Building Financial Security Saving through credit stash the cash (febrero/marzo 2005) drowning in plastic debt (primavera 2003)

David C. John likes to talk about his favorite case study, his 19-year-old daughter, Meredith. The day that the sophomore nursing student at Villanova University lands her first job, John says, she’ll have to start planning for the day she retires.

“Unless Meredith wants to be taken care of by her children and grandchildren, she has to save for her own retirement,” says John, a research fellow on Social Security and pensions at the Heritage Foundation in Washington.

The reason workers like Meredith have to look far down the road, says John, is the rapid disappearance of the traditional pension, which provided some retirement security after a lifetime of employment at a single company. These days, a far more footloose work force rarely stays at one job for long. And U.S. companies faced with global competition are ever more reluctant to commit to supporting their retirees in perpetuity.