Because of this, most baby boomers have been forced to postpone retirement an average of five years.¹

I’m often asked how using the Bank On Yourself method to save for retirement compares to traditional plans, so I put together this short video that reveals seven reasons Bank On Yourself makes an excellent retirement plan alternative.

Click the play button in the video below and see how many of these seven advantages you’d like to have in your financial plan…

1.  Bankers Life and Casualty Center for a Secure Retirement, May 2011

Many readers of this blog have asked to see more specific examples showing how much guaranteed and predictable income you could have in retirement, using the Bank On Yourself method. So I’ve included a fascinating example on this video.

If you have the feeling your financial plan has been treading water (or going backwards) for far too long, you’ll want to be sure to watch this video now. It’s got some pretty cool animation in it, too!

But some of these questions about key money and finance basics tripped up some of our readers – almost no one got all five answers right. Making financial decisions without knowing the correct answer to even one of these questions can easily shave six figures or more off your lifetime wealth.

So I urge you to pay close attention to the correct answers below. You’ll also find a list of our six contest winners at the end of this post.

Here are the correct answers given by readers to the five questions…

Question #1: If you finance a $30,000 car through a finance company, your actual cost for the car is the money you spend on it, plus the interest you pay, less the value of your trade-in at the end of your loan repayment period.

If you pay cash for a car, what’s your actual cost for the car?

Answer: Joe Goldsmith pointed out what many people with alphabet soup after their name don’t get – that “paying cash for the car is just another form of financing.”

John Nicholson summed it up succinctly: “If you pay $30,000 cash for a car, your actual cost is the money you spent on the car, less the trade-in value at the end of the period, plus the opportunity cost – the loss of interest that the $30,000 could have earned.”

Perry Blouin went on to calculate the enormity of the total loss you could have over 40 years because of this “opportunity cost.” And Valerie Coffman noted, “If you use a Bank On Yourself policy (to pay for the car), you make money as if you never took it out, and you make money on yourself when you pay it back. Awesome!”

As Eric pointed out, “with Bank On Yourself, you accumulate the $30,000 and when it comes time for your vehicle purchase, request a check from the insurance company, receive it within 48-72 hours and then be ready to negotiate with the car dealership.”

Using your Bank On Yourself policy to pay for major purchases also gives you access to money on your terms rather than someone else’s. You can pay it back on your own schedule without worrying about bill collectors, late fees or black marks on your credit report. It beats financing, leasing or even directly paying cash for things by a long shot.

To find out how much more lifetime wealth you could enjoy – simply by using the Bank On Yourself method to make major purchases versus the other options available to you, request a FREE no-obligation Analysis that will show you your bottom-line results. I think you’ll be amazed!

Question #2: If you have a $20 stock and it goes up by 40%, how much money did you make on that stock? (Hint: This is about a key financial principle, not a math question.)

Answer: The talking heads on Wall Street NEVER get this one and do their best to make sure you don’t figure out the blindingly obvious answer to this question!

As Ruth noted,

You don’t make any money until you actually sell your stock.”

Likewise, it makes me crazy when people talk about how much value their home has lost since the real estate bubble burst. You don’t have a REAL gain (or loss) until you sell an asset and lock your profits in.

Which is in stark contrast to the Bank On Yourself method. The gains you receive each year (guaranteed and predictable) are locked in the moment they’re credited to your policy. As for losses… well, there aren’t any. This is based on an asset class that has increased in value every year for over 160 years!

Question #3: According to Morningstar, Inc., the top-performing mutual fund for the last decade (ending December 31, 2009) enjoyed an 18% annual return.

However, the typical investor in that fund wasn’t so fortunate.

What was the annual return of the typical investor in that top-performing fund? And why was their return so different from the return reported by the fund?

Answer: Only one person – Raymond Trembath – nailed the shocking correct answer to this question (no one else came even close), and he also noted the reasons why:

“The typical investor in the best performing mutual fund of the last decade lost 11% annually, even though the fund itself rose by more than 18% annually. The reason this could happen is that all mutual funds are legally allowed only to advertise the results of their ‘buy and hold’ investors, in spite of the fact that long-term mutual funds tend to be held for less than half a decade!”

Doesn’t this typify the smoke and mirrors that the Wall Street Casino uses to pull the wool over our eyes?

