Third Stool Retirement Revenue Helps

 When I mean third stool, I mean, one is fortunate to have 3 different versions for access for retirement income. 

1. Personal Retirement Accounts 
2. Social Security Income 
3. Pension 

In my case, 3. pension. I'm lucky to be employed with the very few employers that offers pension benefits for employees. I think less than 20% of U.S. employers even offer this type of benefit.

Source

A pension is basically a set amount of income offered to employees upon their retirement based on a set amount the employee has contributed in during their time of employment. Employers will provide this for the rest of their lives, at times health benefits will be included. Although, the premium you pay after leaving your employer will be slightly more as they will not be paying a higher portion, that portion will fall on you. 




In the late 80s if I'm not mistaken, that the advent of 401k accounts were offered to employees. It took the burden off the employer to fund an employees retirement income needs. So most employees had to either take the initiative to sign up and fund these accounts. Most employers who offered them, automatically enrolled each employee to have one of these accounts, but the employee had to be proactive in funding and maintaining these type of accounts.

In 2023, I find it really difficult to manage this on your own, but I believe the U.S. government is help to take it a step further by requiring all employers to automatically enrolling employees. Before it was optional, so most employees wouldn't tend to or begin to manage this account. 

This option to enroll employees will really benefit employees in addition to Social Security and other Retirement savings accounts, hence the 3rd stool. 

If you haven't already done so, many older American workers should be taking advantage of this benefit, ASAP.  In addition to emergency savings fund, if not already created, this one route will really help in the long run. 

I've been with my employer close to 20 years, and as I get older, I get more aggressive in automatically putting aside more money to help fund my eventual retirement. My goal is less than 2 years away, so putting more money away will really, I mean really help me up my cost of living when I am no longer working. 

We should not neglect this area in our retirement planning goals.