Posted on 12/28/2006 8:07:00 AM PST by shrinkermd
Divorce and lost earning time could put living standards in a free fall late in life.
We traveled where we wanted," she said. "He bought me furs and jewelry. We stayed at the best hotels."
Then the marriage fell apart. Now 51, Tucker Emerson scrambles to pay the bills and wonders how she will get by in retirement.
...I don't know anyone who can afford to retire, and they're all people my age," said Leslie Clark, 64, a flight attendant for Delta Air Lines Inc. who lives in El Segundo. "Most of the people I know will have to find another career, and no one knows what it is."
(Excerpt) Read more at latimes.com ...
Higher overall rates of divorce and singlehood. Record numbers of women are heading toward later life without the backup of a partner's savings and income. Unmarried, older women have higher poverty rates than their male counterparts and much higher poverty rates than married women, government data show.
• Interrupted working years. Although baby boom women generally have more education and work skills than their mothers, many quit jobs or work part time to care for children or ailing relatives. Such efforts may be cherished by family members, but they slash retirement benefits.
• Long lives. At age 65, women are expected to live an average of three years longer than men. This greater longevity magnifies several risks to retirement security, including raising the danger that a woman will outlast her savings or incur costly medical bills without help from a spouse.
In addition to these factors, women overall still earn less than men and have less in the way of retirement benefits for old age
That should be another incentive to either NOT get married or if you do get married MAKE IT WORK.
Is it your opinion that this article makes the case that women are victims or is it true that some women are extremely reckless and that the circumstances of older life are going to be harsh for many women who thought they could simply dispose of men they found inconvenient or irritating for any number of reasons?
Divorce has a far more devastating effect on males. It destroys their health, resulting in greatly reduced lifespan. And Family and Divorce Courts are ferociously anti-male, anti-father hellholes run by FemiNazis.
You all wanted women to be liberated..sometimes you get more than you wish for.
Maybe the next generation will save more spend less and stay married.
Ya, we know:
Women and minorities hardest hit.
yadda yadda yadda
I looked at the article, and it's all women, women, women. If the feminist revolution has anytning to do with it, it has been to pit men against women and increase selfishness on both sides.
It's not really a matter of men vs. women. It's a matter of more divorces, more broken families, more spending on immediate pleasures and less interest in saving for the future, less willingness to care for ones family, fewer close communities and neighbors.
I'm one of the few among my peers who started putting away $1000 a year for retirement in my 20's. My parents were immigrants who would rather go without than go with debt. Those who do incur debt can scarcely tell the difference between good debt (mortgages) and bad debt (credit card interest). Bankruptcy no longer has any stigma. Society is geared to consumerism and women live longer and poorer as a result.
I've long held the belief that obesity and poverty are linked, and given today's environment, soulless lives are the cause. (Flame me if you will, but there is a lot similarity in the root causes here.)
Be careful what you wish for....
Excuse me...many of the women I know in the situation described by the author are women dumped by their husbands who now have young trophy wives. I say if a woman has labored at home and raised children rather then putting her time into a career of her own, the husbands who decide they need younger and prettier wives need to support the wife of their youth properly. After all, in many case her work in the home allowed him to concentrate on his career.
Not at all. I'm happily married to my first wife and will celebrate my 25th anniversary next week. What you read is my observation that a good number of people, men and women alike, really did think they could dispose of the mates they didn't find to be perfect and then got old and unattractive (not to mention developing personality traits that encouraged solitary life). They're going to raise their voices pretty soon and we're all going to have to listen. It won't be pleasant to hear and the chorus may well be large enough that the lesson can't be taught: they will get their way and be recompensed for behavior they should have to pay for themselves.
I know of only a small fraction of such cases in my area. By far the biggest reason in my area is selfishness. Being married is a partnership in which compromise is a big part of making things work. I wouldn't trade my wife for someone half her age and a pin-up model. It just wouldn't work. Probably fun for a week or so and then the obvious irritations on both sides would kick in.
Ahem, your comment seems to impeach itself. If a woman has in fact devoted herself and given over a potential career to raise children and then is divorced by the man who benefited, I can't see how any divorce court wouldn't hand every penny he'll ever have over to her. There being a substantial monetary gain for the lawyer prosecuting the case, that is even more probable.
I personally know two women who are unmarried and approaching 50. The first is long-divorced and now 100% employed as a professional and living with a man for whose child she is something of a substitute mother. This situation appears rather stable and potentially even fruitful for the lot of them.
