How Personal Accounts Secure Your Grandchildren's Future

The Social Security system cannot fulfill the promises it has made to your grandchildren. Funds in the current system will be exhausted by the time young Americans are ready to retire which means, unlike you, your grandchildren will not get the benefits check they are expecting.

• Personal retirement accounts guarantee your grandchildren's retirement income.
• Personal retirement accounts yield high rates of return and big benefits.
• Personal retirement accounts can be passed on to future generations.

Personal accounts would be voluntary supplements to Social Security. Instead of forcing your grandchildren to put all of their money into the current system, they could choose to save a portion of their Social Security taxes in a personal account. They couldn't just spend the tax money though: it would have to be saved and invested for retirement. Once retirement age is reached, your grandchildren would use their personal account, which they own and control, to provide them with guaranteed retirement income.

Personal accounts will provide your grandchildren with benefits that would be much higher than what the current system would offer. Accounts would safely invest a fraction of payroll taxes in the market. These investments would earn high rates of interest that would be compounded over the worker's lifetime and pay out big benefits during retirement. Compare this to the current system, which can't even afford to pay future benefits, and it is easy to see that personal accounts are the best way to secure your grandchild’s retirement.

Personal accounts also offer a unique opportunity to create wealth for generations to come. Because individual workers own their accounts, savings can be passed along to heirs. (Under the current system, the government keeps any money that is not paid out in benefits.) Imagine the legacy future generations of your great-grandchildren could inherit and you can see why personal accounts are the best option for the future.

The current system is unreliable and unfair to young Americans. Show your support for your grandchildren and for personal accounts by joining Students for Saving Social Security. And don't forget to tell them to join S4 with you by sending them an email on the right.