Dan Kadlec

The Motor City is counting on the market to keep its pension promises—a lot like under-saved 401(k) plan participants.

Guaranteed lifetime income has become the obsession of retirees, policymakers and the financial industry. Yet as the public pension debacle in bankrupt Detroit shows, we may never find a solution that completely eliminates the risk of your money running out.

The judge in Detroit’s closely watched proceedings said the recent deal the city cut with its retirees bordered on “miraculous,” as reported in The New York Times. That may be. But the deal still left the city’s 32,000 current and future retirees with diminished benefits and no certainty that they won’t be asked to give up more down the road. Their fate is largely in the hands of the markets—as is the case for millions of workers saving in 401(k) plans, and even many of those still covered by a private pension.

The problem is that there is only so much money we are willing to throw at the retirement savings crisis, an issue that has been exacerbated by an economy that until recently was growing far below potential. Every leg of the retirement stool is underfunded, including private pensions, though they are in the best shape. Many public pensions are in deep trouble. Social Security is on course for a funding shortfall. Personal savings are abysmal.

When government revenue or corporate profits or personal income are too low to allow for setting aside enough money for the future, we can only hope that the markets bail us out. In Detroit’s case, pension managers are counting on average annual returns of 6.75% for the next 10 years. That might happen, and it’s a lower expected rate of return than many public pensions are counting on. But given that stocks have already had a nice run, and that the bond portion of any portfolio will almost certainly come up far short of that mark, it’s probably an optimistic target. That means the city will likely have to raise taxes or cut pension benefits at some later date.

Private pensions face similar math, which is why many companies have frozen their plans or dropped them. Still, those that remain are generally on more solid footing. Profits have been strong and regulators hold companies to a higher funding standard. But by some estimates such stalwarts as IBM, Caterpillar and Dow Chemical will need to pay extra attention to their pension funding in coming years. The equation became more difficult recently, now that the Society of Actuaries has updated its mortality tables, which added a couple years to the life expectancy of both men and women at age 65.

Individuals in self-directed savings plans, such as 401(k)s, face their own funding problems. Workers may not have done the retirement income math but, like many pension managers, they haven’t been putting away the money they’ll need, while hoping for strong market returns to make it all work out. If they stay invested, and stocks keep chugging higher, they may be fine. Otherwise they will have to save more going forward or plan on spending less later—the do-it-yourself equivalent of raising taxes or having their benefits cut.

The good news for individuals is that you can act now on your own—you don’t have to stand by while a committee of actuaries and accountants blows smoke around the issue and kicks the problem further down the road. Steps you can take immediately include saving at least 10% of everything you make. Aim for 15% if your kids are gone and the mortgage is paid. Make sure you get the full company match in your 401(k) and automatically escalate contributions each year.

Young workers, especially, need to act now. Those just starting out are far less likely to have a private pension and more likely to suffer from future Social Security cuts. Many seem to have got the message. Millennials expect employment income and personal savings to account for 58% of their retirement income, Bank of America Merrill Lynch found. That compares to just 35% for boomers.

But even with greater savings, guaranteed lifetime income can remain elusive. As life expectancies have stretched, and interest rates have remained low for nearly a generation, fixed-income annuities have become relatively expensive. Even the so-called safe withdrawal rate of 4% per year now strikes some experts as too high for peace of mind. The push is on to make 401(k) savings more easily convertible into lifetime income. That would help because the big insurers that stand behind the promise of lifetime income are a lot more reliable than a city like Detroit.

Read Next: Retirees Risk Blowing IRA Deadline and Paying Huge Penalties

With just seven weeks left in the year, most IRA owners required to pull money out have not yet done so.

Two-thirds of IRA owners required to take money out of their account by Dec. 31 have yet to fulfill the obligation, new research by Fidelity shows. Now, with the year-end in sight, and thoughts pivoting to holiday shopping and get-togethers, legions of senior savers risk getting distracted–and socked with a punishing tax penalty.

IRA owners often wait until late in the year to pull out their required minimum distributions. Especially at a time when interest rates are low and the stock market has been rising, leaving your money in an IRA as long as possible makes sense. Some retirees may also be reluctant to take distributions for fear of spending the money and running short over time.

