Struggles with retirement, before and after

[JoB]

btw.. this would be a good step for more than the geriatric crowd… we have too many disabled people who need some kind of affordable semi-structured living arrangement that includes some pretty basic services.

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[JoB]

btw.. this would be a good step for more than the geriatric crowd… we have too many disabled people who need some kind of affordable semi-structured living arrangement that includes some pretty basic services.

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[littlebrowndog]

I actually know of people with disabilities and their supporters working on creative alternative co-housing. And I have worked for a few decades in services for people with disabilities and have watched the evolution from institutional to community based self determination. It has taken creative thinking and developing new ways of doing things but I have watched it and been a part of it and that is why I am so confident it could be made to happen with us.

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[littlebrowndog]

JoB

Off to work now so don’t have time for cutting and pasting links, but Google “multi generational cohousing”. But there are also local people working on creative options.

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[JoB]

littlebrowndog

i have visited a couple of the local multi-generational co-housing alternatives.

if not for my rescue dogs who don’t play well with others i would be living in one now:)

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[JoB]

i don’t think co-housing alternatives aren’t possible… i think that they will happen informally with or without changes in legislation… they are happening now… i have girlfriends in them:)

when it comes time.. trust me .. i will happily bend the law till it breaks to provide secure housing for myself and a couple of friends …

however, i think we need to re-visit the laws and regulations that currently make it nearly impossible for a single owner to run co-housing arrangements … especially for those who need limited forms of medical care… as a business…

my friend would like to fund her retirement by giving opportunity to others … a win win situation for her and for her tenants.

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[wakeflood]

Just wanted to post a short quote about retirement funding to get back to the OP thread:

“…Instead, financial hustlers and their media mouthpieces say the fault lies with Americans who either did not invest their savings properly or don’t don’t have enough money saved up because we spend too much of it.

This, frankly, ignores reality. Salaries for the majority of us are, when translated into constant dollars, falling. The median household is earning eight percent less income adjusted for inflation today than it did in 2000. In the first quarter of 2013, wages fell by the greatest amount ever recorded.

Read that again. Now add in…

“At the same time, costs of things we can’t do without continue to rise. College costs have tripled since the early 1980s. The amount of money students are borrowing to pay tuition bills is skyrocketing, and all but doubled from 2005 to 2012 to $1.1 trillion. Healthcare costs have also soared. The New York Times recently reported the cost of giving birth has tripled since 1996. At the same time, patients are increasingly responsible for ever greater amounts of their medical expenses: credit reporting agency Transunion recently claimed an astonishing 22 percent rise in out-of-pocket hospital expenses over the past year.”

But yeah, it’s all just spendthrifts.

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[miws]

Not only does that first quote ignore reality, the attitude depicted in the quote is one of my biggest peeves in any type of wrongdoing; basically laying some level of blame on the victim, whose choices or actions may, or may not have had a significant impact in allowing the wrongdoing to occur.

The blaming of the victim is wrong on so many levels, not the least of which, is it dilutes the level of wrongness committed by the perpetrator.

Mike

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[wakeflood]

I hear ya, Mike.

I’m not saying that no one’s ever gotten stupid with their $ by not thinking about the future – cuz I’ve met a few of those – but when we’re talking about millions of Americans who are doing the best they can and still watching the train leave the station without them AND being told it’s their own fault, that’s just plain cold-hearted evil.

And it just happens to be the most prominent excuse by the HAVE’S to explain why they’re doing better than others.

The vast majority of folks want to and try to do the right thing but the table is tilted and the game is rigged.

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[skeeter]

Is the game rigged for the 100,000 working at Microsoft? The 168,000 at Boeing? The 46,000 at Google? The untold thousands working for the Federal Gov’t? The 434,000 at IBM?

Look, I know I’m gonna be called the villain here, but bear with me. I’ll agree that life is rough for the uneducated, the sick, the disabled, etc. And it’s also rough for the folks working at fast food and walmart. And there are a lot of them. But is the game really rigged? Because that’s not been my experience. I’m not a member of the 1%. But I am a member of the 50%. And it ain’t bad. I just don’t let it bother me that other people have nicer cars and houses and vacations. I have what I need and as I look around West Seattle I’m not the only one.

