+75% of company pensions are underfunded. +44 million workers' pensions were closed and reduced by pbgc.gov/. +Some employers stopped matching 401k plan contributions. +Your OWN tax-FREE pension can grow at 10-12% per year. Start today Every year you delay costs you $100,000 later Everything you need to create, fund and monitor your own pension is right here. Every year we delay costs us $100,000 later in retirement because our pension compounds high earnings without current taxes or fees AND our withdrawals are tax-FREE. A new study indicates pension plan funding decreased by $79 billion last year, leaving a deficit of $418 billion. www.towerswatson.com Social Security will exhaust its funds in about 2033, (2012 projections). We know that income taxes will continue to climb because two wars and two tax cuts have to be paid off. We need to develop our own "lifestyle security"-growing income fund we can't outlive. Today we can make sure we will have an income we can't outlive. We can create an inflation-proof retirement. We need to enter the last 30 years of our lives knowing how we are going to manage it. We need a realistic and flexible plan. Two-thirds of pre-retirees don't have a clue. Fewer employers are paying for our retirement and health care. The number of employers offering defined-benefit pensions has fallen from 175,143 to 59,499 from 1983 to 1997. If we were lucky, our employer offered to match some of our contributions to a self-directed retirement plan (401k, etc.). But then some stopped matching. Others have used our pensions to merge or go bankrupt. We can convert our old employer plans to our new one before it's too late.