By: Russ Kamp, CEO, Ryan ALM, Inc.

You may recall that in April this year I penned a post on the impact of housing costs on one’s ability to fund a retirement fund. Unfortunately, it continues to get worse. According to a Goldman Sachs survey, “New Economics of Retirement,” 42% of Generation Z, Millennials and Generation X state they are living paycheck-to-paycheck, and 74% report struggling to save for retirement due to competing financial priorities – like housing costs, which according to the Planadvisor article in which I found this survey, now account for 51% of the median household income! To put that in perspective, in 2000 the median income needed to fund housing was 33%. Incredible.

It gets worse – truly! If you have a child or two or in my case, five, and you want to provide them with a quality post-graduate experience (college), it will now cost you 85% of one’s income to send them to a private institution. 85%! Sure, your child could go to a public university, but that still will cost a family 25% of their household income.

So, between housing and paying for your child’s college, you’ve already laid out a minimum of 76% of the family income. What about food, healthcare, utilities, property taxes, insurance, clothing, streaming services/cable, etc. Wonder why we have a retirement crisis?

When 42% of Gen X, Millennials, and Gen Z cohort members claim to be living from paycheck to paycheck, it shouldn’t be shocking. What may be more shocking is the fact that only 42% are struggling to get by. Furthermore, it shouldn’t be surprising that the top 10% of earners in the U.S. now account for 49% of the spending!

Can a society/economy function with such disparity? I fear not.