The Great Recession hurt a lot of people and this loss of wealth will follow millions into retirement, according to a report released Thursday.

Early baby boomers (those born between 1946 and 1955) may be “the last group on track to retire with enough savings to maintain their financial security through their golden years," the study finds. But the rest of us are in for a world of hurt -- especially Gen-Xers (born between 1966 and 1975).

The study by Pew Charitable Trusts, Retirement Security Across Generations: Are Americans Prepared for Their Golden Years? shows that early boomers lost 28 percent of their median net worth; late boomers (born between 1956 and 1965) lost 25 percent from 2007 to 2010. However, Gen-Xers lost nearly half (45 percent) of their wealth – about $33,000 on average – during that same time period. And they didn’t have that much savings to begin with.

“Gen-X is the first generation that’s unlikely to exceed the wealth of the group that came before it and face downward mobility in retirement,” said Erin Currier, director of Pew’s Economic Mobility Project. “They have lower financial net worth than previous groups had at this same age and they lost nearly half of their wealth in the recession.”

Financial planners generally recommend that you save enough to replace 70 to 100 percent of your pre-retirement income when you leave the workforce. Pew’s research shows the typical Gen-Xer will only be able to replace half of that income.

When it comes to retirement savings, late boomers (born between 1956 and 1965) are more like Gen-X than early boomers. They’re on track to replace only 60 percent of their pre-retirement income.

RELATED: Retirement age in US rises to 61 (from 57 in the 1990s

You may be surprised to learn that some people saw their wealth grow during the recession. Pew found that a sizable minority of households – 39 to 44 percent – had a positive change in wealth between 2007 and 2009.

“As an example, more than a third of households in this age group experienced gains in home equity during that two-year period,” Currier noted.

Gen-X: the most financially-challenged group
Gen-X wasn’t in very good shape before the recession hit. Their net worth was less than other age groups that came before them. They also had lowest rates of home ownership of all the groups studied.

The recession only made things worse. They experienced the largest percentage decline in median net worth, losing nearly half of their wealth.

Gen-X has significantly higher levels of debt than those in the other groups did at the same age. Pew found that the average Gen-Xer has already accumulated $80,000 in debt.

Key Findings

• Early boomers are financially prepared for retirement: Those born between 1946 and 1955 are approaching retirement in better financial shape than the age groups that came before them. This group benefited from both the dot-com boom and the housing bubble.Americans in their 50s and 60s have higher overall wealth, financial net worth, and home equity than Depression babies (born between 1926 and 1935) or war babies (born between 1936 and 1945) had at the same ages.
• Wealth accumulation and savings for Americans born after 1955 is mixed: Neither Gen-Xers (in their 30s and 40s) nor late boomers (in their late 40’s and 50’s) are on track to exceed the financial position of those immediately preceded them.
• Baby boomers and Gen-Xers have significantly lower asset-to-debt ratios than do older Americans: Depression and war babies spent the last two decades reducing their debt, while baby boomers and Gen-Xers have been accumulating it. In 2010, war babies had accumulated assets worth 27 times more than their debts. In contrast, assets for late boomers were only four times their debts. Gen-Xers’ assets were about double their debts.

Pew’s Erin Currier believes there is a clear takeaway message for America’s policymakers from this data.

“As they focus attention on America’s retirement security, particular consideration should be paid to helping  the youngest groups change course to make up for these losses in order to prevent downward mobility in the long-term,” she said.

Herb Weisbaum is The ConsumerMan. Follow him on Facebook and Twitter or visit The ConsumerMan website.

The average U.S. retirement age has climbed to 61, up from 57 two decades ago, and it’s likely to age higher, according to Gallup's Economy and Personal Finance survey.

The average non-retired American now plans to retire at 66, up from 60 in 1995, according to the Gallup survey.

“Because most of the uptick came before the 2008 recession, this shift may reflect more than just a changing economy,” Gallup’s associate editor Alyssa Brown wrote in her report on the study. “It may also indicate changing norms about the value of work, the composition of the workforce, the decrease in jobs with mandatory retirement ages, and other factors.”

The trend to retire older started in the 1990s, said Richard Johnson, the director of Urban Institute’s Program on Retirement Policy.