If you find it hard to believe that the results mutual funds report could be so different than the results the investors in those funds get, I urge you to read the article supporting this from the Wall Street Journal.

Question #4: What percentage of mutual funds, financial advisors and investment advisory services underperform the overall market? And why?

Answer: Nick H. hit this one spot on when he said, “80% per Hulbert Financial Digest.”

And it’s not just because of the fees they charge. It’s because all the “experts” are humans, too, and are “predictably irrational,” buying and selling at the wrong times.

Question #5: You could have $10,000 in a mutual fund that reports an average annual return of 25% for four years… and at the end of the fourth year end up with only the $10,000 you started with.

How is that possible?

Answer: Doc Youngblood’s little story was such a great, entertaining explanation of this, I decided to include his response in full:

“How is it possible to have $10,000 in a mutual fund that reports an average annual return of 25% for four years… and at the end of the fourth year you end up with only the $10,000 you started with?

The key to the question’s answer is hidden in this short, simple story, but hidden in plain sight for those willing to see.

And the story? You’ll like this I promise—no animals were hurt during its filming.

Imagine we are duck hunting and I shoot. I miss by a foot behind the duck. So I quickly aim and shoot again. I miss by a foot in front of the duck.

By the law of averages, I hit a bulls eye. By the law of dinner, my plate is still empty.

So, if your mutual fund reports an average annual return of 25% for four years, does that mean you’ve got more money in your account?

Let’s play:

Four years later you still have a $10,000 balance. But not once did the rate of return equal 25%. Here’s the percent change for each year: 100-50+100-50. So we add that up (100%) and then we divide that by four years to show our average rate of return is 25% for four years.

Wait! A 25% average rate of return is supposed to be a great thing, right?

Follow the cash in the example above—did the cash increase? The numbers above show one scenario with a 25% average rate of return and ending up with exactly the same money you started with.

However, 25% annual compound interest is a great thing. Take a look:

Year One: $10,000 becomes $12,500 at 25% compound interest.
Year Two: $12,500 becomes $15,625
Year Three: $15,625 becomes $19,531.25
Year Four: $19,531.25 becomes $24,414.06

Were you like me and confused about the two definitions? It’s very common to confuse them AND to assume that the average rate of return is a linear type of activity, one year after the next being the same. Average rate of return and compound interest are not the same.”

(For the record, you’ll find no smoke and mirrors when you see the bottom line numbers and results you could get when you add Bank On Yourself to your financial plan.)

Now for the list of our six contest winners…

There were so many insightful answers that it was hard to pick out only six winners. (All are being notified by email.)

The best entry, picked by our Bank On Yourself team, is Doc Youngblood, who wins a $100 Amazon Gift Card! (Doc – I guess you can tell your wife she was right!)

And the two runners up, who’ll get their choice of a $25 Dining Gift Certificate or a personally autographed copy of my best-selling book, Bank On Yourself: The Life Changing Secret to Growing and Protecting Your Financial Future, are:

1. Eric

2. Raymond Trembath

There were also three winners who got at least one question right, who were randomly chosen to win prizes. The winner of the second $100 Amazon Gift Card is Robert N.

And the two randomly chosen winners who’ll get their choice of a $25 Dining Gift Certificate or a personally autographed copy of my book are:

1. Carl Schoner

2. Rita

Thanks to everyone who participated in this blog contest. You are all winners for thinking – and seeing – through the conventional wisdom about money and finances that has cost so many people so much in lost money, lost time and broken dreams.

As our story opens, we come upon a celebration of all good cheer.  Our revelers, mostly senior citizens, are toasting the news that in 2012, their Social Security benefits will rise for the first time in three years.

And a woeful trio of years it’s been.

Beginning in 2008, many Americans lost as much as 40% of their retirement funds in the stock market rout.  Home values plummeted and have yet to rebound.  Energy costs – particularly gasoline, cut deeper than ever into disposable income.  Rising out-of-pocket medical costs remain unrestrained.  And inflation, although mild, shaved even more spending power from those 65 and older.

So no wonder Aunt Bizarro and her blind-faith minions are throwing a party.

