audio version of the segment here > Nice to see the American Dream is still alive and thriving
Jay Weber Show transcript 12-11-25
Among the things that some of our younger listeners were shocked to find out about me- when I announced my transition into part-time podcaster next year- Is that I started out working in radio for just 11-thousand dollars a year. It was my first full-time job out of college…and that’s what a job as a beat reporter at a medium-market radio station paid in that day.
This was also ‘just about the time’ that credit card companies started to realize that if they put cards into the hands of college students, they’d use them and ring up all sorts of debt…and be hooked as customers for life.
Some of you might remember this: there was a time, around 1990, when credit card companies just started mailing out credit cards to people whether they qualified for them or not…and worried about ‘how you’d pay’ later. At least that was my perception of it. And even then! I didn’t make enough to qualify for any of them…other than for an Amoco card.
And so, making so little money, I occasionally had to put food on my Amoco card just to get by until the next payday. And convenience stores like Kwik trip also didn’t really exist. Any ‘gas station food’ was chips and frozen pizzas and frozen burritos…etc.
But- in telling this story, i also said: and here i am retiring early…and financially comfortable…and so, young people, it’s proof that you ‘will’ be able to retire someday. This is still a country in which- if you work hard and you have any level of financial discipline…you can…start out making very little money and then parlay that into bigger salaries and a retirement nest egg…etc. The money comes, eventually.
And if you do it right, by the time you are old and can’t move around at all and aren’t really interested in much of anything, anymore, then you’ve got oodles of it and can’t really spend it. It’s one of the god’s great jokes on many of us. But I’m not complaining.
I’m financially secure in retirement-even having started at so little a salary. I used my brother for comparison, because at the time, in 1989, as i was starting at WTDY in Madison for eleven grand a year…. he was starting at proctor and gamble as a sales rep for more than double what i was making…something like 23 or 25-grand. And I thought that was a big starting salary at the time. At least it was amongst our ‘friend group’.
Anyway-with the relative economic malaise of the 8 year Obama years…then only three short years of a great economy before covid hit…to be followed up by four dreadful years of Biden, and his inflation, and his economy killers…
Today’s young people are more cynical than ever on the notion that they will ever be able to retire, or that an ‘American Dream’ even exists, anymore. And it’s too bad.
Because even now, in more trying conditions, the American dream of a comfortable retirement is quite achievable. In fact, this generation at least has 401ks and IRAs and 403bs, etc. that are appealing ‘savings vehicles’...and my best advice for younger listeners is: start one. If a 401k is available thru work…start one…. even if you can’t afford to contribute much to it out of any individual paycheck. Just put a little in to start…and get it going. The younger the better. Because compound interest and market growth are mini miracles.
We Gen-Xers and younger boomers are the first generation of Americans to really see the effects of having a 401k or IRA and watch it grow over decades. We are the first test to see whether this sort of ‘government approved’ saving really works.
And it does. And this is another thing that the relentlessly negative news media is never going to tell you. Or will only occasionally tell you.
One truth they’ll never tell you is that every year and every new generation, we still have huge numbers of people moving out of poverty and into the middle and upper classes.
Upward mobility -is- still possible in America- and in many ways, it is easier than it has ever been. And so, this notion that America has a large class of people who are in perpetual poverty is also, largely, bologna. Different waves of people who were in poverty are moving up and out…as, unfortunately, others are born into poverty to replace them. But for the most part, it’s not ‘all the same people’ who are poor their entire lives.
The other thing that won’t tell you is that if you work hard and achieve things and do any amount of saving for yourself. You can retire as a millionaire in this country. Even if you only ever worked a more menial or working-class job. You can.
And Fidelity’s latest ‘end of the year’s data dump just proved it. Folks, Fidelity Investments just announced that the number of 401k millionaires in this country just reached its highest level ever.
And this isn’t the overall worth of these people. Which is even greater. And this isn’t ‘all Americans’. This is just the people who have more than a million dollars in their 401ks that Fidelity investments manage. Get it? This is just fidelity’s clientele.
They also talk about how- maybe?- we are more sophisticated investors as Americans now, or maybe our younger people got good advice from parents and grandparents earlier than we older folks did…but…for some reason….even younger investors are less skittish now….and instead of pulling their money out of the market at every downturn…more and more of us are ‘buying the dip’....and flowing into the market during downturns. This suggests a more sophisticated ‘average’ investor, you’d think.
And i can only speak for my nieces and nephews…who are all about 25 to 30 right now and in their first jobs. They seem to know, already, that they should start saving early. Get into the market early, etc. I’ve been impressed with how much more mature they are-financially- than my group of friends and I were at that age.
That also depends on which socio-economic level you were born into, though. My grandparents on both sides…moved my family into the lower-middle class stratus. My parents moved us more solidly into middle class. Me and my siblings have taken the family into upper middle class. And your family gains more financial acumen as the money grows and the situation grows, too. That’s also true.
But…my nieces and nephews already seem to know this stuff. Which is great…and these financial houses are suggesting it’s not just anecdotal. Many of today’s young people are ‘investors’ already, and smart enough to ‘buy the dip’.
I love stories and information like this- because they prove the ‘promise of America’ is still there. The greatness of capitalism and individualism are real-and enduring- as socialism and communism fail again, and again, and again and if our young people were being taught more of these lessons in our schools and universities, we wouldn’t have to worry about these occasional periods in which socialism comes back into popularity….because the youngest generations don’t know how destructive and full of false promises it is.
photo credit: Getty Images