“I think this trend is one of the most important changes we’ve seen in the labor force in the last quarter of a century,” Johnson said. “I think it’s a really positive development. A lot of people are working longer because they want to work longer. The incentives to work longer have increased.”

Until the 1990s, the retirement age for men had actually been trending younger as pension plans, Social Security benefits and personal savings accrued at a healthy rate, Johnson said.

“That trend stopped and then reversed in the early 1990s,” he said. The trend is similar but more complex for women, he said, because they were entering the workforce at greater numbers as well as working later than before.

Data from the U.S. Bureau of Labor Statistics also show that for workers 55 and over, the labor force participation rate, which includes both the employed and those who would like to be employed, changes its direction in the early 1990s. About 30 percent of those 55-and-older were working in the early 1990s. Since 2008, about 40 percent of the 55+ have remained in the work force.

In the early 1990s, about 11 percent of those 65 and older remained in the workforce. By contrast, this April, 19 percent remained at work, according to the most recent monthly calculations from the BLS. The pattern continues for those 75 and older. In the 1990s, 4 percent of the population over 75 remained in the workforce. Since December, it has been above 8 percent each month.

Those polled in the Gallup survey agreed they will be working later in life, a sentiment most strongly voiced by the oldest workers. More than half of the non-retirees in the 58 to 64 age bracket expect to retire after they turn 65, compared with 36 percent of non-retirees aged 50 to 57, 38 percent of people between 30 and 49, and just 26 percent of those younger than 30.

The Gallup poll is based on telephone interviews conducted from April 4 to 14 with a random U.S. sample of 2,017 adults. There is a sampling error rate of ±3 percentage points for the full group and a ±5 percentage point rate for the sample of the 636 retirees.

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As medical advances extend the average lifespan, projected health care saving requirements likely will have to rise accordingly.

Planning for retirement usually means budgeting for food, travel and other expenses. Don’t forget to include $220,000 for health care costs. 

That’s how much the average 65-year-old couple will spend on medical expenses through their retirement, according to the latest estimates from Fidelity Investments.

If you’ve set your sights on retiring earlier, plan on squirreling away an even bigger savings pile. The average couple hoping to retire at 55 will spend $744,800 on out-of-pocket health costs if they both live to age 85, according to a separate study released Wednesday by the Society of Actuaries.

That’s if you’re relatively healthy later in life. Those averages don’t include the cost of treating chronic diseases like cancer or heart disease.

“People with those conditions spend about twice what the aver age population does,” said Dale Yamamoto, the author to the Society of Actuaries study. “So you need to take these numbers and double them.”

Those numbers also don’t include the cost of long-term care like a stay in a nursing home, which isn’t typically covered by Medicare.

The latest estimates for the average health care tab is likely to come as something of a sobering surprise to most people planning for – or in - retirement. In a separate survey, Fidelity found that nearly half of people aged 55 to 64 planning for retirement figured they would need just $50,000 to pay for health care costs.

Estimating those costs is the thorniest wild card in any retirement plan, largely because longevity and illnesses are so difficult to predict. Those variables are further complicated for Americans by the ongoing reform of medical insurance coverage in the U.S., both through the Affordable Care Act and proposed changed to Medicare.

“It’s more difficult today to try and give people meaningful guidance because the individual insurance market is going to change dramatically,” said Sunit Patel, senior vice president of Fidelity's benefits consulting group. “But we still expect the (retirement health cost) number to be significant.”

Uncertainty over the cost of insurance coverage is further complicated by the potential rise in the cost of health care itself. Fidelity’s projection for how much would-be retirees need to save has fallen 12 percent from its high of $250,000 in 2010.

That drop largely reflects a sharp drop last year in Medicare spending, which rose just 0.4 percent per enrollee last year, and just 1.9 percent between 2010 and 2012. That’s well below the seven percent average annual increases between 1985 and 2009.

Overall, U.S. healthcare spending has been rising just 3.9 a year since 2009. That year, healthcare spending jumped 6.6 percent.