The 2012 benefits increase “underscores the importance of Social Security as the only guaranteed, lifelong and inflation-adjusted source of retirement income for most Americans,” cheers Nancy LeaMond, an executive vice president with AARP, the vast propaganda bureau that masquerades as a friend to those 50 and over.

…For millions of American seniors already suffering in this economy and facing years of rising costs, shrinking returns on their savings and no cost-of-living increases, today’s…announcement lets them know there’s some relief around the corner,”

-chimes in Max Richtman, the ebullient president and CEO of the National Committee to Preserve Social Security and Medicare.

Never before has $39-a-month excited so many people.  Yes, after three painful years of financial losses and erosion, the 3.6 percent increase in Social Security benefits in 2012 will average just $39 a month, or about $467 for the full year.

Such is the craftwork of Aunt Bizarro: The poor naives who have entrusted her – more than one-third of all retirees receive at least 90% of their income from the Social Security Administration – are bewitched into believing that an annual increase of $467 is cause for celebration.

Which perhaps it really is, when measured against the stark reality awaiting those of us not yet dependent on Aunt Bizarro to keep food on our tables.  Indeed, by 2036, when citizens born in 1974 reach the earliest-possible retirement age of 62, the Social Security system will be penniless.

Aunt Bizzaro knows this all too well.  But each and every payday, she shows up nonetheless to collect her bounty – from young and old alike – promising to deposit their earnings in her lockbox.  It’s a promise she’ll never keep.

How does she do it?

What facilitates Aunt Bizzaro and her grand Ponzi scheme is the seemingly unlimited capacity of tens of millions of Americans to live – contented – in a perpetual state of self-denial.

From the time we are but cherubs, Aunt Bizzaro and her governmental backers, invite us to gaze into her Mirror of Erised, which like the magical looking glass in the Harry Potter fantasy series, reflects not reality, but a version of reality that the gazer prefers.

Who doesn’t want to believe that America remains a beneficent financial colossus, 100% reliable, and certain to care for us and our financial needs in our golden years?  Who doesn’t want to see Social Security as the safety net and secure lockbox we’ve always been taught it is?

In fact, Social Security has become the most significant source of income for American’s age 65 and older.  And, with each passing year, our reliance on other personal assets to see us through our retirement has shrunk like a teenage boy and his dog in some Walt Disney movie starring Rick Moranis.

Standing at a stark 11% today, the percentage of available cash that retirees derive today from non-governmental asset income is down from 15% back in 1962.  Indeed, only about half of all retirees (53%) enjoy any non-governmental asset income whatsoever.

Writing this month in the AARP Bulletin, veteran personal finance writer Jane Bryant Quinn – an Aunt Bizzaro apostle – mocks the notion that individuals would be better off if they could manage their Social Security taxes in their own accounts.

“Hmmm – you’re saying that you’d faithfully put that money aside, every year of your working life… without ever skipping a year, drawing on your nest egg or selling when the market dropped?  Few such paragons exist,” Quinn writes.

Obviously, our SuperBOYs have yet to pry Ms. Quinn away from the Mirror of Erised

Hundreds of thousands of Americans, folks just like you and me, have in fact secured a sizeable, non-governmental retirement asset income following the Bank on Yourself method.  And yes, Jane, these “paragons” do avoid the temptations, seductions and traps that bedevil so many people misguided by the forces of SSH4TT.

For the sake of argument, understand that even if Quinn and AARP are correct and those folks who brought you the Social Security mess would be better stewards of your money than you, the government’s old age system has already failed – and failed sooner than anyone anticipated due largely to the weak economy and stubborn high unemployment rate.  Unemployed workers have no wages from which to contribute to the Social Security pool.

While no one was looking in 2010, the program went cash negative because payroll taxes weren’t sufficient to cover all of Social Security’s obligations.  After years of generating surpluses, last year Social Security needed to borrow money from the general Treasury – roughly $46 billion – to cover its shortfall.

The trustees of the Social Security program do not expect it to pay its own way – more cash in than out – again during the lifetimes of anyone old enough to read this article.

The drip, drip, drip of billions of dollars from Aunt Bizarro’s lockbox will soon turn into a stream of red ink and eventually a waterfall.

