  SAMUELSON: Retirees likely better off than many believe  10:48
AM, Apr. 28, 2014  |  Comments   • Filed Under  Can America
afford to retire? As millions of baby boomers pass their
mid-60s, the specter of widespread under-saving has taken hold.
Huge numbers of present and future retirees will exhaust their
savings before they die. Mass hardship looms. It's a scary
vision. But is it likely? Probably not.  Typical retirees are
hardly bereft. In 2010, roughly 80 percent of households 65 to
74 owned their homes, and half of these had fully repaid their
mortgages, reports economist Peter Brady of the Investment
Company Institute, the trade group for mutual funds.  Among
those with a mortgage, the median amount was less than half (44
percent) of the house's value. For all homeowners, median home
equity - the amount not owed on the mortgage - was $120,000.
(The median signifies the midpoint. Amounts were higher for half
the households, lower for the other half.)  To supplement Social
Security, retirees can borrow a