The Future Poor: How families and communities can join together to survive the looming retirement crisis

What do we do if everything we’ve worked for suddenly goes up in flames?
We hope that someone will help us to rebuild our lives.
In two sentences, that’s the message of this book by personal finance expert Jonathan Grimm who just experienced that kind of life-threatening trauma when he and his family lost their California home and their entire neighborhood without warning in a raging wildfire. But there’s hope even after such a disaster, if we remember and reclaim some of our core community values.
We all can use such practical and inspiring wisdom now because the main crisis Jonathan Grimm warns about in these chapters is larger than the devastation of any fire or other natural disaster. The larger crisis that is shared by millions of still-young American adults is a looming retirement crisis. Due to deep flaws in our retirement system, individuals and families who assume they’ll sail smoothly into those retirement years, instead, will fall below the poverty level. Even as the 2025 wildfires swept over his own home, Grimm had been researching and documenting the scope of this coming retirement crisis. In the year before his family was forced to dash from their home, he was just completing this book to show readers pragmatic solutions that can save our communities.
Then, he found his family’s neighborhood bursting into flame and saw families like his own fleeing with only what they could carry in their cars. Suddenly, Jonathan Grimm found himself, his wife, and their children relying on the same network of personal, family and community services that he encourages his readers to recognize and strengthen. We all will need those resources in the years ahead, he writes.