In an effort to stimulate the dying U.S. economy, the Obama Administration temporarily reduced the rate workers pay on their wages in 2011 from 6.2% to 4.2%.  The draw on our national debt will be $105 billion on top of the original $46 billion.  If President Obama gets his way and the payroll tax reduction is expanded in 2012, The Washington Post says the outflow will rise to $267 billion.

All told, Aunt Bizzaro and her agents have collected $2.6 trillion in the Social Security trust fund.  That is the vast number on the government’s ledger — $2,600,000,000,000.  How much has the government actually set aside?  Not one cent remains.

However the politicians and economists eventually attempt to stem the bleeding – if they can ever reach a consensus on any band-aids – the solution will mean fewer benefits, higher taxes, more borrowing or, most likely, a combination of all three.

Meanwhile, week-in and week-out, Aunt Bizarro repeats her unrelenting mantra: “I’ll gladly care for you in the future, so kindly hand over your earnings today.”

The SuperBOYs solution is far better…

Once they are able to draw Aunt Bizzaro’s disciples away from the Mirror of Erised, shattering its illusion once and for all, these fighters for good and justice make this simple proposition:

If it turns out in 2036, by some twist of fate, that the Social Security wizards are able to rescue the system, then what have you forfeited?  The money you hold in your Bank on Yourself account will still be there for you, exactly as promised, growing a predictable, guaranteed amount each year.

But if Aunt Bizarro and her courtiers continue on their current course – and Social Security adherents cling to the belief that a $39-a-month increase is a soothing balm for suffering seniors, then won’t you be delighted that you rebuffed all that SSH4TT was dishing out and that you secured your own retirement funds?

And so the amazing SuperBoys lead the escape from another harrowing financial situation. Armed with this graphic tale, it’s now your mission to prevent your loved ones and friends from ever again coming under the trance of Aunt Bizarro and her evangelists.

Warn them.  Inform them.  And if need be, call in the posse.

Look, up in the sky.  It’s a bird.  It’s a plane.  No, its SuperBoys and they’re ready to fight for you, your loved ones and your American right – to get it right – when it comes to wealth information.

Sam and his little sister, Columbia, were born in the earliest days of our zealous nation.

History records that the Wilson offspring were raised in Menotomy, Massachusetts – now known as Arlington – to parents originally from Greenock, Scotland.

Sam was always the more visible of the two.  In 1797, the stern-eyed, elbow-nosed gent married a gal from Mason, New Hampshire, and together they had four children who they raised in their Ferry Street home. Aunt Columbia, as the tots called her, was a doting kinswoman.

Sam first served our country during the War of 1812. A meat packer by trade, he provided beef rations – which he shipped in barrels – to the Army.  Branded on the side of each cask were the initials “U.S.” – signifying their ownership by the United States government.

But the soldiers and workers who knew good ole Sam Wilson took to joshing that the “U.S.” stood for Uncle Sam.

And the rest, as they say, is history.

Aunt Columbia also tried her hand laboring as a national emblem, draping herself in the red, white and blue, and bidding to join big brother Sam on the patriotic trail.  In 1798, Philip Phile and Joseph Hopkinson teamed to write the music and lyrics for George Washington’s inaugural march, which came to be titled, “Hail, Columbia.”  Few historians properly credit Aunt Columbia as Phile’s and Hopkinson’s inspiration.

Sam and Columbia made a nice iconic tag-team, rallying the country through World Wars I and II, and adorning untold numbers of government placards and tourist postcards.

It was not until after the Japanese surrender on the deck of the USS Missouri in Tokyo Bay on September 2, 1945 that friends and family began to notice the shift in Aunt Columbia’s personality.  Subtle at first, her behavior was increasingly erratic and wild.

Aunt Columbia became obsessed with money – other people’s money. And she plotted and connived around the clock to invent fresh schemes to separate those who once saluted her from their savings.

“I’ll gladly care for you in the future, so kindly hand over your earnings today,” she exhorted them.  Her words were gentle, but her tone was anything but.

Yet this was Columbia, symbol of the full faith and credit of America and its great financial wherewithal. So people complied with her entreaties and entrusted their retirement funds to her Social Security lockbox.

Those who knew Aunt Columbia the best attributed her twisted new priorities and personality to jealousy.  After World War II the fickle public shifted its adoration from Aunt Columbia to that French wench, Lady Liberty, who hung out in the harbor and wooed so many fresh immigrants with her oratory charms.

