The pillars that hold up the retirement system are personal savings, pensions, and social security. As we discussed here recently, low, middle, and high-income earners have different challenges when it comes to saving for retirement. Since our definition of high-income earners are those who can easily save enough to live a comfortable life regardless of their Social Security benefits, we won’t worry about them too much. Today we look at lower income workers. The less income you make, the more of it you need for the basics: food, clothing, and shelter. But there are other things like healthcare, education, transportation, and communication that are pretty important, too.