My retirement fund lost 7K last week. I’m STILL crying!
Where I am many, maybe most boomers I know have the same plan.. they are big in debt on a house and counting on home price appreciation for the next 10 years. Then they’ll all cash out and have enough to retire on.
The slight problem is they all have the same plan, and the younger generation doesn’t have much money.
I had some pretty good savings socked away in my forties. Then, after 9/11, the place I worked shut down.
It took me ten months to find a new job. I had a kid in college, but could not qualify for scholarship money because I had made too much money the year before. That had to be paid for, because you don’t want someone in their junior year with a 3.5 in engineering dropping out. (Well, maybe some freepers would make their kids drop out, but I would not.)
Guess what I lived on? Those savings. I went through most of them before finding that new job. And, no — we were not extravagant. We canceled plans for a 25th anniversary vacation and used the money for living expenses. We cut back our costs and dumped luxuries. The wife got a job and I looked after the kids. (We have two other kids, both at home then.) I worked odd jobs and consulted to bring in some extra cash.
But the week I started my new job, I emptied all but $500 out of my savings account to pay for the next month’s expenses. God knows what would have happened if I had been unemployed another two or three months — probably would have had to go deep in debt.
I am not complaining, just explaining. And only now, after five years, am I managing to build my savings up again. (We had to pay relocation expenses, and have another kid in college.) And I also know the job I have now will probably disappear before the end of 2011, and am planning to weather another storm then.
Actually my biggest fear is not having to put off retirement. I enjoy working and the job I do. My fear is ending up involuntarily retired at 55 or 56 when the current job ends. Employers are reluctant to take an “elderly” engineer — after all they will be retiring soon. (Never mind that a college recruit is just as likely to leave before five years are up.)
Assuming I am healthy, I would as soon keep working until I am 75 or so. (Why not? The work I do is fun, not physically demanding, and pays well. And I do good work.)
I can understand wanting to retire at 65 — or even 55 if you are in a dangerous, physically demanding work (puddling steel in a steel mill for example). But early retirement is unnecessary for those in an office environment.
Every year I save & save - it just about covers my taxes. And I am not a boomer, born in ‘66. Socialism is stacked against those who play by the rules. Where’s my guv’mint tit?
It’s another boomer bashing thread. The bashing started in the third post.
Yeah, and that's because the "new welfare" is social security disability. Nothing's going to be left for the truely disabled, and nothing's going to be left for those who contributed a lifetime.
I don’t lack a retirement fund now. However, if this market meltdown continues...
Our popcorn fart economy has to float on something, and it ain’t people saving their money.