“Give me your tired, your poor, your huddled masses yearning to breathe free,” trilled Mademoiselle Liberty, a message that mesmerized like the siren songs of ancient Greece.  All Aunt Columbia could counter with was the by-now quite clichéd, “I want yours.”

Well, it was no contest.

Perhaps, in truth, Lady Liberty did contribute some to Aunt Columbia’s money madness.  After all, so many immigrants looked to her – not Columbia – as their American North Star.

But, dear reader, we know better, don’t we?

For in fact, Aunt Columbia’s derangement had it real roots back in 1935, more than a decade prior, when the well-intentioned President Franklin D. Roosevelt and members of Congress enacted the Old-Age, Survivors and Disability Insurance program, best known as the Social Security Act.

It was back in that fragile time, with much of America still reeling from the aftershocks of the Great Depression, that Aunt Columbia enlisted in the unholy and corrupt order that we now know as SSH4TT, dedicated as it is to lust after money – our money.

And what, even in those fledgling days of SSH4TT could be a more appropriate financial grail than Social Security?

Millions and billions of dollars flooding annually into the U.S. government treasury with only the promise of returning the funds to their rightful owners decades down the road.  Oh, how all that money cried out to Aunt Columbia and her fellow SSH4TT members.  “Come and get me, caress me, spend me.”

And that they did.

While Aunt Columbia gingerly collected the monies of workers with each and every paycheck, promising – on the nation’s honor – to keep it safely in a lockbox, she and the other SSH4TT members knew the lockbox to be nothing but a dark void.

Yea, the day is nigh, when workers will discover the fraud that has been practiced upon them.  That Aunt Columbia is no trusted fiduciary of their retirement funds.  She is, rather, a sinister, sick-minded villain who preys mercilessly on the sick and elderly.

Live off your Social Security payments, will you?”

-cackles this brazen plunderer.

Aunt Columbia, she is no more.  Long ago, in the dank and fetid inner sanctums of SSH4TT she adopted her real, abiding persona – she is Aunt Bizarro.  And no larger a financial menace has ever prowled the halls and corridors of our nation’s treasury.

Continue learning about Aunt Bizarro in Episode 2: Shattering of the Mirror of Erised.

Here is how the responses to each of our 10 survey questions have broken down.  The percentages reveal which option our survey-takers find more scary!

You’ll see that snakes, blood, public nudity, eating fire-hot peppers, and even close proximity to a psychotic killer caused far fewer trembles than did the terrifying prospect of winding up in a serious financial jam.

Here’s what Americans find most scary…

1. Which of the following is more frightful to you?

• 22.2% – Death

• 78% – Outliving Your Money

  

2. Which of the following is more frightful to you?

• 28.6% – Having all of your investment decisions — good and bad — published in your local newspaper

• 71.4% – Walking naked down a fashion runway while being photographed

3. Which of the following is more frightful to you?

• 17.5% – Having to remain awake for 48 uninterrupted hours

• 82.5% – Having to memorize all the fine print on your 401(k) plan in no more than 48 hours

4. Which of the following is more frightful to you?

• 64.3% – Watching your stock portfolio lose 40% of its value in only a few weeks

• 36.4% – Ingesting 40 habanero peppers within 24 hours

5. Which of the following is more frightful to you?

• 58.8% – Sitting for 30 minutes in a tub of live snakes

• 41.7% – Explaining to your family or other loved ones that you’ve lost your home to foreclosure

6. Which of the following is more frightful to you?

• 49.2% – Having to pick the one mutual fund (among hundreds) that will outperform all others during the year

• 52.1% – Bobbing for a 10 oz gold bar in a vat containing 50 gallons of cow’s blood

7. Which of the following is more frightful to you?

• 9.4% – Going on twelve once-a-month blind dates with a randomly selected bachelor or bachelorette

• 91% – Entrusting your retirement portfolio to an anonymous fund administrator, who may or may not have any special education or training

Editors Note: Although 9 out of 10 Americans fear entrusting their retirement to an incompetent administrator, millions of Americans may unknowingly be doing exactly that right now! Read our shocking exposé and learn the facts!

