American retirees are screwed. The 401(k) experiment has failed. Social Security's going bust. Savers haven't saved nearly enough and don't have the means to improve the situation. But do the facts play out the scary message?

Pension

• Many companies have abdicated the role they once played in helping support employees' retirements through defined benefit pension plans by promoting and then under-supporting defined contribution plans, such as the 401(k).
• Most pensions that remain - even those run by states and municipalities - lack sufficient funds to pay what they've promised. The entity conceived to insure underfunded pension plans is also underfunded.

401(k) facts.

• Some large financial firms have filled many of the 401(k) plans they manage with overpriced, underperforming funds, and offered little in the form of substantive education for the masses now left to their own devices.
• After a 6-year effort to ensure that financial advisors who manage retirement assets would be required to act in the best interests of their clients, there's a corporate and political movement afoot for firms to reclaim potential lost profits if they were forced to do right by their clients.
• Even some of the individuals who initially conceived the 401(k) concept and lobbied for it have recanted their support, regretting it ever started.

Social Security facts.

• The program intended only to be a safety net has become the primary financial resource in retirement for too many.
• The surplus funds received when the huge baby boomer generation paid in - which are now being used to help replace the inherent shortfall of smaller generations - are projected to run out in 2034, thereby reducing the system's ability to pay benefits by 25%.

There - how does that feel, now?

Not any better? The concept of retirement used to be considered a 3-legged stool: pension, Social Security and personal savings. Now, it looks like a pogo stick - sans the foot peg! So, where's the hope?

Well, consider the fact that a number of things are better today than they were 'yesteryear'.  Take, for example:

• in 1979, only 38% of private-sector employees were supported by a pension - and 0% had a 401(k).
• IRA's retirement accounts were barely on the radar, and the only access that most people had to the markets came through high-priced brokerage firms that horded the information that would enable typical "eligible workers" to make good investment decisions.
• Relying on a single company's promise of a pension "back then" handcuffed many people to jobs that weren't fulfilling and likely led to a miserable 9-to-5 and lower lifetime earning potential.

And, by the way, you - the employee - and your financial well-being were never your company's first priority. Then or now.