But blowing the annual deadline can be costly. The IRS sets a schedule of required minimum distributions, or RMDs, to keep savers from deferring taxes indefinitely. After reaching age 70 1/2, IRA owners must begin to take money out of their account each year and pay income tax on the amount. Failure to pull money out triggers a hefty penalty equal to 50% of the amount you were supposed to take out of the account.

Among 750,000 IRA accounts where distributions are required, 68% have yet to take the full amount and 56% have yet to take anything at all, Fidelity found. These IRA owners should begin the process now to avoid end-of-year distractions and potential mistakes like using the wrong form or providing the wrong mailing address, which can take weeks to find and correct.

A report by the Treasury Inspector General estimated that as many as 250,000 IRA owners each year miss the deadline, failing to take required minimum distributions totaling about $350 million. That generates potential tax penalties totaling $175 million. The vast majority of those who fail to take their minimum distributions are thought to do so as part of an honest mistake, and previously the IRS hasn’t always been eager to sock seniors with a penalty. But the IRS began a crackdown on missed distributions a few years ago. Don’t look for leniency if you miss the deadline without a good reason, like protracted illness or a natural disaster.

Early each year, your financial institution should notify you of any required distributions you must take by year-end. If this is the first year you are taking a required distribution, you have until April 1 to do so, but then only until Dec. 31 every subsequent year. Once notified, you still need to initiate a distribution. A lot of people simply do not read their mail and fail to initiate action in time.

Among other reasons IRA owners miss the deadline:

• Switching their account Institutions that open an account during the year are not required to notify new account holders of required minimum distributions until the following year.
• Death Often there is confusion about inherited IRAs. The beneficiary must complete the deceased IRA owner’s distributions in the year of death. Non-spousal beneficiaries of any age must begin taking distributions in the year following the year that the IRA owner died—and no notice of this is required.

With the penalties so stiff and the IRS cracking down on missed mandatory distributions, this is a subject that seniors and their adult children should talk about. In general, financial talk between the generations makes seniors feel less anxious and more prepared anyway. Required distributions can be especially confusing, and the penalties may have the effect of taking away money that heirs stand to receive. So it’s in everyone’s interest to get it right. Consider putting mandatory distributions on autopilot with a firm that will make the calculation and send you the money on a schedule you choose.

Related:

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Remarrying brings special savings hurdles and leaves blended families further behind, new research shows.

The nuclear family went out of fashion 40 years ago, and what has replaced it is a far cry from TV’s blissfully blended Brady Bunch. Modern families include more same-sex, single-parent and multi-generational make-ups—and, new research shows, these households have special savings obstacles.

Today, just 19% of U.S. households are married heterosexual couples with young children vs. 40% in 1970, according to Census Bureau data. The rise of non-traditional families is reshaping household economics and, it seems, deepening the nation’s savings crisis.

Blended families, where parents have remarried with young children, are the biggest segment of the new-look household. About 75% of divorced people remarry. In roughly 43% of all marriages it is the second time around for at least one member of the couple, and 65% of remarriages involve children from a previous marriage. In such families, the average level of savings is $158,600, vs. $264,300 for traditional families, according to a new Love Family Money study from Allianz.

Only 46% of blended families believe they are on track towards their financial goals vs. 60% of traditional households. Some 55% of blended families live paycheck to paycheck vs. 41% of traditional families; and 30% of blended families say they are not saving any money vs. 20% of traditional families.

Behind this struggle, in many cases, is the financial stress of a broken household, Allianz found. Parents in blended families are more likely to say that they or their partner brought financial baggage to the marriage, and a third cite insufficient monetary support from their ex as a major problem keeping them from saving. They often find it difficult to merge their financial resources and plans, which means they tend to wind up with multiple, and frequently competing, goals within the household.

Some 35% say they and their partner have different financial priorities that are difficult to navigate. They are almost twice as likely to feel less aligned as a family than those in a traditional household. Yet there is some good news. Perhaps because they have a hard time planning as a unit, blended families are more likely to talk about money and take steps to teach their children to budget and save, Allianz found.

How can blended families overcome their struggles? With the rise of non-traditional households more financial firms are weighing in. It’s not enough to talk to the kids about money. Couples need to talk to each other and develop mutual goals and a plan for getting there. Agree on a fair distribution of responsibility. To get on the right path to your financial goals, start is by finding ways to trim your major expenses, then make a budget that leaves room for saving. If you can’t free up much cash to put away now, start small and increase that amount with future raises. It’s also important to take a careful look at wills and legacy planning, since you want to protect your family financially as long as possible.

