Very recently, I ran across an article posted to one of those social media sites I frequent.
I will not link to the article, but the gist was the average retirement income for those over 65 had fallen from $56,632 in 2019, to $46,360 in 2020. The source for that data was the Census Bureau.
As the drop was so large, I decided to investigate further, rather than accept the analysis of a financial planner.
It was a case of mixing apples and oranges, as the 2019 number was for the age group 65~74, while the 2020 number included everyone over 65.
I visited the Census Bureau website and downloaded the 2019 and 2020 data. Here is a snapshot of each...
2019...
2020...
Of course all this is 2019 with pre-Covid and 2020 with Covid. There is a drop in each category.
Overall, the picture looked like this for 2019...
And here is 2020...
I could go on about how the economy was still struggling to fully recover in 2020, as it had not met GDP output for end of 2019... in either real terms or nominal.
Not real sure why the apples to oranges comparison came about, but it serves to point out the need to carefully parse the underlying data... prior to jumping to conclusions and certainly before publishing as fact.
