Max Baucus: “most people my age have known the heartache of having to watch their parents grow old. It is a sad day in a person's…”

“most people my age have known the heartache of having to watch their parents grow old. It is a sad day in a person's life when they see their father get his first gray hair. Or the day you notice lines in your mother's face where previously, there were none. This aging process is made worse by the scary and very real possibility that too many people who will become senior citizens in the next several years are not at all prepared for the transition from work to retirement. To be honest, it isn't our parents who we need to worry about so much. They survived the Depression. They know what it takes to get by during the lean years--it takes planning and saving. Putting money aside, when it might be easier to spend it in the moment. Those are the values that our parents live by. They are the values we would do well to heed. And even better to teach those who will follow us. We as a nation have lost our imperative to save. Personal savings rates have dropped to 3.8 percent of our Gross Domestic Product, the lowest in 58 years. Fifty-one million Americans in our nation's workforce have no pension coverage. But statistics like those don't tell the whole story. They don't do justice to the hardscrabble struggles that real people go through every day.…”