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[JoB]

skeeter..

yes the game is rigged for those working at Boeing.

They just lost their deferred wages called a defined pension benefit plan.

they now get to rely on stock plans that are managed by someone else who is not responsible for replacing your assets if they do a lousy job managing them..

just like you do if you are employed..

and it may surprise you to learn that not everyone working at microsoft or google makes those big big bucks..

and even if they do..

they too get to rely on stock plans managed by someone else for their retirement..

of those who are currently doing well…

many of them have done the bubble and bust game of the software industry..

losing everything they gained in the first third riding out the unemployment in the next third… losing homes and retirement assets and …

only to scramble like crazy to make that retirement one more time in the last third of their careers

all for dollars that have not kept up with inflation.

yup.. the game is definitely rigged for them too

and not necessarily in a good way

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[JanS]

nice lumping ” the uneducated, the sick, the disabled, etc.” all together. Some of us disabled are educated, and no longer “sick”…just sayin’…I realize that you probably didn’t mean it that way, but that’s how it came across…to me, at least.

There are quite a few people out there with fine educations, who are older, who, through no fault of their own, are unemployed, using up the money they have, and can’t find employment..they apply many times, and are either underqualified, or overqualified. And now many have had their unemployment benefits taken away. Their decisions? Whether to pay this bill, or that bill, or what kind of beans to have with their rice this evening. And there’s something wrong with this world if full time employed workers get paid so little that they also have to rely on food stamps, food banks, etc.to feed their families, while the people they work for have more money than they would know what to do with in 10 lifetimes.

And that bothers many of us. Houses? Vacations? Cars? there are many who don’t have those at all, let alone not let it bother them that someone else has it nicer…to them, you have struck it rich…

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[wakeflood]

Skeets, this relates to your point about folks working for MS or Boeing, etc. There is a price to pay for most of them in those enviable positions ( and I fall into that category), and the price is now your window for making the big bucks is 10 years shorter than it was for my folks. If you don’t cash out by mid fifties, you’re expendable. And you are now expected to be “on the clock” 24/7 too. Work/ life balance is a figment of the imagination.

Either way, if your point is that you did some smart things over the years and others did too but ended up in a much less advantageous situation, then your point is taken. ;-)

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[skeeter]

JanS I’m sorry if I offended you. I did not mean to imply that disabled people are uneducated. I re-read my post and I don’t think I said that. But I apologize if that is how it was interpreted.

I also did not realize people had their unemployment benefits taken away from them. That is lousy. I knew there was an expiration for the benefits but I didn’t realize the benefit could be taken away before then.

Wakeflood makes a valid point about work/life balance. And being expendable at 55. WF – do you have any advice for a mid-career person about how to tackle this challenge?

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[wakeflood]

skeets, not a lot of obvious options around the conundrum – i.e., you didn’t cash out by mid-50’s.

One is to scale back your expectations of income/job security, get in shape, hair implants, facelift and find a place a few rungs back down the ladder at some smaller company.

Another is to go entrepreneur and see if you can parlay your business relationships into a free-standing consulting business. (Gotta’ plan this a few years before actually doing it!)

And then there’s always volunteering with the hopes of finding some reasonable paying gig in a non-profit or other similar field.

Or…bartending. ;-)

Pondering that last one myself if I get stuck…

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[skeeter]

Thanks Wakeflood. That’s really helpful. Do you mind me asking your age? Curious where you are on this schedule.

Right now I have a kind of 2 part plan. But it’s a very rough plan at this point and might not work out.

Part 1 of my plan is to save like crazy. I have been doing this ever since the age of 22. With no gaps in employment (lucky me) and a generous employer contribution to my 401k (again lucky me) I have saved quite a bit. “Quite a bit” is relative of course.

Part 2 of my plan is to begin looking for a lower stress and lower paying job in about 10 years. I’m now almost 40. I don’t think I’ll be able to manage the stress and mental requirements of my current job as I get older. I’m pretty sure I can do it another 10 years but definitely not 20 years. So if I’m able to find a job that has half the pay and half the responsibility when I’m 50 then I might be in good shape.