The other woman is equally professional and never-married. Every penny she has she has in her own name. She also has no family outside of that into which she was born. That is a financially stable situation, but a loveless and empty one.
These two women seem to put the lie to the article, but then they took their own lives into their own hands and dealt with the cards they got. That appears to be not what the article is interesting in pursuing and is not the situaion to which I was alluding.
But you may know better. If so, I concede your point for those women on whose behalf you presume to speak. That they got left behind seems to me to speak to the issue of mutual intimacy being simply dropped. Either these women, as a class, are unable to sustain their own intimacy with their men or these men, as a class, are singularly unsuitable as mates. In either case, we have a bunch of people now getting older who have perhaps come to view marriage as something that comes and goes. This strikes me as a passive and destructive attitude and is what they are all going to pay for, unless they can stimulate enough pity to get us to pay for it.
Divorce has the greatest devestation on the kids.
In older times, women tolerated their husbands' mistresses and lived in wretched and loveless, albeit not necessarily poverty-stricken, marriages.
Now, the men are "forced" to choose between their mistresses and their wives. They often choose the mistresses. This is probably better for the wife, but it does cause financial strain.
As a man, I can say that many men are really dogs.
No argument from me. You concisely state the facts. Well said.
There's another big problem..The vast majority of the women described here, don['t wake up initially to the fact that there life, and life style has changed dramatically until a few years after, when it's too late. Best example..assets are split..the wife, usually at the beset of her lawyer, goes for the house, often the biggest assest. Problem is, she doesn't need it, she can't afford the upkeep, and it becomes a huge cash drain from the getgo..
I know two women in their 70's who try to live on SS payments of about $500/mo. Another expects her income to drop to $650 when her lifetime husband dies. I don't care about people who want more money to travel. That's their problem. But the first group needs a decent benefit.
Both, actually. There are obviously some women who won't make a marriage work, and the same goes for some men.
-"We traveled where we wanted," she said. "He bought me furs and jewelry. We stayed at the best hotels."
Then the marriage fell apart."-
Yeah - it just fell apart one day! Boom! (sheesh). Her entire concern, it seems to me, is that she misses the furs and jewelry and hotels. Maybe THAT's why the marriage "fell apart".
$1000.00 a year is not enough- even if you start in your 20's
Compound an average 15% interest, and assume a 40 year career. Further, if I could stash away $1000 a year on a starting salary of less than $15K, imagine what that skill translates to once you're earning near six figures. (BTW - I'm not forty yet, have been divorced, and believe me get no alimony.)
Teaching kids the value of saving half their allowence, giving ten cents of each dollar to charity (their choice) and making their "mad money" purchases count, teaches them a lot about self control and self respect for a lifetime.
Sorry kid. From your own words, your hubby treated you nicely. In retrospect, you probably should have worked harder at keeping the marriage together.
Too many women buy into the "supportive" comments from their friends:
Midlife Crisis
When I was married 25 years, I took a look at my wife one day and said, "Honey, 25 years ago, we had a cheap apartment, a cheap car, slept on a sofa bed and watched a 10 inch black and white TV, but I got to sleep every night with a hot 25 year old blonde.
Now, we have a nice house, nice car, big bed and plasma screen TV, but I'm sleeping with a 50 year old woman. It seems to me that you are not holding up your side of things."
My wife is a very reasonable woman. She told me to go out and find a hot 25 year old blonde, and she would make sure that I would once again be living in a cheap apartment, driving a cheap car, and sleeping on a sofa bed.
Au contraire. Studies are showing that the next generation, I believe they are calling them the "millenials" are very much like the post WWII generation. Belongers. Back to family, turning back on materialism. I am hopeful indeed. The two I am raising, and quite a few of their friends show a positive trend.
The article implies that it is mens's fault, but I imagine that a lot of these women were never married and just had kids on their own, thereby lowing their earning ability, and upward mobility. Do Welfare Queens save for retirement. Finally, if this were caused by broken marriages, who is doing the dumping?
I agree 100%. Men need to toddle on back to the Bible and check it out. They are ultimately responsible for the relationship! Not the woman, as many want to whine and cry a river about...
Whaaa! Don't take the vows if you don't intend on keeping them. Marriage is supposed to last a life time. Divorce is the punishment for a failed marriage.
I would hate to think that my husband is "ultimately responsible" for our relationship.
So would he, since as far as we're concerned it's a partnership.
Oh well...We all hate to think certain things for certain reasons...
So, just figure out why it is that you hate thinking such a thing...
That has already been explained in the second sentence of my post.