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Common money problems; uncommonly smart solutions

A new novel revolves around a murderous life settlements investor. That's fiction. But these products have very real risks for buyers and sellers.

Selling your life insurance policy is right up there with taking out a reverse mortgage when it comes to retirement income sources that most people would be better off not tapping. But folks do it anyway, while paying little attention to the costs and, as a new novel points out, the risks of a policy landing in the wrong hands.

Selling a life policy for a relatively large sum—known as a life settlement—has gotten easier over the last decade. Hedge funds, private equity funds, insurers and pension funds dominate the market, which totals around $35 billion, up from $2 billion in 2002. Individuals are investing in them too, through securities that represent a fraction of a bundle of life settlements, sometimes called death bonds.

How Life Settlements Work

Those most likely to be offered a life settlement, formerly known as a viatical, are individuals with a universal life insurance policy they no longer need or can’t afford—or who simply don’t want to pay the premiums. A term life policy that converts to a universal policy may also have value. Policyholders sell their insurance for more than they’d get by surrendering the policy to their insurer. If you have a death benefit of $1 million, you might have $100,000 cash surrender value but manage to get $250,000 from a third-party investor. The investor assumes future premium payments and collects $1 million at your death.

Not a bad deal, assuming you’re comfortable with the fact that someone out there has a financial interest in your demise. You get a bigger payout for a policy you were going to give up anyway. Life policies with total face value in the tens of billions of dollars lapse every year, according to industry estimates. Many of those policies have value in the secondary market.

As part of their ad campaign, the life settlement industry has enlisted actress Betty White, who pitches these deals for “savvy senior citizens needing cash.” Heck, she’s more persuasive than Fred Thompson is about reverse mortgages. But don’t be easily swayed. Aging celebrities from Henry Winkler to Sally Field are pitching all sorts of elder products these days in what amounts to an encore career—not a genuine endorsement.

The Privacy Risk

Okay, so what are the downsides to life settlements? For policyholders seeking to raise money, the creepiest risk by far is that you sell your policy to Tony Soprano, who understands that the quicker you die, the greater his rate of return. This is the extreme case explored in a new novel by Ben Lieberman, The Carnage Account. The lead character is a Wall Street high roller who buys up life settlements and dispatches the people with the biggest policies. “Very few products on Wall Street have been immune to exploitation,” says Lieberman, noting the wave of subprime mortgages that blew up in the financial crisis. “The abuse can now hurt more than your property. Instead of losing your house you can lose your life.”

Of course, Lieberman is a novelist with an active imagination. Life settlements have been around since the AIDS crisis, and there has never been a known case of murder for quick payoff, says Darwin Bayston, CEO and president of the Life Insurance Settlement Association. There have been only three formal complaints of any kind about life settlements to national regulators in the last three years, he says.

Yet Lieberman, who has a long Wall Street background, finds the entry of cutthroat hedge fund managers more than a little unsettling. Policies with insurers or held by pension funds remain largely anonymous inside huge portfolios. Institutions base their settlement offers on average life expectancies, knowing some policies will pay early and some will pay late.

But in smaller and more actively managed pools investors may pick and choose life policies that promise a quicker payoff, based on things like depression and mental illness, or clues from medical staff as to the most “valuable” policies. Life settlement investors are also targeting an estimated $40 billion of death benefits that policyholders might sell to fund long-term care needs, spinning it as socially conscious investing. How else will these seniors pay for end-of-life care? “Instead of credit risk or prepayment risk we now evaluate longevity risk,” Lieberman says. “This began as a way to help terminally ill patients. Now it incorporates perfectly healthy people and presents a way to bet against human life.”

One former life settlements investor told me he has seen third-party portfolios of life policies fully disclosing the names of the insured parties, which is the basis for the success of Lieberman’s fictional Carnage Account. In his novel, a murderous hedge fund manager gets this information and speeds up the whole process. Again, that’s fiction. But even Bayston concedes that a determined life settlements investor could get the identities of the insured people whose long lives are bad for investment returns.

The Financial Risks

Now, let’s look at the non-fiction risks with life settlements. For sellers, they are considerable, and include giving up your policy too cheaply and paying dearly for the transaction, and possibly becoming ineligible to buy another policy. Always check the cash surrender value first. Do not be swayed by brokers putting on a hard sale. They stand to collect commissions of up to 30% of the settlement. If you are determined to quit paying premiums, rather than sell the policy consider letting the cash value fund future premiums until the cash is exhausted. That’s a much better deal for heirs if you pass away in the interim. You can sell the policy when the cash value has been depleted—and get more for it then.

