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Unless you are extremely wealthy or have an incredible retirement program, you'd better save for retirement. Even if you think you have a good retirement program, you need to take into account the rapid rise of inflation and the ongoing destruction of the dollar. The dollars in your pocket and in your retirement fund are losing money every day. A million dollars ain't what it used to be.

When my father retired some 35 years ago, he had a pension from the Marine Corps and from the Teamsters. He also had Social Security. I don't know if my father saved for his retirement. I imagine he did not. Nevertheless, his three sources of income were quite sufficient for him and my mother to live on. Part of the reason for this is that the house was paid for.

Times have changed. Social security is generally not enough to live on. Unless you have a very large retirement from your work, it might not be enough to live on. The two together might not be enough to live on. If you began saving when you were young and contributed to your savings regularly for 40 or 50 years, you should end up with a nice nest egg.

If you have such a nest egg and it is still in some kind of savings vehicle, a savings account, CD, or Money Market account, you are undoubtedly losing money in those accounts. It does pay to save and if you have been saving for a long time, you will have a good amount of money put aside. But to keep it in those savings vehicles right now may be a bad idea.

There are two problems already mentioned that I would like to speak about in more detail. One is the rate of inflation. In order to make money on any savings vehicle, your rate of return must be at least higher than the rate of inflation. If the numbers being given out by the government are accurate or meaningful, you might make enough interest on a simple savings account to just keep your earnings above water.

The problem is that those government numbers are not accurate and do not reflect the inflation we experience whenever we buy groceries or put gas in the car. As shocking as it may seem, food and energy are not included in the core prices that are used to determine inflation. In other words, the government leaves out the two areas where prices are going up most rapidly to come up with their inflation numbers.

When housing prices were going up like a rocket, housing costs were also not being counted in inflation calculations. Instead, they counted rental costs. Now that the cost of housing is

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