Assuming he saved nothing for retirement, and assuming he never worked for an employer that had a pension (which would be a bit odd for a 72 year old)

• when the car needs new brakes, you don't have retirement money. When the hot water tank breaks, that's most of your contribution. When your upstairs neighbor floods the bathroom and you're moving the things out that can be saved while dealing with the futility of insurance and renting from old and new place for a month, retirement contributions tend to be null for a bit. When life isn't like on TV, retirement becomes a secondary dream to just getting by.
• we don't get dream jobs every time. Sometimes you go for a living wage and that's not enough to live large at 70.
• sometimes we have car accidents or horrible illnesses. And, in america, that means you lose everything you ever saved - either on costs, or on fighting your medical insurer.

Americans live in this cognitive dissonance where they know all these things but yet just hope they'll win the lottery and not have any of it happen to them. I hope you also never have to deal with any of that, and you don't die for many years until that freak parachute/jetski/shark accident takes you.