Quiz: Get Ready for the ‘Second Fifty’ Years of Your Life

Life can be difficult if you are living on Social Security income alone. The average monthly retirement check in 2022 was $1,670, barely enough to pay the average rent on an unfurnished apartment. That leaves little for food, clothing, medicine and other necessities.

Traditional pension plans have been losing favor with corporate America, especially after companies were required to show the plans as liabilities on their balance sheets. As recently as 1991, more than 100,000 companies offered these private employer plans, but by 2018 that number had plunged by half.

Roughly 1 in 5 Americans receive some kind of Social Security benefit, including the 52 million people who receive retirement benefits and almost 6 million people of all ages who get monthly survivor payments.

Unless lawmakers update the program, benefits will be cut by 20 percent in 2034. Social Security will endure because it’s too important to too many people, but the sooner policymakers put Social Security on more solid financial ground, the better for us all.