Part of the slowdown is the result of a weaker economy, according to economists. Spending increases have also slowed as many of the most common brand name drugs are now available in cheaper generic versions. The Affordable Care Act is slowing the rate of payment increases to hospitals, physicians and health plans. It remains to be seen whether those trends will continue.

Regardless of the changes in coverage and costs, the ultimate unknown is how long you’re going to live. As medical advances extend the average lifespan, projected health care saving requirements likely will have to rise accordingly.

The Society of Actuaries study, for example, found that a couple that expects to live until age 90 would need an average of $441,200 to meet out-of-pocket healthcare costs –  more than double the cost of living to age 80.

Reuters contributed to this report.

You know that old newspaper adage: "If it bleeds, it leads?"

The same is true of personal finance news: The headlines love to bleat about all of our (collective) bad money habits: "Workers Saving Too Little to Retire!" "Mortgages Underwater!" "Student Debt Crisis Looming!"

It's enough to make you want to crawl in your piggy bank and hide.

But, luckily, in addition to people cutting their expenses by $1,000 a month or paying off $15,000 of debt, there are a lot of good money trends going down. In fact, we've identified five new ways people all around us are saving: On their cell phones, their grocery bills, even their 700 (and counting!) cable channels.

Have you adopted these habits yet? We guarantee you'll be happier if you do.

We're getting rid of stupid cable channels
From 2001 to 2011, the average cable TV subscriber’s monthly bill has nearly tripled, from $48 to $128 per month. But we all know we're really only watching our favorite five channels, anyway—why should we pay for more?

The available solutions to this dilemma could save you $50 to $120 a month, depending on what you're willing to sacrifice.

The first option is a cable plan that gives you only channels you want. While larger cable providers, such as Time Warner, Verizon and Cablevision are still in the early stages of considering offering this kind of package, a company called Aereo has already put it into practice. Aereo created a remote antenna that provides service to channels such as CBS, NBC, FOX, ABC and more, for a maximum of only $80 a year. (For the record, despite cable protestations, two judges so far have ruled that the service is legal.)

Or, you could cut out cable altogether. Five million households now operate without cable services and are considered "Zero TV" households. That's only 5 percent of the U.S. population, but it's double the number that had in 2007. Their abstinence doesn't mean they're missing "Breaking Bad"—they're tuning in via Internet or cell phones, using sites such as Hulu, Netflix and Amazon.

RELATED: Trim Your Bills With Free Cut Your Costs Bootcamp

We're over new cars
The number of new cars purchased by Americans ages 18-34 dropped 30 percent in the last five years. In fact, we're purchasing about four fewer cars in our lifetimes than we have in the past: While it had been an industry standard to buy a new car every four to five years, the average car on the road today is 11 years old.

Americans have steadily been driving less in this same time period, beginning before the recession, due to an aging population (older people drive less), the rise of ride- or car-sharing services like Zipcar or Zimride and the increase in Internet connectivity, so people can work and socialize without stepping foot—or gas pedal—outside.

Owning a car has only gotten more expensive in the past few years. A study by AAA found that this year, people who have a basic sedan—like a Toyota Camry or a Ford Fusion—can expect to pay $9,122 for its upkeep, which is up 2 percent from last year. While not everyone has access to the easy fixes that are public transportation or carpooling, there's a simple money-saving takeaway: Hold on to that car!

RELATED: Why I Would Never Buy a New Car

We're seeing through cell phone plans
Did you know that U.S. families spend an average of $139 a month on cell phones? That's $1,668 a year, and a creep up from the $127 per month we were spending in 2009.

It's not so much the calling and texting that's the problem: When we have data, we use it, and when we use too much, we pay. It costs $10-$30 per megabyte of data past our allowance. But now, we're starting to see through those confusing cell phone bills, and spending less on your phone has become downright trendy.

There are the tried-and-true tricks for reducing data usage, like disabling push notifications, using Wi-Fi instead of 3G and consolidating phone lines into a family plan (although that isn't the right fit for everyone). 

Then there's the really cool stuff: At SaveLoveGive.com, a free site started by a former Verizon employee, you plug in your phone number and the service analyzes where you're overspending. It's saved more than one user $1,000 a year, and the company estimates that 80 percent of us overspend on our cell phone bills by an average of $200 each year. How much could you save?

