About being laid off and unwanted when you're 59

The Star (South Chicago) ^ | 4/23/6 | Michael Bowers

[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."

[ex-snook]

"Why did you choose to have 9 kids?"

Good for her. If there were more 'Alouettes' in Western Civilization, Europe and the USA would not be inviting illegal immigrants or Muslims to populate their countries.

[CindyDawg]

I have made lot's of mistakes. Times when I had more, I could have saved more. I have done the debt thing. I admire that you planned but some of us have been trapped or learned the hard way but that is is ok and since I've been there I don't judge. I know where a lot are coming from . I remember times of hunting for change for milk and diapers the day before payday. I don't know how I could have saved during those times. What I have learned is that I should try to be a good manager of what I have and that God always provides and I shouldn't worry. That said, I think Harry is a whiner and paying 3 dollars for gas irritates me to no end:').

[ImpBill]

I don't want to appear or sound unkind here, but you made the choice to raise a family into your later life. We all make choices and not planning for being somewhat financially secure by age 59 was a choice this fellow made. Actually I would rather think that he didn't even give it a thought 35 years earlier.

We live in a culture where personal responsibility and accepting the consequences for "our" choices somehow have been relegated to someone else.

[null and void]

Yeah. I'm 53 and "between jobs"...

[marajade]

There's a point in time when you just have to choose between personal responsibility and compare that to the number of offspring one person has.

[squalus192]

You sure do assume a lot! You what they say when you assume to much! Jerk!

[squalus192]

You sure do assume a lot! You what they say when you assume to much! Jerk!

[69ConvertibleFirebird]

I agree that Capitalism will not work without a moral (read Judeao/Christian) foundation. Many of the founding fathers agree as well:

"We have no government armed with power capable of contending with human passions unbridled by morality and religion. Avarice, ambition, revenge, or gallantry, would break the strongest cords of our Constitution as a whale goes through a net. Our Constitution was made only for a moral and religious people. It is wholly inadequate to the government of any other."
John Adams

But I will still maintain that one should save a couple of thousand per year, starting as soon as he gets a job, planning for the day when he either can not, or chooses to not, work.

[El Gato]

Money is no big deal. Yeah, we have to live but things work out.

That's more or less our attitude.

Another complication is that we don't live in the same town, but rather about 3 3/4 hours apart (on limited access Texas highways at Texas speeds!) We'd like to retire to San Antonio, or nearby, but now have to factor in not moving the girls after they get into high school, and preferably middle school. (My wife's family moved when she, the oldest, was a junior in HS, and she feels it really messed up the younger siblings, including the girls grandmother, who has since turned herself around, but it's been a long journey, including so many husbands, I've lost track. She's now married to the girls' grandfather's brother. :) ).

We moved, because my wife got her position as una professora , just before our oldest (now mother of the delightful Miss Victoria) started high school. Even that was traumatic, but it worked out OK.

[CindyDawg]

LOL about the SS. I wanted 12 but it wasn't meant to be. I had the idea that I would pay for the 1st and each would pay for the next. That didn't even work with 3. You have been blessed 9 times and your husband is alive and you have some income. Things will work .

[ladyjane]

Your post reminded me of an email I got the other day. It was about IRA's and the value of compound interest. It gave this example:

If you have $14,000 in your IRA by the time you're 26 (that's 2k a year for 7 years) you never have to put any more into it and you'll have more at retirement (about a million dollars) than the person who starts putting in 2k every year at the age of 26.

[CindyDawg]

Can you homeschool them? It would give you a lot more freedom.

[bvw]

Getting laid off at any age is traumatic.

Let not anyone fall into the "being a victim" trap -- in this case the vile pitch, the sweetened trap, is that one is a victim of being old. A lie. Accept it and you become trapped in a cage of your own making.

[svcw]

Good for you. I made an abrupt change myself .. at 59 just got a job managing a coffee house. Not related at all to anything I have ever done (except the management part).

[69ConvertibleFirebird]

Jerk!

Jealousy/envy is never pretty...

[Mr Rogers]

There is a lot of truth in what you say. However, there are still sections in the government where government employees develop the software and do the engineering. It isn't common, but I like it when I encounter it (as a management type myself) - when the government develops and owns the software, we don't get raped when we want a change made.

I'm looking at one project now where it looks like the government has its own software that the engineers think can be modified for about $30K in salary. A private company has offered to EXPLORE doing the work - for $300K. With a bit of luck, later this summer, I'll be able to tell the company no thanks...

[squalus192]

You wish. Your ego is astounding! I think the phrase pompus a$$ comes to mind!

[ImpBill]

Thank you so much. I have been trying to point out the same. You realized at about the same time we did that something needed to be done and took the "responsibility" to do it.

I was one of the first American's laid off as your nick name suggests you can understand. In 1973 I was Rif'd. A few years before any of the auto workers began being laid off. And yet it still took me until about 1984 to figure out I better start planning to be financially "solvent" by age 60. It takes work and a bit of sacrifice (not much actually), but it can be done. Retired last September and loving it and still not spending the amount we set aside for living each month.

We live in a culture that has not only left out the idea of "taking personal responsibility", but almost promoted the idea of living irresponsibly and way too many Americans have chosen that path, I am afraid.

Congratulations.

Ain't living on easy street, but quite comfortable on our "budget".

[Max Monroe]

Try getting a job at age 71 (little old gray haired lady)after having lost all of your retirement money to an Enron-like situation. And my tag line is true. That's what I'm doing right now. Loking for something a little less strenuous like becoming a dog washer or something.

[Ghost of Philip Marlowe]

Hey, no argument there. Part of public education should include basic finances and saving for retirement.

But there will always be those unfortunates in society who have their savings wiped out or who work in low-end jobs that don't pay well but still need to be done and which some perform faithfully.

The Collectivists will use these stories to appeal to the emotions and have more intrusive regulations enforced or to create another welfare class based upon this demographic.