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"Sounds like a lot of poor life choices."

There was a time when a workingman could save for retirement and then expect to live comfortably in his old age. If you had put half of your savings in a bank account making 2% and half of your savings in the stock market making somewhere around a 6% annual return you would have a blended 4% return on "safe" investments and every dollar that you saved when you were 16 would become 8 dollars by the time you were seventy. But now, with the Fed's ZIRP (Zero Interest Rate Policy) and with banks testing the waters on negative interest rates and with inflation running somewhere around 3% per year (and don't forget to factor in an occasional stock market crash or a short bout of high inflation) every dollar you save when you are 16 will be worth only 25 cents when you are seventy. In other words - saving for your old age in the traditional manner doesn't work. That life was stolen from us. To say that people arriving in their old age with insufficient assets to live comfortably is the result of "a lot of poor life choices" are the words of a lucky man and a man that does not know what is happening in the world.

I don’t know. I retired at 46, 15 years ago. I still live below my means but sadly I’ve earned zero interest for over 10 years now.
I live in Texas in a rural area. I carry an HVAC license and could work if I wanted but once my son had a stroke I just shut it down. It just was no fun doing it myself anymore.
Sure I get a small pension but live below that. I’ve always paid cash for everything and never had a loan.