We're saving on food
Have you been spending less at restaurants? Most Americans are, according to a 2012 poll by Harris Interactive, which found that 71 percent of respondents choose to save money by cooking more rather than going out. A full 57 percent say they now consider dining out a luxury.

And how much can firing up the stove save you? The average restaurant meal costs about $12.28, while a home-cooked one will set you back $5.93—well under half the price of eating out. Taking into account that the average family dines out 4 to 5 times per week, that's about $2,554 per person in a year spent on eating out—in addition to grocery bills. According to the U.S. Department of Agriculture, the average American family of four spends $610-$1,203 per month on grocery bills, the higher end of which maxes out to $14,436 per year.

It's not hard to see the cost savings of eating in—and there are ways to save even when you eat at home. Read about how one woman saved her family $600 a month on groceries, how another regularly reduced her bill by 50-70 percent, or take our free checklist: I Want to Cut My Grocery Bill.

RELATED: 8 Cheap and Easy Lunches You'll Look Forward To

We're saving more for retirement
An April survey from Fidelity Investments found that 42 percent of us have increased our contributions to our retirement accounts.

And that is reason to celebrate, considering that most Americans aren't socking away nearly enough. How can you get in on this savings trend? First, if you're not saving for retirement at all, our flow chart will show you what type of account(s) you need. If you are, but need to up the ante, try increasing your contributions by 2 percent every six months. Since your retirement savings are invested, and the interest compounds, a little increase now can lead to a big payoff later.

Need proof? Let's say you start saving $5,000 a year at age 30. With a 6 percent rate of return, you'll have $636,340.59 to retire at the age of 67. If you increased and sustained your contributions by 2 percent only once, after the first six months, you would have $649,067.41 at retirement—almost $13,000 more for a $100 increase early on.

RELATED: The Secret of Retirement Savings: You Can't Make Up for Lost Time

The "gender gap" in retirement savings may be explained, in part, by differing financial goals.

While the top financial priority for men is to "maintain lifestyle in retirement," for women, the number one goal is to "not become a financial burden to loved ones," according to a 2012-2013 study by Prudential. But putting family first can be a setback to accumulating savings. 

Like many women looking toward retirement, entrepreneur Lorin Palmer says figuring out how to juggle family and personal finances has been an important lesson for her to learn over the years. Palmer, a 56-year-old funeral home owner in Sumter, South Carolina, finds making final arrangements for other families is instructive, underscoring the importance of ramping up planning for her own financial future. 

VIDEO: Sharon Epperson reports on the obstacles many women face, and how it is never too late to ramp up savings to meet retirement goals

"I have learned that in this business just as families preplan, they come in and they make funeral arrangements and they pay for them in advance. Likewise that same principle applies with retirement planning," Palmer says.  

Palmer - the third generation in her family to own this funeral business - believes careful planning is critical not only for her own nest egg, but her son's financial future as well. 

But like many women, she says staying on track hasn't been easy. 

"I've been through a divorce. I've raised a son as a single parent. I have educated my son," she says. All of these milestones have taken a toll on her savings. Many more women face similar challenges. 

A recent study by the State Farm Center for Women and Financial Services at the American College found that about 64 percent of all women say that their family's needs are really impeding their ability to save for retirement and only 42 percent of women say they save a certain amount each month. 

Since women generally make less money than men, how much money they'll be able to save is affected by those factors as well. According to the latest figures from the U.S. Labor Department, white women earn about 81 cents for every dollar white men earn. Black women earn 67 percent of what white men earn and Latino women earn only 60 percent. 

Women also spend 12 years out of the workforce on average to care for their families, according to the American College study, further impacting their retirement savings. Caregiving for children and parents, possible layoffs, disability are all factors that can derail women's savings. 

"We have to take a look at the things that could happen that would prevent the retirement date that you want, health issues, divorce, losing a family member," says financial advisor Deborah Breedlove with Ameriprise Financial. However, considering these issues early and how they could impact finances can encourage some women to start to save more. Breedlove says using 401(k)s, IRAs, Roth accounts and diversifying investments within those portfolios can help many clients reach their intended goals. 