For buyers, settlements are complex and illiquid, and they may not pay out for many years. Given these hidden risks, they generally do not make sense for individual investors. Wall Street, meanwhile, benefits from their huge fees and expected long-run annual returns of 12% or more. Perhaps more important, settlements offer returns with no correlation to the financial market, which can be attractive to sophisticated investors and institutions, such as pension funds.

The life settlements industry has leveled off since the financial crisis, in large part because policies are taking longer to pay, thanks to increasing longevity. That drives down returns. Underscoring this risk to investors: the Society of Actuaries recently published revised mortality rates showing that a 65-year-old can now expect to live two years longer than someone that age just 14 years ago. But investors have been edging back into the market the last couple years, drawn by more realistic return assumptions and an anticipated flood of life policies held by boomers who will need cash to pay for assisted living.

Only in a novel do life settlements investors manage longevity risk with a hit man. But there are good reasons to be careful nonetheless.

Young adults have been the most conservative investors since the Great Recession. But now they are cozying up to stocks at three times the pace of boomers.

What a difference a bull market makes. The Dow Jones industrial average is up 160% from its financial crisis low, and the latest research shows that young people are beginning to think that stocks might not be so ill advised after all.

Nearly half of older millennials (ages 25-36) say they are more interested in owning stocks than they were five years ago, according to a Global Investor Pulse survey from asset manager BlackRock. This may signal an important turnaround. Earlier research has shown that millennials, while good savers, have tended to view stocks as too risky.

In July, Bankrate.com found that workers under 30 are more likely than any other age group to choose cash as their favorite long-term investment, and that 39% say cash is the best place to keep money they won’t need for at least 10 years. In January, the UBS Investor Watch report concluded that millennials are “the most fiscally conservative generation since the Great Depression,” with the typical investment portfolio holding 52% in cash—double the cash held by the average investor.

This conservative nature has raised alarms among financial planners and policymakers. Cash holdings, especially in such a low-rate environment, have no hope of growing into a suitable retirement nest egg. In fact, cash accounts have been yielding less, often far less, than 1% the past five years and have produced a negative rate of return after factoring in inflation.

Conservative millennials, with 40 years or more to weather the stock market’s ups and downs, have been losing money by playing it safe while the stock market has turned $10,000 into $26,000 in less than six years. Yes, the market plunged before that. But in the last century a diversified basket of stocks including dividends has never lost money over a 20-year period—and often the gains have been more than 10% or 12% a year.

Millennials are giving stocks a look for a number of reasons:

• The market rebound. The market plunge was scary. Millennials may have seen their parents lose a third of their net worth or more. But with few assets at the time, the market drop didn’t really hurt their own portfolio, and stocks’ sharp and relentless rise the past six years is their new context.
• Saver’s mentality. Millennials struggle with student loans and other debts, but they are dedicated savers. They have seen first-hand how little their savings grow in low-yielding investments and they better understand that they need higher returns to offset the long-term erosion of pension benefits.
• Optimism still reigns. Millennials are easily our most optimistic generation. At some level, a rising stock market simply suits their worldview.

This last point shows up in many polls, including the BlackRock survey. Only 24% of Americans believe the economy is improving—a share that rises to 32% looking just at millennials, BlackRock found. Likewise, millennials are more confident in the job market: 32% say it is improving, vs. 27% of Americans overall. Millennials are also more likely to say saving enough to retire is possible: only 37% say that saving while paying bills is “very hard,” vs. 43% of the overall population.

Looking at the stock market, 45% of millennials say they are more interested than they were five years ago. That compares with just 16% of boomers. Millennials also seem more engaged: They spend about seven hours a month reviewing their investments, vs. about four hours for boomers.

This is all great news. Millennials will need the superior long-term return of stocks to reach retirement security. Yet many of them are just coming around to this idea now, having missed most of the bull market. In the near term, they risk being late to the party and buying just ahead of another market downdraft. If that happens, they need to keep in mind that the market will rebound again, as it did out of the mouth of the Great Recession. They have many decades to wait out any slumps. They just need to commit and stay with a regular investment regimen.