8. Which of the following is more frightful to you?

• 64% – Having my personal tax returns audited by the IRS

• 37.3% -Walking around for a week wearing pants with pockets overflowing with live worms

9. Which of the following is more frightful to you?

• 31.7% – Be strapped atop a vintage stunt plane while it performs a typical aerobatics routine

• 70.% – Be tied to the Social Security program as your sole source of retirement income

10. Which of the following is more frightful to you?

• 66.1% – Losing my job and having to live only off of my current savings for a year

• 34.6% -Renting an extended-stay room in the Bates Motel and sharing a shower with Anthony Perkins

Were you surprised by any of your responses?

These results are a sad commentary on the financial condition and current state of mind of so many of our family members, friends, neighbors and colleagues.

The definition of insanity is doing the same things in the same way and hoping for different results.  So, if you’re ready to find a better way to save and invest for your financial future that gives you peace of mind and lifetime financial security, check out the Bank On Yourself method.

To find out how much brighter your financial picture could be if you added Bank On Yourself to your financial plan, request your free, no-obligation Analysis now, while it’s fresh on your mind!

If you want to scare the bejesus out of home dwellers this Halloween, trying dressing up as an IRS auditor or a foreclosure process server.

In fact, an exclusive nationwide online survey conducted this month by my company,  Bank On Yourself, finds that by a margin of almost four-to-one, many Americans would rather die than outlive their money.

The results are neither trick nor treat: They’re a sad commentary on the financial condition and current state of mind of so many of our family members, friends, neighbors and colleagues.

More than 500 adults took part in our Bank On Yourself Fear Factors Challenge: Personal Finance Edition. Like the popular television contest that inspired us, we presented players with some icky, gross, terrifying or truly embarrassing scenarios. We then quizzed them on what makes their flesh crawl more: Our scares or the frights associated with personal finance failures?

Snakes, blood, public nudity and eating fire-hot peppers caused far fewer trembles among many of our respondents than did the terrifying prospect of winding up in a serious financial jam.

While our challenge and its results do not constitute a scientific poll, they do unquestionably underscore the depths of anxiety that so many Americans harbor over the economy and its potential impact on their lives.

Blind dates versus incompetent retirement plan administrators

Blind dates are nerve-wracking experiences for almost all people: “Will my date like me?” “Will I like my date?” “What will we talk about?” “What if my date is unattractive or unpleasant?”

Yet, in our Bank on Yourself Fear Factors Challenge, fully nine out of every ten players said they prefer facing 12, once-a-month blind dates with a companion selected at random, to entrusting their retirement portfolios to an anonymous plan administrator.

What’s so surprising about that response is how many millions of Americans, in real life, hand over the selection and responsibility for their retirement portfolio – especially 401(k) plans – to others, who may or may not have any special education or training.

Because there are no mandated standards for who is permitted to administer the majority of company-sponsored retirement plans, nothing prevents employees from unwittingly entrusting the most important financial decision of their lifetime to their boss’s dunderhead brother-in-law.

Now that really is chilling. (See: More than 15 Million “Zombie Investors” Unwittingly Allow Others to Feed Off Their Retirement Savings)

We offered our contestants this creepy choice: Rent an extended-stay room in the Bates Motel (from the 1960 classic Alfred Hitchcock thriller Psycho) and share a shower with Anthony Perkins (who starred as the mommy-dominated slasher). Or, lose your job and live off only your current savings for a year.

Well make way Janet Leigh, two out of every three of our challenge participants would rather bunk with you and Tony than face the blood-curdling prospect of having to get by for a year on their savings alone.

What could be more mortifying?

42% of our challengers find the prospect of having to explain to their family or other loved ones that they’ve lost their home to foreclosure an unbearable horror. In fact, they’d opt for sitting 30 minutes in a tub of live snakes ahead of having to break the bad news to those closest to them.

While I don’t know how many Americans actually bathed with squirming serpents last year, RealtyTrac, which monitors nationwide filings, reported that a record 2.9 million homes received foreclosure filings in 2010. This year is well on its way to being another gory one for homeowners.

Wall Street and the mutual fund industry often tout their annual breakout performers. But our challenge-takers know from experience that picking the winners from the losers can be a waking nightmare.

Almost half of those who participated in our Bank on Yourself Fear Factors Challenge equated the pain of trying to single out the one mutual fund that will outperform all others in a given year to bobbing for a 10oz gold bar in a vat containing 50 gallons of cow’s blood. To both options, all I can say is, “yuck.”

