401K is a massive Wall Street ripoff and a massive failure. The disaster is just beginning.
Retirement Nomads: Too poor to retire and too young to die
21–30 of 198 posts
Re: Retirement Nomads: Too poor to retire and too young to die
#22Before Social Security, over 70% of seniors died in poverty. Today, that number is less than 10%. The amount of transfer payments to the elderly is so much larger than to any other age group, but unless you're willing to let those below the median income die in abject poverty, it's necessary.
I agree with you, but do you have more sources that convey the full impact of Social Security?
Re: Retirement Nomads: Too poor to retire and too young to die
#23Westfall — 5 feet 1 tall, with a graceful dancer’s body she honed as a tap-dancing teenager — is as stubborn as she is high-spirited. But she finds herself these days in a precarious place: Her savings long gone, and having never done much long-term financial planning, Westfall left her home in California to live in an aging RV she calls Big Foot, driving from one temporary job to the next. This is just shameful. You…
Well she gets $1200 a month from social security, which is already essentially a basic income for old folks.
Re: Retirement Nomads: Too poor to retire and too young to die
#24Westfall — 5 feet 1 tall, with a graceful dancer’s body she honed as a tap-dancing teenager — is as stubborn as she is high-spirited. But she finds herself these days in a precarious place: Her savings long gone, and having never done much long-term financial planning, Westfall left her home in California to live in an aging RV she calls Big Foot, driving from one temporary job to the next. This is just shameful. You…
She is mostly living her own dream though:
After her retirement in 2007, she had planned on selling the double-wide to finance a lifelong dream: touring the nation from behind the wheel of Big Foot.
Yes, she is working while she does it, but it sounds like she's migratory by choice.
Re: Retirement Nomads: Too poor to retire and too young to die
#25Westfall — 5 feet 1 tall, with a graceful dancer’s body she honed as a tap-dancing teenager — is as stubborn as she is high-spirited. But she finds herself these days in a precarious place: Her savings long gone, and having never done much long-term financial planning, Westfall left her home in California to live in an aging RV she calls Big Foot, driving from one temporary job to the next. This is just shameful. You…
You are being down-voted because the US has near universal basic income for older folks & the subject of the story collects it. It's one of the real questions I have about basic income schemes generally. The examples we have are not powerful arguments in favor of them.
Social Security worked well, before cost of living overtook the benefits provided.
Re: Retirement Nomads: Too poor to retire and too young to die
#26Westfall — 5 feet 1 tall, with a graceful dancer’s body she honed as a tap-dancing teenager — is as stubborn as she is high-spirited. But she finds herself these days in a precarious place: Her savings long gone, and having never done much long-term financial planning, Westfall left her home in California to live in an aging RV she calls Big Foot, driving from one temporary job to the next. This is just shameful. You…
I find it unfair that I'm expected to make sacrifices while I'm young to ensure a comfortable retirement and also have to pay for other's retirements because they failed to do so.
If you're making these sacrifices now, your retirement will be an entirely different experience from someone on Social Security. Also, retirement planning is a luxury. Not all have the means to set anything aside.
Re: Retirement Nomads: Too poor to retire and too young to die
#27Its tricky to feel sympathy w/ the lady in this article. She's part of the most benefitted generation, the "hardships" shown are induced by her own choices (expensive dinner, speeding ticket) and by world standards she's won the lottery to even be alive and living comfortably at her age. Alas, thats the trick with other people's stories-- difficult to project how it would feel if I were in their shoes.
It's even trickier if you consider that she lost her house in 2008. How?! She is in her seventies, the house should have been long paid out. So this means she borrowed heavily against the house equity and spent all that money. I do feel sorry for her problems right now, but I sympathize more with people who were prudent not to risk their house to pay for expensive toys (Smart car).
Re: Retirement Nomads: Too poor to retire and too young to die
#28Before Social Security, over 70% of seniors died in poverty. Today, that number is less than 10%. The amount of transfer payments to the elderly is so much larger than to any other age group, but unless you're willing to let those below the median income die in abject poverty, it's necessary.
I agree with you, but do you have more sources that convey the full impact of Social Security?
Basic stats: http://www.cbpp.org/archives/4-8-99socsec.htm
You can go a lot deeper on this. Even today, about 50% of seniors would be below the poverty level without Social Security.
That's mostly okay, because the majority of seniors have the major expenses covered by guaranteed benefit pensions, Medicare and private savings, usually in the form of a house.
But things would get pretty grim without the government programs.
Re: Retirement Nomads: Too poor to retire and too young to die
#29I feel so sad when I read stories like these ones... a 300$ ticket is the difference between being broke and having food on the table for her. To me it says a lot about our society if we can't take care of our elderly.
While I agree with your sentiment, I do not agree that it is my responsibility to take care of your parents. I want to take care of mine, and socializing these costs just means I'm forced to pay for your parents at the expense of mine. There is no replacement for the family unit. Obviously I feel differently about people who have no family, but that is the exception not the norm.
Not socializing these costs means externalizing them. Should we all chip in to take care of this very social issue or should we just accept the costs in the form of living in a dysfunctional society with all the ramifications of huge numbers of poor elderly folks? We bear the costs as a society one way or the other.
It seems what you're saying is: you just wish every elderly person just had a wealthy enough family that could comfortably take care of them. But that's completely useless fantasy talk.
Re: Retirement Nomads: Too poor to retire and too young to die
#30Westfall — 5 feet 1 tall, with a graceful dancer’s body she honed as a tap-dancing teenager — is as stubborn as she is high-spirited. But she finds herself these days in a precarious place: Her savings long gone, and having never done much long-term financial planning, Westfall left her home in California to live in an aging RV she calls Big Foot, driving from one temporary job to the next. This is just shameful. You…
That exists, it's called Social Security.