Does this seem like a reasonable plan to you?

The bartending gig doesn’t sound appealing to me. I like to work in the morning. Working in the evening would be very unpleasant for me.

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[VBD]

Pensions are severely underfunded in all industries and government sectors that still offer them. The idea of a pension was to assure that retirees would have enough money to sustain themselves for a few years after retirement.

Now, so many people are living 10, 20, even 40 years beyond retirement, that the amount of money paid by businesses is unsustainable. Not to mention that the boomer generation is retiring and that makes an already upside-down pension system even more lopsided.

In 1935 the average life expectancy was about 61. That was also the year social security retirement age was set at 65. The life expectancy in the US is now close to 80 and going up. That is a HUGE retired population.

This is the reason Boeing, and others are desperate to eliminate pensions.

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[wakeflood]

While that is generically true, I suspect that life expectancy figure of 61 back in the day was somewhat artificially lowered due to higher rates of infant and child mortality.

But that’s not to debate the point.

Let’s not forget that many/most of these large companies are flush with cash. Like TRILLIONS of dollars sitting overseas. Chunks of it are being used to do stock buy backs which are short term ways of padding top level mgmnts pockets (whose gains on those very stocks are taxed at lower rates than normal income – just sayin) and that $ is NOT being used to fund hiring nor R&D.

So, lets not kid ourselves that these companies are hurting. They aren’t. And additionally, a lot of those pension funding plans were negotiated as offsets to current wage increases that the companies didn’t want to fund either. So, they not only got good current wage deals, they then DIDN’T pay out the pensions that they themselves negotiated.

Must be nice.

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[wakeflood]

The point of this whole thing being, in rigging the game for the short term advantages for a few at the top of these companies and their large scale investors, they are killing the goose that laid the golden egg – namely, the American middle class consumer.

We’re the largest economic engine on the planet and genocide is in progress. Who exactly will be buying the goods and services in the coming years/decades?

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[wakeflood]

I guess they’re planning on everyone in the 1% will own 3,500 each of: homes, cars, boats, accountants, hair salons, grocery stores, restaurants, vineyards, computers, etc., etc…

I didn’t include lawyers, cuz they probably actually DO have 3,500 of them. And maybe the accountants too? ;-)

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[wakeflood]

While they changed the laws and manipulated the systems to maximize their INDIVIDUAL corporate profitability, they, as a group, lost track of how that impacts the greater whole.

Like a swarm of locusts, they will rape the land for all they can and be fat and happy until…the piper has to be paid.

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[skeeter]

Well I’m one of the accountants. But full disclosure – the only boat I own is an inflatable kayak. So I must not be part of the 1%.

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[VBD]

I’d say the problem is bigger than just the 1%. Perhaps the top 10%. Most people with the means to do so, look at retirement as an extended vacation. Dream trips around the world, or a nice home in the country. Maybe to live in retirement housing communities on golf courses, or near ski resorts. People want more than just enough to “make it” through their last few years. I know I do.

So the top tier of people might think they need $10 million or more, just to fulfill their version of the retirement dream.

The fall of social security and pensions actually exacerbates the problem, since the wealthy are without those safety nets as well. So they save for themselves – excessively.

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[wakeflood]

skeets??? Inflatable kayaks are great and all but that’s not getting it done, my friend. Time to step up and get the 65′ cabin cruiser. You may not be able to afford the payments, but it might take years before someone repossesses it! ;-)

Oh, and as icing on the cake of the nice situation big corporations have created for themselves, most of them are quite adept at blackmailing municipalities into zero B&O taxes and paying for the infrastructure needed to support their facilities. Heard somewhere recently that it amounted to around $500k per actual new job. So, that’s a win/win…for them.

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[wakeflood]

VBD, what’s the “fall of social security” you refer to? The SSTF is funded fully through mid-century and if you bumped the pay-in on wages up to $250k you’d be solvent as far as they can count.

Nobody who can see retirement in the next few decades will have to worry about getting what they’re promised.

And there was a day not too long ago when the average Joe could plan on living a very decent lifestyle after retirement by putting a fair bit away and not living stupidly on the way there. Those days are either in the rear view or just about to be…

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