No they didn't, or this article wouldn't have to be written. A feminist made this stupid quote, so the sad experiences listed here expose these lies in their own words.
If anything, this article points out how marriage is taken way too casually and divorce taken way too quickly and easily. In most cases, what we are seeing here are the fruits of divorce and /or greed.
Everybody suffers when life becomes "all about me", either by a single person or one or both parties in a marriage. Strangely enough (and despite extensive life examples), "all about me" is precisely what our society seems to glorify and encourage and to hell with the consequences, which are dreadful! Certainly, this attitude is what feminism is all about.
Selfishness is not a virtue, and particularly not in a marriage. Saying it is doesn't change the facts it isn't.
Alrighty then. You want the last word, so you can have it...
I agree 100%. Men need to toddle on back to the Bible and check it out. They are ultimately responsible for the relationship! Not the woman, as many want to whine and cry a river about...
You're right about men needing to be moral and responsible but women who are living out there God given roles are scarce even in the church.
Yeah, right.
No kidding. I'd bet a large sum that the luxuries were her idea and he grumbled every time she indulged herself on his income. At first he endured and tried to keep ahead of her spending. Eventually he decided he had to look out for his financial future and extracted himself from the situation as an act of self preservation, even if it meant enduring huge legal and alimony expenses. Now he’s desperately trying to catch up so he can have some semblance of a retirement. She still doesn’t understand the basic arithmetic involved and feels like a victim, when in fact, he is the victim of her narcissism and self-indulgence. Just a guess, but a good one.
Usually, it's a relief to reach the age of 65 when Medicare kicks in..
What I've found out, is those with little to no savings or assets, are helped out the most.
The rest of us will have to spend it all down before we can qualify for any financial assistance. If we live long enough, we will spend all our money on caretakers or nursing homes untill it is all gone, while the person with no assets gets the same thing for FREE.
sw
Settle down with that one. Lurch or no lurch, men are to behave as men. Regardless of this, that, and the other. A man's behavior is NOT dependent on a woman. That is totally absurd and it is also known as conditional.
Let's take it all back to Adam and Eve. Yes, it has been established that Eve ate first. But guess why? Because Adam neglected her and she was left on her own to deal with the temptation...
LOL That's about the most absurd thing I've ever seen!
Yes. There are a great many that think the Bible is absurd. And you can take the LOL and throw it in the garbage because that is such an utterly deceitful thing to tack on the end of what you just said...
Her entire concern, it seems to me, is that she misses the furs and jewelry and hotels.
_________________________________________________________
You nailed it right there!
How many of these poor women the type who someone would want to spend the rest of their life with (I'm talking behavior, class and attitude)?
Settle down with that one. Lurch or no lurch, men are to behave as men. Regardless of this, that, and the other. A man's behavior is NOT dependent on a woman. That is totally absurd and it is also known as conditional.
Maybe a man can and should be honorable and loving no matter what. That will probably keep his marriage together but if the woman isn't also fulfilling her responsibilities it will not be a happy marriage for either of them. The children will still suffer.
Is a woman's behavior dependant on the man's?
"Midlife Crisis
When I was married 25 years, I took a look at my wife one day and said, "Honey, 25 years ago, we had a cheap apartment, a cheap car, slept on a sofa bed and watched a 10 inch black and white TV, but I got to sleep every night with a hot 25 year old blonde.
Now, we have a nice house, nice car, big bed and plasma screen TV, but I'm sleeping with a 50 year old woman. It seems to me that you are not holding up your side of things."
My wife is a very reasonable woman. She told me to go out and find a hot 25 year old blonde, and she would make sure that I would once again be living in a cheap apartment, driving a cheap car, and sleeping on a sofa bed."
The things men give up for sex.
Mmmkay. I'll humor you, where in the Bible does it say that "because Adam ignored Eve, she went ahead and ate of the fruit"?
I'm being picky here but, the LOL was at the front of my statement, and I must say I was being entirely open and not at all deceitful. It is entirely in the husband's realm to do what he must, however he cannot control his wife's actions or her heart. Are you suggesting that if his wife were to be unfaithful or otherwise, it's his fault?
It most certainly is. And, today what has happened is really quite simple. Many men have relinquished their responsibility, which in turn will cause the woman to eventually relinquish her responsibilities. This is the rule and there are always exceptions to the rule for various reasons. So, don't any of you men or women go and get all tied up in knots and ready for a fist fight because you've found a loophole...
Are you yelling at the women or the men who leave their wives for younger models. I think this is what the article is referring to.
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