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Your Summer FRONTLINE Viewing List: Film 2

Your Summer FRONTLINE Viewing List: Film 2
Whether your IRA or 401K will assure a safe retirement is largely a gamble. Building off reporting from the groundbreaking special Money, Power and Wall Street, FRONTLINE’s “The Retirement Gamble” raises troubling questions about how America’s financial institutions protect our savings.

By

Jason M. Breslow

August 13, 2013

We know there’s always a bunch of FRONTLINE films you meant to see, but somehow missed. Where to start catching up?

We went back through our archives to find the five films that resonated most with viewers this season. We looked at why you watched, what you liked and what you said about them. We’re posting one film every day this week — in no particular order. Check out Monday’s here. Watch No. 2 now:

The Retirement Gamble

When FRONTLINE producer Martin Smith started thinking seriously about his retirement, he came to an unwelcome realization: At the rate he was saving, he was on course to experiencing a $434,000 shortfall in retirement. As Smith put it to a financial advisor in The Retirement Gamble, “It looks like my own personal fiscal cliff.”

The investigation got many viewers thinking about their own retirement.

“Thank you for spotlighting our dysfunctional ‘system’,” tweeted Edgardo Resto. “I hope many watched. We all need the help.”

The full film is available below. And be sure not to miss our guides on how retirement fees may be costing you, which questions to ask about your retirement, as well as extended interviews with Vanguard founder John Bogle and financial journalist Helaine Olen.

Inside FRONTLINE
Jason M. Breslow

Former Digital Editor

Email:

FrontlineEditors@wgbh.org
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Funding for FRONTLINE is provided through the support of PBS viewers and by the Corporation for Public Broadcasting, with major support from Ford Foundation. Additional funding is provided the Abrams Foundation, Park Foundation, John D. and Catherine T. MacArthur Foundation, Heising-Simons Foundation, and the FRONTLINE Trust, with major support from Jon and Jo Ann Hagler on behalf of the Jon L. Hagler Foundation, and additional support from Koo and Patricia Yuen. FRONTLINE is a registered trademark of WGBH Educational Foundation. Web Site Copyright ©1995-2025 WGBH Educational Foundation. PBS is a 501(c)(3) not-for-profit organization.

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