Suggested by 
Randy Hammond
10 months ago
America is facing a retirement crisis which will only get worse given the emerging demographic challenges imposed on the Social Security and underfunded pensions coupled with increasing federal, state and local government deficits. Widely used approaches to capital markets investing have failed investors.
Considering the retirement crisis by the numbers, according to Charles Schwab's annual nationwide survey of 401(k) plan participants, those surveyed believed a minimum of $1.6 million will be required to retire. Just 34% of those plan participants feel "very likely" to achieve their financial goals. According to The U.S. Federal Reserve's Survey of Consumer Finances (updated to 2022, released in 2025), only about 2.5% of all Americans actually have $1 million or more saved in their retirement accounts. Only 3.2% of retirees have $1 million in retirement accounts vs. about 2.6% of Americans in general. The average retirement savings for households aged 65-74 is $609,000, while the median is only about $200,000.
For the second straight year, rising prices were cited as the No. 1 obstacle to achieving a comfortable retirement, the study found. About four in 10 (38%) cite keeping up with monthly expenses, 33% blame stock market volatility, 32% cite unexpected expenses, 26% point to paying off credit-card debt, and 23% cite paying medical bills as a savings obstacle.
When it comes to strategies taken by investors planning for retirement, they have proven to be only marginally effective:
The ratio of workers to Social Security beneficiaries has fallen from 42 workers per retiree in 1940 to the current 3-to-1 and is projected to fall to 2-to-1 by 2050, significantly impacting Social Security. This declining ratio is due to factors like lower fertility rates and longer lifespans. While 73% of civilian workers had access to retirement benefits in March 2023, only 56% participated in a plan. Much like the U.S. budget deficit, the time is now to confront this problem. Through the intelligent application of new and evolving technologies, we possess the ability to enhance investment performance while mitigating downside risk as measured through volatility.
Are you interested in addressing this Unmet Need?
Are you interested in addressing this Unmet Need?
Fractional CMO @ Intelligentsia
Don't forget to factor in the rapidly changing landscape of work, which will see increasingly precipitous declines in access to the retirement plans available only to those in conventional, in-house roles. People are leaving—and being downsized out of—those roles at every level, with the current generation of new workers barely able to get in in the first place.
Between the enormous added costs of self-employment, financial illiteracy about what it entails, and an underwhelming slate of retirement planning options for the self-employed, retirement savings will increasingly take a back burner to the costs of merely staying alive. By the time millennials and younger with "portfolio careers" and skyrocketing costs of living start earning enough to even consider saving for retirement, it's often too late to make a meaningful impact.
CEO | Founder | Managing Partner @ Platform Venture Studio
@Ryan Welsh has been working on this space too. It's an important one.
Financial Services Executive | Algorithmic Trading, A.I. Optimization | Entrepreneur | Investor | Marine @ Stone Wall Financial Group
The creation of a reliable rules based algorithmic system, including the application of AI machine learning, with defined risk management parameters that automates decision-making based on consensus modeling. The platform would be designed to deliver consistent performance and downside protection and dynamic risk management and signals-based allocation, with no emotional bias. It would need to be designed to preserve capital during turbulence and seek upside when conditions improve with dynamic rotation between risk-on and risk-off states to keep investors on the right side of the market. This system would deliver far superior upside performance with significantly less risk as measured by volatility (beta). This is entirely possible and would be designed to work across a variety of asset classes from stocks to ETFs to crypto.
The platform ingests real time market and macro data and the algorithm analyzes macro/micro signals daily. AI/Machine Learning enhances predictive signal reliability, computes thresholds and trend signals daily to guide allocations between market investments and cash equivalents while allocating across asset classes or sidelines to cash equivalents.
Such a platform, provided to retirement investors, delivered through ETFs and possibly provided to pension funds would enable investors to get on track and help solve the current retirement crisis.