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First-time 401(k) plan enrollees are soaring as young workers enter the labor force. This is a positive development. But it won't solve our savings crisis by itself.

Young workers have received the message about long-term financial security—and with increasing assistance from employers they are doing something about it, new research shows.

In the first half of 2014, the number of Millennials enrolling for the first time in a 401(k) plan jumped 55%, according to the Bank of America Merrill Lynch 401(k) Wellness Scorecard. This twice-yearly report examines trends among 2.5 million plan participants with $129 billion of assets under the bank’s care.

The brisk initial enrollment pace is due partly to the sheer number of Millennials entering the workforce. They account for about 25% of workers today, a figure that will shoot to 50% by 2020. But it also reflects a broader trend toward 401(k) enrollment. Across all generations, the number enrolling for the first time jumped 37%, Bank of America found.

One key reason for the surge in 401(k) participation is the use of auto-enrollment by employers, as well as other enhancements. The report found that number of 401(k) plans that both automatically enroll new employees and automatically boost payroll contributions each year grew 19% in the 12 months ended June 30. And nearly all employers (94%) that added automatic enrollment in the first half also added automatic contribution increases, up from 50% the first half of last year.

Enrolling in a 401(k) plan may be the single best financial move a young worker can make. At all age levels, those who participate in a plan have far more savings than those who do not. Another important decision is making the most of the plan—by contributing enough to get the full company match and increasing contributions each year.

Other added plan features include better educational materials and mobile technology. In a sign that workers, especially Millennials, crave easy and relevant information that will help them better manage their money, the bank said participants accessing educational materials via mobile devices soared 41% in the first half of the year.

The number of companies offering advice online, via mobile device or in person rose 6% and participants accessing this advice rose 8%. A third of those are Millennials, which suggests a generation that widely distrusts banks may be coming around to the view that they need guidance—and their parents and peers may not be the best sources of financial advice.

Millennials have largely done well in terms at saving and diversifying. They are counting more on personal saving and less on Social Security than any other generation, the report found. They seem to understand that saving early and letting compound growth do the heavy lifting is a key part of the solution. Despite its flaws, 401(k) plans have become the popular choice for this strategy.

Yet this generation is saddled with debt, mostly from student loans and credit cards, and most likely to tap their 401(k) plan savings early. Millennials are also least likely take advantage of Health Savings Accounts, or HSAs, which allow participants to set aside pre-tax dollars for health care costs. Health savings account usage jumped 33% in the first half, Bank of America found. But just 23% of Millennials have one, versus 39% of Gen X and 38% of Boomers.

Still, the trends are encouraging: employers are making saving easier and workers are signing up. That alone won’t solve the nation’s retirement savings crisis. Individuals need to sock away 10% to 15% of every dime they make. But 401(k)s, which typically offer employer matching contributions, can help. So any movement this direction is welcome news.

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Yet many of the same folks are hardly saving anything for retirement, study finds.

A large slice of middle-class Americans have all but given up on the retirement they may once have aspired to, new research shows—and their despair is both heartbreaking and frustrating. Most say saving for retirement is more difficult than they had expected and yet few are making the necessary adjustments.

Some 22% of workers say they would rather die early than run out of money, according to the Wells Fargo Middle Class Retirement survey. Yet 61% say they are not sacrificing a lot to save for their later years. Nearly three quarters acknowledge they should have started saving sooner.

The survey, released during National Retirement Savings Week, looks at the retirement planning of Americans with household incomes between $25,000 and $100,000, who held investable assets of less than $100,000. One third are contributing nothing—zero—to a 401(k) plan or an IRA, and half say they have no confidence that they will have enough to retire. Middle-class Americans have a median retirement balance of just $20,000 and say they expect to need $250,000 in retirement.

Still, Americans who have an employer-sponsored retirement plan, especially a 401(k), are doing much better than those without one. Those between the ages of 25 to 29 with access to a 401(k) have put away a median of $10,000, compared with no savings at all for those without access to a plan. Those ages 30 to 39 with a 401(k) plan have saved a median of $35,000, versus less than $1,000 for those without. And for those ages 40 to 49 with 401(k)s, the median is $50,000, while those with no plan have just $10,000.

