In our generation, it's important to understand what you don't have, or to be specific, what you won't have.

Social Security is a time bomb ticking down to its last seconds. Our parents' generation, the so-called baby boomers, are nearing retirement. The collective expense of their retirement is going to cost this country, us, far more than we can support.

If you watched President Bush give his State of the Union address Wednesday night, you know he talked an awful lot about this. The often-repeated question we hear all the time is "How do you save Social Security?"

But, what does this mean to the average student who doesn't see a week past the end of Friday night's beer bottle? Well, a lot. It concerns our age group more than any other, and we need to pay more attention to it.

The issue isn't really a political one, although its solutions are politically conjugated by the Republican and Democratic parties. It's an issue of how to handle a system, and the complicated solution will be nothing short of pulling a rabbit out of a hat.

It's perhaps in this complication that many people our age become lost. Given that most of us are acclimated to thinking of money in terms of "accounts" - places that hold amounts of money we either owe or own - Social Security is an entirely different beast.

So, without further bantering, here is your State News crash course to Social Security. In the end, hopefully you'll realize it's not as hard to understand as you might think.

The Social Security system works off the simple principle that the younger generations will help financially support the older generations when they retire. It began in 1935, during the Great Depression, with the signing of the Social Security Act by former President Franklin Roosevelt. Because of the poor economic situation, many people needed support for when they retired.

Funding for Social Security works just like a tax. A percentage is taken from your check, and your employer matches that amount. The current rate is 12.4 percent split between you and your employer.

The money drawn into the fund is then paid out to retirees. The amount they receive is based on a complicated formula. Ideally, this system would be self-sustaining as one generation paid for the next. It worked great for a time until the baby boomer generation contained so many children that population growth became disproportionate. After the explosion of births, birth rates returned to normal.

The essential "problem" with Social Security is that our generation has the mass retirement of our parents hanging over our heads to fund.

The reason Social Security is important to us is, by the time we go to retire, there will be no money or Social Security system to speak of.

In his address, President Bush pushed to make some big revisions to the system. Among these, he highlighted limiting benefits for wealthy retirees, indexing benefits to prices rather than wages, increasing the retirement age, discouraging taking Social Security benefits early and, most hotly debated by Democrats, turning Social Security into personal accounts similar to retirement plans.

These solutions could, potentially, be the answer, or they could prove disastrous. Our generation needs to be more involved in the debate to make sure the right choice is made. Although the consequences of not having any support when we retire may seem far off, they are not going to go away. Ignoring Social Security will make the problem insolvable.