What would you rather do: Walk naked down a fashion runway while being photographed or see your dumbest financial decisions published for everyone to gawk at in your local newspaper?

Will it be naked or exposed for you?

Just shy of 30% of our survey-takers think they’ve got the abs and pecks to strut their buff stuff before the paparazzi. Either that – or, more likely – they’d be absolutely humiliated if the people around them ever knew just how poorly they’ve handled their investment and savings decisions.

Indeed, watching their stock portfolios nosedive 40% in only a few weeks – as happened to so many investors during the 2008 crash – is less appetizing to almost two-thirds of our contestants than would be munching down 40 fiery-hot habanero peppers within 24 hours. Both scenarios are guaranteed to induce a serious case of heartburn. Only the peppers don’t require you to rethink all your life’s goals and retirement plans.

On the topic of retirement, most respondents view Social Security as an apparition that is most likely to haunt them, not help them in their golden years.

Just over 70% of those who took our survey say they’d rather be strapped atop a vintage stunt plane while it performs a typical aerobatics routine than be tied to the Social Security program as their sole source of retirement income.

The Center on Budget and Policy Priorities and other reliable sources indicate that roughly one-in-five Americans rely strictly on the financially troubled government benefits program for all of their financial needs.

In the 1998 Tim Burton film, Beetlejuice, the title character, a freelance bio-exorcist ghost played by Michael Keaton, stashes bugs, snakes and an entire menagerie of creepy-crawlies in his musty overcoat pockets. Most viewers probably assumed that Beetlejuice had odd epicurean tastes and was merely collecting snacks to keep on hand.

But our Bank on Yourself Fear Factors Challenge revealed another possible explanation: The head-spinning bio-exorcist was simply trying to avoid an IRS audit, himself.

You see, fully 64% of our challenge-takers said they’d rather walk around for a week wearing pants overflowing with live worms than have their personal tax returns scrutinized by the government.

Word from Hollywood is it that Warner Brothers is in the process of producing a remake or sequel to Beetlejuice. Details about the possible reboot are still sketchy.

But perhaps, instead of setting the horror-comedy in another idyllic New England country manor, the producers will give the next iteration an extra dose of realism and set it in an a typical American household spooked by fears of job loss, portfolio volatility, foreclosure and – worst of all – Social Security dependency.

As for casting, take your pick. There are millions of us who qualify to play ourselves.

Check out the full results of the survey here… and how your Fear Factors choices compare to the rest of America!

The key to eliminating retirement uncertainty is to plan carefully, save as much as possible, invest wisely, and then, at age 65, get hit by a bus.”

A rather grim solution, to be sure, although one subscriber to my Bank On Yourself Ezine did write me to explain that his retirement “plan” was to make sure he died on the day he retired.

Just when I thought I’d heard every possible bizarre way to ensure retirement security at a time when most people’s nest-eggs have been scrambled, I got an email that flabbergasted me…

This subscriber – I’ll call him “Carl” – said that, while he agreed that Bank On Yourself is a solid method, he had come up with an alternative plan:  He had purchased two Long Term Care policies that would pay him $7,500 per month, after the first 90 days, and would pay out this benefit every month for the rest of his life.

Carl said,

So I plan to continue working in my sedentary job, which I enjoy, and to start collecting long-term-care benefits as soon as I can.”

Sheesh!

Carl also noted that his premiums for these policies were “relatively low” and as an added benefit, he wouldn’t have to pay to cover the cost of the death benefit.

If you’re actually looking forward to relying on Long Term Care as your retirement “plan,” I feel sorry for you…

Aside from the fact that I think Carl way overestimates what his benefit will be, how long it will last and how long his premiums will remain “low,” I wonder if it ever occurred to him that he might remain healthy and able – right up until the day he dies?

Those policies won’t pay him a dime if he’s “unlucky” enough to have that happen.  (Unfortunately, I think Carl’s plan is symptomatic of a shift in our society from self-reliance to dependence, but that’s a topic for another day…)

I can just imagine Carl smoking cigars, eating junk food and being a couch potato, to make sure he needs long term care “as soon as he can.”

What’s your retirement plan?