Posted on 04/23/2006 7:49:45 AM PDT by SmithL
One of my readers is an underemployed 59-year-old man from among us here in the South Suburbs. Call him Harry. He works in information technology. Slowly and wearily, he says: "Once you get past 50, I swear, it gets tough, it gets really tough."
For instance, Harry applied for a job with a city of Chicago department that operates 24 hours a day, seven days a week. He got an offer for some contract work. There were no benefits, but it was a paying job.
A woman from the city called him one Monday morning and wanted to know if he could start at midnight. Harry said he'd like to give his current employer a week's notice. That wasn't good enough. The job was gone. The caller told him: "This is a brave new world. Learn to live with it."
(Excerpt) Read more at starnewspapers.com ...
It seems that most people who do well (if they're not lawyer scum screwing people for $250,000/year) follow plans similar to yours. Don't live the "high life" with the new cars, etc. For example, with gas above $3.00 per gallon I'm perfectly happy. Along with my 14 mpg Sequoia I have a 25 year old diesel VW pickup truck. It gets 44 mpg commuting, 50 on the highway, saving me about $2000 per year just in fuel for the car. If at 20 years old someone put all of that in mutual funds, over 40 years (Harry's age) it would cover retirement alone.
Why did you choose to have 9 kids? And why don't the kids pay for their own post secondary education?
Bingo! Never trust in anyone to "owe" you a job, a retirement, insurance, and so forth. There is only one person who has your own best interest in mind: you.
Firebird might be a bit blunt, but his message is right on track. One needn't be fortunate and no one is perfect. But "one" (everyone) should be responsible and we live in a culture that promotes irresponsible personal actions.
It is not anyone else's responsibility to provide for us PERIOD. Job, food, clothes, money for a rainy day ... nothing PERIOD.
It is our personal responsibilities.
And yet we live in a culture where the vast majority are about 3 pay checks away from bankruptcy and being "homeless".
Servicing a $700.00 mortgage payment at age 59 wasn't a real responsible choice to have been made. The fact the man claims he will have to work every day for the rest of his life suggests fairly poor financial planning (his responsibility).
It doesn't take much to live on in retirement if one has taken the responsibility to plan and save modestly for it beginning at a fairly early age. Even at modest interest rates.
Had the individual started saving $195.00 a month at age 22 and only earned an average of (5% APR), and was in the 15% tax bracket he would have had a quarter of a million dollars ($250,000.00) today. And that was during a period of time that interests were much higher for the greatest period of time. And I am talking about $195.00 dollars of taxed savings.
My wife and I are retired (at age 59) and live fairly comfortably on a monthly nut of about $2,000.00 a month and that includes annual golf course dues and other discretionary spending amounts. Of course we don't have any debt to service and it took a time and determination/responsibility to get to this point.
Had this or any other individual taken the responsibility at age 22 to save a couple hundred a month and have a minimum of 250,000.00 in savings they could withdraw $2,000 a month for the next 18 years before the principle would be depleted. And this doesn't count any other investments or that mystical "Social Security" each person can get at age 62.
Becoming financially secure is not fortunate. It is a product of taking personal responsibility. A commodity this culture has been lacking in for quite some time now.
So while I do feel bad for the chap I am not bleeding for him nor his situation. He bares a lions share of the responsibility for being in the position he is in.
Great quote. So appropriate to today's transnationalists.
Show me. I'm highly skeptical since no hospital is apt to give a physician who won't take insurance admitting privs.
Good post.
Most people who are laid off were productive members of their companies. The companies either no longer had work for them to do, or pretended not to, and then sent the work to India or China, or hired a new grad to do the same work (although probably not as well).
Thank you for the offer but you're too old for me so no thanks. (Sorry, another rejection for you based on your age...)
On a more serious note, I never said that there aren't special circumstances. The problem is that not saving for retirement is the RULE in the U.S. rather than the exception. So, yes, Socialism/Communism is apparently the way to go because we can't have only a few people saving for retirement while the vast majority spend it all on new cars, plasma TVs, etc. Again, there are a FEW exceptions to this but the rule is spend, spend, spend...
You have ISP...
Can I make my monthly payments? Yep so let's buy something else on credit. That seems to be the American way of living for the vast majority.
Everything I read tends to suggest that the majority of working Americans are about 3 pay checks away from bankruptcy or worse.
We live in a culture that doesn't and hasn't put a premium on "personal responsibility" for a long, long, long time now. And Peter is going to demand payment and it ain't going to be fun for quite a number of folks.
My home based business pays for it.
Man, I'm getting ripped by some for it though :)
Somebody has to pay for your Social Security.
LOL, too!!! Good post.
Not to worry, the grasshoppers always bad mouth the ants and think that the ants should give it up for the good of the "community". It's the second half of the grasshopper signature.
My husband too is severly disabled and because of that we chose to have "zero" children to financially support.
I work full time and contribute 9.1 percent of my gross to a retirement plan. I also have planned that I will not be able to count on my spouse for income.
My original question still stands: why are you paying for your childrens' post secondary education? My parents never offered to pay for mine.
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