Jim Cramer and CNBC exposed how so many of us were duped by frenetic Wall Streeters who parlayed our money into something worth half of what it was a year ago.

We listened to people no smarter than we who were tantalized with 30 percent returns and conveniently forgot to mention that there is a difference between Savings, and Investments.

Now that financial advisors have found Jesus, they’ve once again started preaching about that difference; but only because they’re jobless if they can’t obtain more of our money.  They need us to be reformed investors, and born-again savers.

We have been repentant – kind of – and are saving again.  America’s savings rate grows with every recession, then plummets when the economy improves.   It has risen dramatically (see the little blip at the far right of the graph) after falling essentially to zero since 2005.  To ZERO.

Even in this worst of times we are not close to putting away enough of our income to avoid a cat food-based retirement.  The erosion of the Social Security net might persuade us to save more, you would think, but hi-def TVs and Starbucks are just too tempting.  We suck at saving but we’re great at believing our government will bail us out when the sky falls in 2020.

I still have many years before reaching retirement age and have a pretty good chance of getting there with enough savings to be comfortable.  I’m not so sure about my 64-year-old friend, who can no longer retire at the end of the year.