Palmer says she wishes she had saved more for retirement, but she realizes it's not too late. She believes she now has an effective plan in place. She is putting herself first, so she can leave a legacy for her son and her family.

Sharon Epperson is CNBC's personal finance correspondent.  

Love it or hate it, many of us will rely on Social Security. And that’s making a lot of us very nervous.

This week in Life Inc., we wrote about how the latest plan to tweak Social Security is unpopular with both liberal and conservative thinkers. The story prompted tens of thousands of readers to weigh in on their hopes, fears and frustrations about the retirement safety net.

Many readers said they would like to see Congress take steps now to address the funding shortfalls that are projected in years to come.

“Fix the program now - while it's still ‘easy.’ Later changes will cost much more. We can lessen the impact to the less-wealthy recipients,” one reader wrote.

That’s not surprising, given how many readers said they will need those monthly checks in old age.

More than half of the nearly 36,000 readers who took our survey said they plan to rely on Social Security for day-to-day expenses.

Many Americans simply haven’t saved enough money to fund their retirement, especially now that the burden of saving has started shifting toward self-directed 401(k) plans and away from company pensions.

“I have my own retirement account, but it's not going to pay my total expenses. I'll need the Social Security benefits I've earned,” one reader wrote.

For others, Social Security has become a lifeline after losing other savings during the Great Recession and weak recovery.

“I lost all my money on a business that was too small to save in 2009. (unlike Wall st and GM) I only have SS to live on now,” another wrote.

For many Americans – including about 37 percent of those who took our survey – Social Security will be a key supplement to other savings.

“I'm not relying on it but it is a big share of my retirement plan. I worked and earned it! I should get the fair share my parents did!” one reader wrote.

About 10 percent of our readers were more cynical about the future of Social Security. They said they weren’t planning on getting that monthly check once they retired.

“If I get SS, great - but I'm planning and saving as if I'll never get anything from it,” one wrote.

Jim Lo Scalzo / EPA

President Barack Obama speaks about his budget proposal at the White House earlier this month.

There’s not much that the left and right can agree on these days, but many on both sides appear to have found a common foe in the latest plan to address Social Security costs.

The proposal, unveiled as part of President Barack Obama’s latest budget plan, would change the method the government uses to calculate inflation to something called the “chained Consumer Price Index.”

The chained CPI assumes that when prices go up for one item, like beef, people don’t always simply spend more. Instead, they sometimes switch to a similar but lower-priced item, like chicken.

Critics on both sides say the proposal would essentially amount to a benefits reduction for Social Security recipients, because it would result in smaller cost-of-living increases for them.

“In effect, you’d have a substantial cut to the program,” said Dean Baker, co-director of the Center for Economic and Policy Research.

The left-leaning think tank estimates that the average worker retiring at age 65 would see a $650 a year cut by age 75. Those cuts would only increase as retirees got older and the gap between the new inflation measure and the old one grew wider.

(The president's proposal does include a benefits enhancement for people 76 and older and those who have been on Social Security for a long time, which could partly offset the switch.)

Baker and others also argue that the chained CPI is a bad idea because it’s a poor measure of how older people really spend money. That’s because retirees tend to spend more on items like health care.

Baker notes that an experimental consumer price index for the elderly, which the Bureau of Labor Statistics has been compiling for some time, indicates a slightly higher rate of inflation for older Americans.

There are plenty of critics on the conservative side too. Andrew Biggs, a resident scholar with the right-leaning American Enterprise Institute, said one concern is that it hits current retirees the hardest, while not doing enough to address the long-term solvency of the retirement safety net.

“I would just think people should aim higher than this,” Biggs said.

The proposed inflation calculation change would also apply to tax rates, which could result in tax increases for some over time. That’s another reason conservatives oppose the plan to more broadly use the chained CPI for government inflation estimates.

“It’s a sneaky revenue raise and it’s a sneaky benefit cut,” said Teresa Ghilarducci, director of the Schwartz Center for Economic Policy Analysis at The New School for Social Research who has studied retirement issues extensively.

