In this week’s Your Money column, I tried to make the case that the current brinkmanship in Washington is a bit of a sideshow to a long-term problem that nobody much wants to discuss: we haven’t come close to charging ourselves enough money to pay for all of the things we’ve promised to one another.

That’s the inevitable conclusion I’ve come to after considering the frightening estimates from the realists at the Pew Center on the States and the regular dispatches from the research group Third Way on the sad state of our federal fiscal outlook.

So my own long-term financial plan is based on the presumption that I’ll be paying much higher tax rates and laying out much more for health care in retirement than current retirees do today. I’m trying to save accordingly and stashing money in tax-advantaged accounts of various sorts to the extent that I can.

Are you as bearish on the long-term fiscal outlook as I am? And what are you doing about it in your own financial life?

Article source: http://bucks.blogs.nytimes.com/2012/12/28/the-future-of-your-taxes/?partner=rss&emc=rss