Executive Summary

• The Importance of Adding New Income Streams
• Income-Producing Assets
• Taking Advantage of Subsidies
• Hedges, Cost-Controls & Other Strategies
• The 14 Steps to Prosperity

If you have not yet read Part 1: The Great Retirement Con, available free to all readers, please click here to read it first.

In Part 1, we revealed the woefully insufficient level of retirement savings — across IRAs, 401ks, and public pensions — America faces as it's largest demographic cohort, the Baby Boomers, now reaches retirement age. And eating quickly away at the scant savings that exist is the soaring cost of big-ticket essentials such as rent, higher education and healthcare that retirees can't avoid paying.

So what can we do about it?

There are only a few strategies that can make a real difference:  own assets and income streams that keep up with real-world inflation, radically reduce the cost structure of big-ticket household expenses, qualify for subsidies (i.e. lower household income), and/or adopt a healthier view of what prosperity in retirement means.

Qualify for Subsidies

Though it runs counter to our philosophy of self-reliance, we have to address incentives offered by the system we inhabit. One powerful set of incentives is entitlement subsidies for lower income households: rent subsidies (Section 8), healthcare subsidies (Medicaid and ACA/Obamacare), college tuition waivers, food subsidies (food stamps), free school lunches, and so on.

These programs were designed to aid households that cannot earn more income, but for households on the borderline between paying full freight (no subsidies) and receiving some subsidies, it makes sense to work less, earn less and qualify for substantial subsidies.

I am not recommending gaming the system, I am simply noting that subsidies exist and those who earn just above qualifying incomes are in effect punished for earning a bit too much.

In many cases, we assume subsidies are reserved for “poor people” and we don’t qualify. For entitlements such as food stamps (SNAP), this is generally the case. But other programs offer some subsidies to households with incomes that are substantial but below the median levels of their region.

Households that go through the complex process of seeking financial aid for college may find they qualify for some reduction in tuition or even a tuition waiver for state universities, despite earning a middle-class income.