The fact that both conservatives and liberals oppose the change caught some people off guard because Obama has painted the proposal as an effort to compromise with Republicans. The proposal to switch to the chained CPI appeared to have support from both Obama and House Speaker John Boehner when it was first under discussion during the fiscal cliff negotiations late last year.

The widespread opposition also is surprising because the switch has historically been seen as one of the least contentious elements of any major plan to reform Social Security, said Richard Kaplan, a law professor at the University of Illinois who specializes in elder law.

“This has always been on the menu and in fact it’s usually been considered the least controversial item on the menu,” Kaplan said. “If you don’t like this, you’re not going to like anything on the rest of the menu.”

Most economists agree that the government will eventually have to make some changes to Social Security, because of government estimates showing that the benefits program for older Americans could see funding shortfalls beginning in about two decades.

Any major reform would involve making big, hard decisions about major elements of the Social Security system, such as the age at which people receive benefits and the rate at which earnings are taxed for Social Security purposes.

Ghilarducci, the economist at The New School, said she thinks another reason the chained CPI proposal hasn’t garnered much support is because it is a small step that does little to address those bigger issues. 

“It’s more important that we actually construct a package in a more deliberative fashion,” she said.

 Related: Yes, we can fix Social Security (but it won't be pretty)

Tobie Stanger

You work all your life and dream of the day when you can ease back a bit and enjoy the fruits of your hard labor. But unless you plan for your retirement, that dream could turn into a financial nightmare.

During a TODAY Money web chat on Wednesday, Tobie Stanger, a senior editor at Consumer Reports Money Adviser answered a variety of questions about retirement. She said it’s never too early to start planning your retirement.

Tobie Stanger: Understanding what you spend now in your working life can help you determine what you'll need once you hit retirement.

Of course, things will change, but this is an important first step. And every financial planner worth his or her salt will ask you for this information. It also gives you a chance to look at what you're spending now. From there, you can plan changes so you'll be able to save more toward retirement.

Jon: How do I know how risky I should be on my 401k investments?

Tobie Stanger: It depends a lot on how old you are, and how long you expect to be retired. The rule of thumb is that the percentage of bonds you own should be about equal to your age.

Alice: Are annuities a good way to invest?

We're not crazy about variable annuities, which often come with steep fees and are very difficult to compare for shopping purposes. But a fixed immediate annuity may be a reasonable purchase.

There's a web site called immediateannuities.com that provides comparisons. Consumer Reports Money Adviser has an upcoming article in June on this very subject.

Omar: What are your thoughts on investing solely in index funds (S&P 500, small cap and foreign index) for an aggressive portfolio?

Tobie Stanger: Consumer Reports is very bullish on index funds. They are low-cost ways to track the market. Exchange-traded funds (ETFs) are somewhat like index funds, but can be even more low-cost. Check out Schwab and Fidelity for some good ETF choices and Vanguard for index mutual funds.

Stanger suggested using the retirement calculator on the T. Rowe Price website to help figure out how much you need to save to reach your goal. She said it's the most complete one Consumer Reports has judged.

Read the rest of the Q & A below:

To most thirtysomethings, retirement is a distant dream. But Jason Fieber, 30, of Sarasota, Florida, believes the dream of quitting work for good, traveling the world and playing golf is just 10 years away.

A car dealership service department clerk, Fieber, who lives in a city that's home to many retirees, told TODAY.com he'll be ready to join their ranks at age 40.

Fieber has been working towards retirement since he had "an epiphany" while balancing his checkbook online. After adding up his savings and subtracting his student loan debt, he was broke. "I was working and working and working and just digging myself a bigger hole," he said. "I felt like I was going nowhere."

He decided to start by paying fewer taxes. He found a job in Sarasota and moved from Michigan to state-tax-free Florida. The weather made waiting for public transportation bearable, so he sold his car and started taking the bus to work, saving on insurance and maintenance. That first year, Fieber halved his grocery bill, to $120 dollars a month, by replacing steak and potatoes with noodles and sandwiches.

"For dinner it was peanut butter and jelly a lot,” he said. “Occasionally I would mix in some deli meat, when I felt like splurging," he said. He has since added rice and beans, and today spends between $200 and $250 monthly. 

