Not everyone is as fortunate and perfect as you seem to be.
lol
What, it's not an Ozzie & Harriet world anymore?
Why aren't I told about these things?
Thank you for the compliment but you don't know me, nor do you know my financial circumstances.
Are there no prisons? No work farms?
“Well, if they’d rather die then let them die. It will reduce the surplus population.”
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.
There's a lot of that here. Some guy's getting old and on the one hand these folks tell him to "get a job" and on the other to "start a business."
We have some real ham handed conservatives here. The guy isn't a parasite, but they treat him like he is.
These articles always seem to bring out the worst in Freepers. Stories of people being unemployed or in some kind of bad financial predicament just serve as an opportunity for folks to say "well they deserve it for not starting their own company like me!" or "they deserve it for not being independently wealthy already...like me!" It isn't so much sage advice as it is anonymous internet boasting.
Well said!
Just ratchet the argument up another step, and another, and another, and pretty soon he should have been a millionaire at age 20.