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 ...
I really don't think you caught the point of my reply to the other poster thinking of starting a business. Actually, you made my exact point better.
And I was not saying young and inexperienced has advantage over older age and wisdom/experience. My point there was, that someone said they should wait until they are in their 40's to get started.
If you are going to do it, don't wait till you are old. I bet you yourself have said, I should have done this a long time ago."
Then you have nothing to complain about right?
I'm chuckling with you. Somehow my post is getting turned around in ways I did not mean.
By all means, if you want to start a business, go for it. Just don't hock your house to do it. Make it go from day one on it own.
Oh, and on the part about "giving back to the community..." forget that. They will come knocking anyhow. It's called taxes and fees and more fees. Your focus should be profit. That is what it is all about. And if it is not, you will fail.
I'll never forget the words of the communist party leader of the town where my factory is located in China. He said, "First, a business must make a profit."
"Many of these people were promised pensions, which in the world of the past were inviolate. They were paid less because they had pensions, and then the companies pulled the pension out from under them."
I worked for a state institution, a public University, and retired almost 2 years ago (wonderful!). In my administrative position as Ass't to the Head of a large science department on campus, I wasn't paid that great, but to compensate for that we had good pension packages. I am extremely lucky in that our pensions are protected by our State Constitution which assures that all state pensions must be paid and not screwed around with. So, unless the State itself goes under, I am protected.
Now, the healthcare part of our benefit package is subject to dinking around with, but so far so good. I suspect our co-pays will continue to go up for our doctor office visits; however, I don't have to pay health insurance premiums anymore, as they are paid as part of my benefit package. And, I don't have to pay State income taxes. Plus I have dental and eyecare to boot, as well as drug coverage. Now, one could say, typical gov't largess; however, I was never paid well for the amount of work I had to do, the hours I had to work, and the responsibilities I had, like many others in middle management administrative positions. In exchange, my benefit package was very good.
I am now reaping that which I worked very hard for and enjoying it to boot, and I pity anyone who has had the pension "rug" pulled out from under them, when they worked all their lives expecting their benefit packages to be honored. I don't like it when companies renege on their promises to their employees because of their own bad planning. It' cruel. Now, if it is a small company, and it goes belly-up, well, that's life. But some of these large corporations, which are now shafting their employees by changing the rules of the game after it's in their ninth inning, are just a bunch of louses. Change the rules for all new hires, but leave the older employees' benefits alone. Plus, a lot of these companies are trying to foist their pension expenses off on the federal government. That stinks too.
Mr. M was laid off mid-50s, did consulting and when the economy went south after 9/11, we were able to buy some more rental real estate through creative leveraging and now that's pretty much a full time gig. He's happy. I'm self employed. We eat regular.
That is certainly a VERY judgmental statement on your part. Are lord and master judging me?
By the way, I read the entire article. The article doesn't mention that he was wiped out by illness, the market crash (which, by the way is pretty much back), etc. I have no doubt that an extra sob story aspect like that would have gotten in - make the **evil** employer look even worse.
My point throughout my posts still stand - in general people in the US are "live for the now" types and could really care less about retirement. Savings rates vs. spending/debt are proof. But, yes, FReepers should have fits stating that there are at least three people who they have heard about who were devastated financially by cancer - so how heartless of me to want people to save for retirement.
It's not heartless at all;it's actually a good goal. However, it IS heartless to assume that because others have not had the same circumstances -- and luck -- that you have had they must be slackers looking for government hand-outs.
Thought yall might be interested in this thread
Again, there is plenty of proof that people in the US DO NOT save for retirement. And the average pay in the US is $36,764. Yes, one can save even a little on that.
I don't think Harry is a real person
How are some ways you saved?
You neglect to consider people in the following situations:
1. People laid off multiple times who have used up their savings while looking for work.
2. People whose pensions (which they counted on) have been stripped by their former employers.
3. People who have been devastated by illness or natural disaster.
4. People whose savings have been pirated by unscrupulous investment manipulators (Enron, Indianapolis Power and Light).
5. People who have toiled at jobs which never paid enough for them to save very much (the working poor).
It is all well and good to make the statements about how everyone should save, and it's their fault if they don't have enough to retire. Are you going to reimburse your parents for the money they spent on your education?
Why are you assuming this? I'm certainly not. Facts indicate that the vast majority of people in the US don't bother saving for retirement - until it's too late. Are the facts so heartless that they should never be mentioned in a discussion regarding getting laid off as one ages?
