Robert Brokamp

The contribution levels weren't that high.

Same with IRAs.

They came out in the 70s.

Contribution limits were $1,500, moved up to $2,000, but still not a lot of money.

I've talked about before that when I joined The Motley Fool back in 1999, our 401k wasn't very good because if you were a small new business, you just couldn't get a 401k.

Fortunately, things are better now, but it's to a certain degree maybe come a little late for Gen X.

I love that.

I love to get to the solutions, but I do want to highlight just a few other challenges that they're confronting.

So, for example, the classic sandwich generation, right?

I just heard from a Motley Fool reader the other day.

He's 55 years old, has a couple of preteen kids, but also has a mother with dementia.

So he's finding it difficult to prioritize his retirement savings at this point because he's got both kids and parents to take care of.

Social Security, we don't know what's going to happen with that, but the trust fund could be depleted in less than a decade, depending on what happens.

And then you also highlight in the book, the levels of debt.

Tell us a little bit about the levels of debt that Gen X has.

Yeah.

So as you point out, Gen X has the highest levels of student loan debt, credit card debt.

Also, I looked at a report from Fidelity, looked at 401k loans.

Gen X has the highest percentage of people with a 401k loan.

One in four, Gen X has a 401k loan.