The main problems are insufficient diversification and the failure to pick age-appropriate strategies - that is, more aggressive when you're younger, and more conservative when you approach retirement. But even then you have to invest for growth.

The issue of the pension gap has got to become visible and important to millions of people before Washington will respond seriously. Right now, everyone thinks it's his or her own problem and that individuals have to do better and save more. Of course, that is true. We all have to save more and take responsibility for our own retirement. But we have a huge social and economic problem on our hands.

Only if enough ordinary Americans speak up and demand better from both their employers and their government is the system going to get fixed. But first of all, we have to understand how serious the problem is.

The retirement financial crisis will affect far more people than baby boomers, and certainly it will affect their children. Most of the retirees and near-retirees with whom we talked, said that they were extremely reluctant to have to depend on their children financially, or to think of moving in with their children. But the mere fact that they were discussing those issues indicates that some of them have already figured out that that is what lies ahead for them.

In Western Europe, most countries have variations of the lifetime pension system for most workers so they are keeping the system that we are walking away from. By comparison, 50% of the American workforce is not offered any retirement plan by their employers. And of those who are offered a plan, roughly 25% do not choose to join. In other words, everything is voluntary, and that's one of the reasons our results are so perilous for most people.

It's probably also smart to keep some money in cash to invest it. But I would resist at all costs taking a lump-sum distribution because the tendency is to spend out too fast in the early years of your retirement. The advice of professionals is to take out no more than 5% per year and that will give you 20 years of distributions, and at your age, 55, you probably have more than 20 years life expectancy.

The most common mistakes were investing in money market funds by people who were so scared at the prospect of managing their own funds that they picked the most conservative option, and their investments did not keep up with inflation. The second major mistake was being too heavily invested in their own company's stock, and buying when it was high and there was a lot of optimism about the company, and then having to sell it low when the company got in trouble.