Clearly, despite its many drawbacks, the venerable 401(k) remains our de facto national savings plan, and the best shot that the middle-class has at achieving retirement security. But only half of private-sector workers have access to a 401(k) or other employer-sponsored retirement plan, according to the Employee Benefit Research Institute. Those without access would benefit from a direct-deposit Roth or traditional IRA or some other tax-favored account, but data show that most Americans fail to make new contributions to IRAs, with most of those assets coming from 401(k) rollovers. One exception: a growing number of Millennials are making Roth IRA contributions.

Most people do understand the need to save for retirement, but they don’t view it as an urgent goal requiring spending cutbacks, the survey found. Still, many clearly have room in their budget to boost their savings rates. Asked where they would cut spending if they decided to get serious about saving, 56% said they would give up indulgences like the spa and jewelry; 55% said they’d cut restaurant meals; and 51% even said they would give up a major purchase like a car or a home renovation. But only 38% said they would forgo a vacation. We all need a little R&R, for sure. But a few weeks of fun now in exchange for years of retirement security is a good trade.

Of course, the larger problem is that a sizeable percentage of middle-class Americans are struggling financially and simply don’t enough money to stash away for long-term goals like retirement. As economic data show, many workers haven’t had a real salary increase for 15 years, while the cost of essentials, such as health care and college tuition, continues to soar.

Given these economic headwinds, it’s important to do as much as you can, when you can, to build your retirement nest egg. If you have a 401(k), be sure to contribute at least enough to get the full company match. And if you lack a company retirement plan, opt for an IRA—the maximum contribution is $5,500 a year ($6,500 if you are 50 or older). Yes, freeing up money to put away for retirement is tough, but it will be a bit easier if you can get tax break on your savings.

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If your sleeping hours are filled with visions of your financial life, you're in the minority. Here's what that means.

In your sleep, do you dream about money? Surprisingly, most people do not—at least not literally. And if you believe the thoughts that enter your head while you sleep actually mean something, this may suggest we’re shockingly content.

Dream analysts say that winning the lotto or a boat, or getting a bonus aren’t even among the top 50 most common thoughts in slumber. Money is nowhere to be found on a state-by-state chart of popular dream symbols. The dream map is dominated by things like “family” in Texas, “cats” in New York, “pigs” in Nebraska, and “sex” in perhaps the most honest states Missouri and New Hampshire.

We each have three to nine dreams per night, and most of us think about money everyday. Yet up and down the list of most common nighttime visions are things like dancing, school, guns, drugs, movies, and food. Nothing about greenbacks. Zilch. “This shows that people place more importance on the quality of their real happiness,” says dream expert Anna-Karin Bjorklund, author of Dream Guidance. “If you never dream about money, chances are your happiness is not related to feeling powerful or having the means to acquire material possessions.”

That’s good, right? Our subconscious is telling us that our pets and friends and experiences are what we really care about—even if we’re carrying a credit card balance and haven’t earned a decent raise in five years. To a degree this confirms much of what polls have shown since the Great Recession: a broad rediscovery of basic values and things that money can’t buy.

But before we congratulate ourselves on being phenomenally high-minded, we need to dig a little deeper. For one thing, materialism creeps onto the dream list in the form of “beach house” in Alabama; in the fourth richest state in America, Connecticut, “shopping” and “malls” make the top-five list. “Cruise ship” sneaks onto the list in Florida.

Besides, dreams are rarely literal—and thankfully so because on the list of popular dream subjects we find cheating, adultery, cemetery, and murder. If you dream about doors opening or being given the keys to an important room—that may be dreaming about a cash windfall, says dream expert Kelly Sullivan Walden, author of It’s All in Your Dreams. And, she says, “If you’re stressed about money in your waking life, you might find yourself dreaming of a leaky faucet, animals fighting over food, or your teeth falling out.”

Got that? How you view whatever you are dreaming is far more important than the dream itself. “If you have a dream where someone is stealing your vegetables, this could indicate that you feel what you’ve been planting has been taken away,” says Bjorklund. According to dream expert Lauri Loewenberg, author of Dream On It, financial stress also shows up in dreams as:

• Drowning (debt)
• Bleeding (savings disappearing)
• Falling (diminishing financial security)
• Getting lost (directionless career)
• Calling 911 but no one answers (poor financial advise)

“Dreams are symbolic and speak to us in metaphors,” says Loewenberg. “If you want to look for your dreams to help you with your financial situation, they will, but they may not use money to get the message across.” So maybe a good deal of our subconscious nighttime adventures are about money after all. We just don’t know it.