A recent study voices what some may view as financial heresy by suggesting that, for some younger people, saving for retirement isn't really worth it, given changed economic conditions, according to Fortune. The working paper, recently published by the National Bureau of Economic Research, relies heavily on the notion that savings are just a means to an end, namely happiness and life satisfaction. It argues that while people who start saving early for retirement will have more savings, it is not a given that their happiness and life satisfaction will be greater than if they'd just spent the money when they were young. By the time they can crack open their retirement accounts, people might be too sick to properly enjoy the proceeds (e.g. having dementia), or they might even be dead.

Beyond an uncertain future, however, the paper notes that the state of the economy today upends some old retirement planning assumptions. First, interest rates are low and have been low for a long time, and so saving in one's 20s and 30s won't yield that much more growth than starting in one's 40s, even with employer matches. Second, those with the ability to save for retirement generally have a higher earnings potential than they did before ( a college graduate’s income at age 25 will be only 42 percent of their peak income at 45 or 50). Saving makes more sense for those whose income won't rise all that much over their lifetimes, but for those who anticipate earning more later in their careers, the paper argues, it makes more sense to start saving then, when they actually have money to save.

With all this in mind, the paper essentially argues that returns from retirement savings are a lot less impactful than they were when the economy was different, to the point where it makes more sense, in terms of just happiness and life satisfaction, to spend in the present. But it should be reiterated that the paper was talking about those with higher earnings potential in the future, and so therefore should not necessarily be taken as a call to cash out one's 401(k) and go hog wild.