Statistic Brain – Look at the Stats to Get Motivated

This post is probably most exciting for the scientists, engineers and mathematicians among us. I found this cool site cool Statistic Brain, which gives the stats on many interesting things, including  financials, entertainment, education, food, health crime, and demographics.

Clearly, being a blogger about frugality and how to gain your financial freedom I went straight to the financials. (Although other pages such as food or health had some important stats about the US and the world, and reading these certainly makes me want to do even more exercise and give more to charity, be it time or money).

OK, so in the financials is the retirement stats section, which comes out with some interesting numbers that may help you get motivated.  The scary ones are that of the 100 people who started working at aged 25, at retirement only 1% will be considered wealthy, and 4% will have adequate capital for retirement. 3% of these will still be working, a shocking 63% will be dependent on social security, friends and relatives or charity, and sadly 29% will have passed on. Let’s get into that 4%, and way before retirement age!

If you need to find even more motivation, it seems that the average retirement age here in the US is 62, and that the average length is 18 years. However, at aged 50, the average savings of a person is merely $43,797. Also, the percentage of people who believe that they will not have enough for retirement is 80% in the age 30-54 range. The percentage of Americans who haven’t saved anything for retirement is quoted at 36%, and those over 65 that rely completely on social security are 35%. There are some other interesting numbers, but I think I’m at risk at putting you to sleep if you are still reading, but if your interested here is the  link again for the retirement stats.

There are so many other things for the nerd in us to look at on this site. Interestingly, I also looked at the stress section, and here the number 1 cause of stress, was stated as job pressure, namely tension with co-workers, bosses and having too much work. The second cause of stress was to do with money, through loss of a job, reduced retirement and medical expenses. These also sound like serious motivators for becoming financially free, and as quick as possible!