"I try to save 60 to 70 percent of my net income every month," said Fieber, who earns about $50,000 a year. He spends $900 on rent, $200 on student loans, and $50 on transportation. 

Fieber shares learnings on his blog, where his bio reads: "Trying to retire by 40 by investing in dividend growth stocks and living frugally, valuing time over money."

"Time is to me the most precious commodity we all have," he said. "We are given a very limited amount of it and people tend to trade it away so easily for stuff. And I value my time more than stuff, typically."  

He has a girlfriend who shares his frugal sensibilities, and hopes his retirement will coincide with his parents', so they can take long trips together and play golf. 

Fieber plans to live off the dividends he expects his stocks will pay. "Money works 24/7," joked Fieber. "Money works weekends and one day will be working when I'm not working."

Some financial analysts say living off dividends at age 40 is unrealistic for most.

"Industry experts generally agree that a 4 percent withdrawal rate from retirement income sources is sustainable, however this typically assumes a 30-year timeframe," says Derek G. Hassenpflug of Ameriprise Financial Services. "Potentially doubling this to 60 years in retirement takes this investor into uncharted and potentially disappointing territory." 

The average retirement age is 59.7 for men and 57.2 for women, according to a 2012 MetLife survey of baby boomers. And a Boston College study found that most 30 year olds' savings won't be enough to retire even by age 62. Only 20 percent of households led by 30-39 year olds would be prepared to retire by 62, according to the study.

Younger people tend to be less prepared to retire because they are expected to live longer, which means they will need additional assets to cover a longer retirement period, according to the study. 

Fieber's efforts are to be commended,said Andrew Kowalczyk, president and CEO of A.K. Capital, but his model is a tough one to follow. "There is the mathematics of living super modestly, but then there is the mathematics of real life."

There could be unexpected expenses, such as bills from a parent's sudden health problem, he said. The financial analyst describes the early retirement formula as “make a lot of money, invest it wisely and hope for a great return,” but that doesn't always work. "You have to be prepared for the curve balls that life throws at you."

For his part, Fieber doesn't plan on having children, and is optimistic he'll stay healthy. 

And he'll keep saving. "I'm going to have peanut butter and jelly tonight again," he said. "If you really kind of respect what you want out of life and you really want it then that's what you're going to have to do."

TODAY's Marcie Rickun contributed to this report.

If you spend time worrying that you'll end up on the street in your old age with your belongings stuffed into plastic bags in a shopping cart, you have good company.

A new survey shows that almost half of American women fear they will become "bag ladies" some day, and the anxiety ripples across all income groups.

Even among women with household earnings above $200,000, 27 percent harbor the bag-lady fear, according to a new online survey issued by Allianz Life Insurance Company of North America.

While Allianz is promoting the survey to encourage women to seek more financial-planning advice, the underlying concern is valid, according to a labor economist who studies aging and income issues.

Because women typically earn less and have more sporadic work histories, their pensions and benefits are less sturdy, said Barbara Butrica, a senior research associate at the Urban Institute’s Income and Benefits Policy Center. “They are starting retirement at a disadvantage,” she said.

Women also tend to live longer than men. “So she’ll have to make that income last a lot longer time,” Butrica said.

Among the over-65 set, non-married women have the highest poverty rates. While only 4 percent of married women over 65 fell below the poverty line in 2010, that number rose to 14 percent for widows over 65 and 18 percent for divorced women over 65, Butrica said.

For men over 65 living in poverty, 4 percent were married; 11 percent were widowers and 12 percent were divorced. The gender differences are even more striking, Butrica said, when you consider that in 2010, only 29.5 percent of men age 65 or older were not married, compared with 56.3 percent of women. Those numbers come from the Social Security Administration's 2012 report on “Income of the Population 55 or Older, 2010.”

But should even women with very good jobs fret about being homeless one day?

“It’s highly unlikely. But it could happen,” Butrica said, citing the likelihood that a catastrophic illness is more likely to strike as you get older. “The fact that these women are thinking about it is a good thing.”

And indeed more women are planning for retirement, especially since the financial crisis of 2008-2009, according to the Allianz survey.

