Past Tense Indeed

Recent survey would tell you as a normal citizen who wish to retire in a city with comfort you would need a huge amount of money. By simple math it will show most people simply cant reach that figure. Read yahoo's latest How to retire with a million dollars. It recommends "By age 55, your retirement portfolio should be at $400,000".

Let us assume you have 20 years to get the figure from scratch, $400,000 / (20x12) = $1666.66 pure savings a month, now I won't know if that number is a coincidence, but for a normal joe it is simply a piggy bank too far to reach. At any rate by the time you are really 55 (assuming 20++ years from now) one can really doubt if a million dollars will be enough for you to retire in style.

In short, 95% of the world's population can't really afford to retire.