I was assigned to a contract in San Diego AFTER I had moved to Pocatello. My company didn't cover the travel costs. It's not fun to suck up 8 months of travel costs and thousands of miles of wear and tear on my personal vehicle. I was covering work for 4 Java programmers, 3 C++ programmers and a EE. Average billed time was 250 hours/month at $256/hour. My company was reaping a windfall and using the money to cover a room full of people for whom there was no work.
The contract company was a startup and it folded up shop in June 2002. Less than a week later, my "boss" sent me a layoff notice. Seems he was sitting on his ass doing nothing with all the money I was earning for him. No marketing. No effort to find the next bit of work. He laid off all the other non-producers too.
I had 480 hours of vacation on the books. I was allowed two week grace before termination...or I could consume my vacation in 40 increments to remain on the payroll. I chose the latter. I did my own marketing. First, I tracked down immediate work to port some weather analysis software from SUN Solaris to Linux. That put me back into a "covered" mode and out of "layoff" mode. I then found $3 million in new work in Detroit. My old boss wanted a piece of that action. I told him to "stuff it" and took the work to a trustworthy manager in Dayton, Ohio.
That was my first layoff ever. I decided that I needed to get out from under my mortgage. I put 4,000 shares on the table to cover the mortgage, pay off both cars and zero my credit card. Damn if the company didn't stop the sale for first time in its 33 year history. The share price was lowered from $33 to $28. I just lost $20,000 overnight. I decided I still needed to pay off the mortgage. The cars and credit cards would have to wait. I sold 4100 shares and paid off my main residence. Except for $3,400 per year in taxes, I'm pretty well set for a place to live.
Today I have more work than I have time to do it. I work 70+ hours per week on embedded systems design and implementation. I also have signal processing tasks on another project. Finding time to mow the lawn is sometimes challenging.
Things just aren't as they were when retirement plans were were originally adopted.
No one foresaw the skyrocketing health care cost increases (largely brought on by govt regs) starting in the early 90's.
Most did not foresee that stock mkt reversal (late 90's)causing pension funds to underfund/BK
Who'da thunk unnecessary govt. regs & oversight (& activist judges) could've created this ?
Hey, when your masters can dictate that your health plan cover Viagra, toupees & "breast augmentation" sumpin's wrong...& govt. deserves the most credit !
"By 59 he should have saved enough so that he could retire. Then it wouldn't really matter if he were laid off. His savings should have been enough for your food, clothing, health insurance, and whatever fun he wants to have. Your home should be paid off by then."
~~~~~~~~~~
That is cold response, since you have no idea of the circumstances of this man's life. If you have been fortunate enough to have lived your life with no unexpected health costs and if you are not responsible for the help or care of family members and if you have never been broadsided by any kind of unexpected tragedy, then I am delighted for you. But for you to state that "by 59, he SHOULD have saved enough" for an unexpected downsizing is assuming much that you do not know.
Sure, but I would have problems reading their finely commented signal processing code. It's bad enough dealing with code commented in German. The general rule is writing software is to use variable and function/method names that are meaningful. The problem is that names that are meaningful to a German/Spanish/Italian/French speaker aren't necessarily meaningful to an English speaker.
Thus far, I haven't had much competition from Mexican illegal aliens in the world of hardware and software engineering.
Well we should all try to save more. Beating up on people who haven't done well, without knowing individual circumstances is counter-productive IMO. What is important is that today is not to late to start.
Are you going to reimburse your parents for the money they spent on your education?
I paid every penny - for my undergrad and masters. Paid off my student loans early so I could get saving. But, yes, this is unrealistic and can't possibly be done. OK, off to the car dealership to see about a new car!!!
What's mind boggling is that people call this arrogant. When in reality what this is is a person who didn't want to get caught not having enough money for retirement so I saved and invested, working two jobs to be sure that i will have enough. I'm sorry if that upsets you.
And, who knows - some day I may loose it all. But I'm not going to go about whining about it (certainly the man in the article wasn't). I'd do what I always do - get back up and keep going at it. I've had tenants who don't bother paying the rent because their cell phone bill is hundreds of dollars a month when I didn't even own a cell phone. Yes, plenty of people would rather live like Kings and Queens and not put some money away. And, yes, there are a very few tragedy cases where there are exceptions.
Did you -- or will you -- pay for your kids' college?
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