Gig-economy careers are starving retirement savings - Financial Literacy

Gig-economy careers are starving retirement savings

There is a growing gap in retirement savings in the gig-economy with contract workers. Freelance workers, people with a few side gigs agglomerated together, and other self-employed workers are not adding enough to their retirement savings. According to a Small Business Majority survey for self-employed: 40% have no retirement account; 31% say their erratic income makes it difficult to save for retirement; and 38% say they do not make enough money to save for retirement. The crisis is that your retirement savings must be treated as a non-negotiable ongoing expense. This is an expense that you have to be able to afford, now, while you are able to work. A compounding problem is that your retirement social security is based upon your income, and if you are under compensated, then your social security payments will be far smaller than they could have been during your decades in retirement.

These challenges are not new and many careers have erratic income: anyone on sales commission (such as realtor or stock broker), seasonal work (such as farming, grass cutting, snow removal), or short-term assignments (such as acting or modeling). People in these careers have typically supplemented their income with an additional part-time or full-time job. It could be temp work, waiting tables, or some other profession easy to get into, hopefully with some flexible hours for their main gig or side gigs.

If you’ve gone all-in on your dream career or side-gig, and it is unable to support you and adequate additions to your retirement savings, then at some point it is time to bail out and find a job/career that will financially support you. Some careers can take many months or a couple years to gather traction and momentum, but you need some reasonable deadline as a trigger for “this is not working, time to do something else right now.”

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