More than 90 percent of the women who responded to the survey said women need to be more involved in financial planning. The strongest agreement, 96 percent, came from divorced women.

Overall, 57 percent of the respondents said they both "have more earning power than ever before" and 60 percent said they are the primary breadwinner in their household

The Women, Money & Power Study was conducted by Larson Research + Strategy in December 2012 as an opt-in, online survey with 2,213 women, ages 25 through 75, with an annual household income of at least $30,000. The numbers are representative of the U.S. female population based on age and geographic distribution and are weighted to reflect the most recent and accurate available U.S. Census proportions.

Many Americans are feeling pessimistic about their retirement prospects, and with good reason.

Previous studies have shown that many households are drastically unprepared for their golden years because they haven’t saved enough money, and now comes another showing that we rank 19^th worldwide when it comes to retirement security.

That puts our retirees in a worse position overall than countries including Israel, Japan, Slovenia and the Czech Republic.

A Life Inc. post this week on the relative quality of American retirement got many readers talking about their own retirement prospects, or lack thereof.

More than 7,000 readers took our poll, and about 39 percent said they are not at all confident they’ll be able to save enough for retirement.

“Retirement? What's that?? My gracious employer has gutted its pension plan and 401-k match, and gave us a 10% pay cut,” one reader wrote.

Still, not everyone was so gloomy. About 29 percent said they were somewhat confident they’d be able to sock away enough money, and another 21 percent were feeling very confident.

Their secret? Many said they had sacrificed luxuries and goodies along the way with an eye toward the delayed gratification of not worrying about money later in life.

“I actually save unlike most Americans and I do not plan to depend on Social Security or Medicare,” one reader wrote.

The United States ranks 19th worldwide when it comes to retirement security, according to a new analysis of worldwide economic and other data. That's probably comes as no surprise to many Americans who are fretting about whether they’ll ever have enough money to stop working.

The Natixis Global Retirement Index puts U.S. retirees in a more precarious position than retirees in Western European countries including Norway, Switzerland and Germany, which have strong social programs providing health care and retiree benefits. But the analysis finds that the U.S. also lags countries including Israel, Japan, Slovenia and the Czech Republic.

On the other hand, we do rank better than the Brits, who came in at No. 20. And we’re apparently in much better shape than Zimbabawe, which placed dead last at 150th in the rankings.

Natixis, an asset management firm with $779 billion in assets under management, created the index using worldwide data from the World Bank, United Nations and other sources. The index weighed factors including health expenditures, life expectancy, income inequality, unemployment and the ratio of young workers to older retirees.

The list comes as more Americans are fretting about their retirement own security. A Pew report released last fall found that nearly 4 in 10 Americans are not very confident they’ll have enough money for retirement, a sharp increase over just a few years ago.

Fewer Americans are also now counting on retiring by age 65, a switch from a trend toward earlier retirement that lasted into the mid-1980s.

In the last several decades, many companies have moved from pension-type retirement plans to 401(k)-type plans that put more responsibility on individuals to save for their golden years.

Many Americans aren’t saving enough, and some people who did have retirement savings were forced to pull money from those plans during the recent recession. The Natixis study cited a Senate report released last summer showing that, in total, Americans have saved $6.6 trillion less than they should have at this point for retirement.

The recent run-up in the stock market has probably helped some Americans feel better about the state of their 401(k)s, but a bull market won’t be enough to make up the shortfall many Americans face.

The United States does have social safety nets in the form of Social Security and Medicare, which provide some monthly assistance and help to cover many health care expenses. But many other developed countries have much stronger safety nets that provide much more robust financial security.

“The message is clear: You will be call on to finance more of your retirement,” John Hailer, Natixis’s president and chief executive for the Americas and Asia, said in a statement.

Here are the top 20 nations in the Natixis retirement index.

1.            Norway                               
2.            Switzerland                       
3.            Luxembourg                     
4.            Sweden                               
5.            Austria                
6.            Finland                
7.            Netherlands
8.            Denmark
9.            Germany
10.          France
11.          Australia
12.          Israel
13.          Canada
14.          Belgium
15.          Japan
16.          Slovenia
17.          Czech Republic
18.          Slovakia
19.          United States
20.          United Kingdom