I spoke the other day about rich people whingeing that they don’t have enough to retire in luxury. In today’s news there is a 67 year old man who hates his job and wants to retire. However the poor thing only has $700K saved up. This only gives him $28K a year in interest. 
Poor old dear still hasn’t paid off his mortgage so how will he manage on that?
How the other half live.
I understand that a lot of people look at those numbers and think that’s an obscene chunk of money, but $28k/yr as a retiree (especially one who doesn’t have fully paid off housing) is not liveable. This person still has property taxes to pay, utilities, groceries, and above all else massively inflated medical expenses (which may very well wreck their body to the point where working is a literal impossibility).
Also, for retirement money you’re not taking the interest but instead slowly doling out what money you have saved up year over year, so the amount you could sustainably take out will shrink over time… which means if you live longer than you expected, now you’re in a position where you have no money at all at the point in your life where your support network has quite literally died off and you have no ability to work anymore.
4% rate of withdrawal is supposed to be “safe” for 30 years, but that’s only a 90-95% chance. So based off that around 1 in 10 or 20 people end up with nothing but social security even before the 30 years is up