Retirement Savings Revolution | WBUR and NPR

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Wednesday, February 5, 2003 at 11:00 AM EST

Retirement Savings Revolution

All right. Your 401K is a 201K now. Maybe a 10K. Your IRA is squat. your retirement is distant, diminished, or both. Forget about it. Washington is about to unveil a whole new world of American savings.

New programs and tax breaks and incentives are on the table that would radically reshape the way Americans sock it away. No more 401K or IRA. The Bush administration is talking a new language of LSAs or RSAs. Proposals that would allow American families to shelter the earnings on tens of thousands of dollars a year from federal taxes.

If you and a spouse have an extra thirty thousand dollars a year to tuck away, you just might retire after all. If you don’t, you’ll have to be happy for those who do. And help payt the deficits their good fortune creates. Tonight, On Point: preparing for the savings revolution.

Guests:

Howard Gleckman, senior correspondent, Business Week

Edward Slott, nationally reconized IRA distribution and tax expert, and author, “The Retirement Savings Time Bomb…and How to Defuse It”

Mark Iwry, senior fellow, Brookings Institution and benefits tax counsel at the US Treasury Department from 1995 to 2001

Pamela Olson, assistant secretary for tax policy at the US Treasury Department

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