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Times have changed for the average American worker. In the early part of the 20th century, most jobs offered a pension after dedicated service to a company. The thought process was to dedicate your working years to a large company, who will in turn take care of you with a pension in your retirement years. Simultaneously, following the Great Depression, Social Security was created in 1935 to supplement retiree income.

As time progressed, retirees begun living longer, thus making it cost prohibitive for companies to continue providing a pension. This has also contributed to the disappearance of Social Security, making it less of a probability as time continues. As a result, pensions offered by large companies have slowly disappeared.

In the mid to late 70s, the Traditional IRA was created along with the passing of the Revenue Act, creating the 401K. This provided companies with a retirement savings plan versus that of a traditional pension, giving workers more freedom to invest in their retirement while giving them the ability to move from job to job. Soon the ROTH IRA was created in 1997 soon to be followed by the ROTH 401K. The responsibility for planning retirement has begun to fully shift to the American worker.

At the start of the 21st century and the tech boom, the average worker no longer stayed loyal to their companies as their parents and grandparents previously had. It was not uncommon in the mid 2000s for workers to have jumped from company to company four or five times. Workers invested in their 401Ks, Traditional IRAs, and had the ability to continue investing in their retirement with another company if they chose to leave.

The issue is, financial education is lacking and many workers do not know or understand how to invest in these retirement products at all. Many workers still cling to the traditional ideas of staying loyal to a company only to be let go. Loyalty has become a thing of the past.

As a result, some have chosen to invest in Financial Planners who do the work for you. Unfortunately, Financial Planners are expensive and their compensation structure relies solely on taking from their clients wealth resulting in the loss of possibly MILLIONS of dollars in retirement. 1% in management fees compounded over the course of your 40 working years is quite a bit.

My point is this. Over the course of our lifetimes, the responsibility for managing your money and your retirement has solely fallen on YOUR shoulders. Remaining ignorant of your finances and outsourcing it to Financial Planners can cost you millions.

But it is not all doom and gloom. Understanding how to invest and how to manage your money is a skill like anything else. It’s not as difficult as most imagine it to be, especially with the help of a coach and a community in the same position. Financial Education is IMPERATIVE.