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Retirement Nomads: Too poor to retire and too young to die

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Re: Retirement Nomads: Too poor to retire and too young to die

#181

Post by nadezhda18 »

maerF0x0 wrote: post #3

Its 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.

I agree with you. I was surprised to read she could afford to pay $25 for a meal! In her broke situation, she should be mastering the art of cooking! Then these $25 would last her for a week or longer, not for 3 meals. Maybe I do sound judgmental, but I grew up in USSR right before it got collapsed, and I remember how our family tried to survive :-|

Re: Retirement Nomads: Too poor to retire and too young to die

#182

Post by nadezhda18 »

robertcorey wrote: post #95

She made several major financial mistakes in this article. 21.36 would have gotten her a months worth of beans and rice. But we shouldn't write people off for making poor financial choices. Maybe SS payments could be offered in the form of room and board for those struggling to manage their cashflow.

so agree she would benefit much more from learning how to save money than from having more money

Re: Retirement Nomads: Too poor to retire and too young to die

#183

Post by dragonwriter »

6stringmerc wrote: post #89
DanBC wrote: post #75

Earlier quoted context omitted.

Is this parody? Or are you being serious? EDIT: Really, I can't tell.

For about 5 years, I volunteered with the elderly in rest homes. I saw what happens to us as we get old, infirm, sick, and lose the last of our mental faculties. I'm being somewhat serious, in that I've watched the elderly closely and believe they will vote en masse for their own desires and interests until the younger generations are completely unable to survive. I'd probably shock you by also holding a belief that…

> For about 5 years, I volunteered with the elderly in rest homes.

Your personal experiences of the elderly in rest homes are probably not a representative sample of the elderly in society, for all the usual reasons that personal experiences aren't representative, plus the fact that elderly in rest homes themselves are likely not representative of elderly in society.

Re: Retirement Nomads: Too poor to retire and too young to die

#184

Post by nadezhda18 »

x5n1 wrote: post #4

Just shows that the US government can't afford to launch any wars or flex its muscles, when it does so it does it at the cost of all these people who have paid a life's worth of taxes, and have nothing show for it. The corporate interests and the government has eaten all that work and not given them enough to live off in their old age.

she needs a financial class to learn how to save money - much more than money itself

Re: Retirement Nomads: Too poor to retire and too young to die

#185

Post by dogma1138 »

hiram112 wrote: post #137
s_q_b wrote: post #8

Before 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.

There's a lot that can be done to lower the amount we spend on the elderly. Something like 50% of health care costs are spent on a small minority of the population in their last year or two of life. Anecdotally, my grandmother who worked as a state nurse for about 15 years (which is less than I've worked now that I'm in my mid 30's) received a golden pension higher than the average salary in the US along with 100% fr…

Given the option would you agree to get a 100% exemption from paying taxes while your grandmother was alive on the condition she would receive non of those benefits?

Re: Retirement Nomads: Too poor to retire and too young to die

#186

Post by jdhzzz »

I stopped reading when I read: "Eight in 10 Americans say they will work well into their 60s or skip retirement entirely." Uhm, the system is kind of designed that way. Why is alarming that most will work "well into their 60's"? How do 1 of 5 get by without working well into their 60s? Sign me up.

Re: Retirement Nomads: Too poor to retire and too young to die

#187

Post by nikdaheratik »

kafkaesq wrote: post #18
maerF0x0 wrote: post #3

Its 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.

$300 is beyond exorbitant for a speeding ticket. It's vindictive and exploitive.

IIRC, she was able to talk them down to $65 anyways, but she lost a days work so it was still a big loss.

Re: Retirement Nomads: Too poor to retire and too young to die

#188

Post by nikdaheratik »

robertcorey wrote: post #95

She made several major financial mistakes in this article. 21.36 would have gotten her a months worth of beans and rice. But we shouldn't write people off for making poor financial choices. Maybe SS payments could be offered in the form of room and board for those struggling to manage their cashflow.

And there were parts of the article where she lived off of rice and milk. It's not the $20 meal that's costing her, but the higher cost of living from living in an RV + the unfixed employment income and the fact that she doesn't have a lifetime of savings to fall back on.

Re: Retirement Nomads: Too poor to retire and too young to die

#189

Post by nikdaheratik »

roymurdock wrote: post #48

Here's a breakdown of the US 2015 combined (Federal, State, Local) government spend: Total Spend: 6.18tn Total Revenue: 6.08tn Healthcare: 1.32tn (21.3%) Pension: 1.20tn (19.7%) Education: 0.93tn (14.8%) Defense: 0.80tn (13.1%) Welfare: 0.50tn (8.2%) Other*: 1.43tn (23.1%) *Other = Protection, Transportation, General Government, Interest Currently, social security is taking in ~$74bn less in payroll taxes than it pay…

The consensus is that Social Security is fixable, mostly. You wouldn't need to pay too much more into it in some manner to make it sustainable. They may need to raise the age again, but since none of the hard decisions have to be made for 10-15 years down the line, no one is making them.

Healthcare is one of the bigger problems. Maybe the ACA will "bend the curve" enough to make it more sustainable. If not, then more cost cuts or higher wage taxes are the future for that. At least the issue is looking better now than it was 5-10 years ago.

None of these are as important as making sure we don't end up in some kind of $1-2Tn war or wreck the environment enough with global warming that we have major infrastructure and agriculture issues.

Re: Retirement Nomads: Too poor to retire and too young to die

#190

Post by s_q_b »

bradleyjg wrote: post #86
s_q_b wrote: post #28

Earlier quoted context omitted.

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 pro…

What about assets? The highest median net worth cohort is households headed by those 65-69, second by those 70-74, third by 75 and older. (as of 2011) It's one thing to give welfare to older people who can't work to keep them off the streets and quite another to give them welfare so they can give lavish inheritances to their children.

Assets are a great point. Much like lifting the cap on earnings tax, assets should factor into the payout equation, much like they affect student grants.
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