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Too poor to retire, too young to die (2016)

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Re: Too poor to retire, too young to die (2016)

#101

Post by maxerickson »

bradleyjg wrote: post #75

Social security is a pretty strange program in no small part because it doesn't know what it wants to be. It tries to be everything to everyone -- a mandatory savings program for the middle class, an anti-poverty program for the elderly, a safety net for widows and orphans, and long term disability insurance. It could use a good healthy dose of the UNIX philosophy of do one thing and do it well. The woman profiled in…

They are separate programs though. They just all happen to involve the same expertise and are managed together.

(the things you call mandatory savings and anti-poverty aren't separate things, but it is mandatory because the anti-poverty funding is done on an actuarial basis with the broadest possible base; in any case, you receive benefits based on having paid in, not just because you is old)

Re: Too poor to retire, too young to die (2016)

#102

Post by jstarfish »

tytytytytytytyt wrote: post #87
knicholes wrote: post #41

Earlier quoted context omitted.

I'd say even driving at all is a mistake if one is trying to save money. Insurance is costly, gas is costly, and so are speeding tickets. I recommend to struggling friends to buy a used bicycle (some non-profits will give bicycles away for free) or to ride public transportation.

Are you suggesting someone her age should bike dozens of miles per day to and from her job? And it's not like spending an extra hour a day on a bus is a great solution, either, possibly 2 hours on days someone needs to go somewhere other than work.

My first thought about that was, at 80, a simple fall could kill her.

Re: Too poor to retire, too young to die (2016)

#104

Post by maxerickson »

taway_1212 wrote: post #98
cpursley wrote: post #8

Earlier quoted context omitted.

Hum. Potential opportunity: Turn dead malls into senior centers with housing for the elderly.

I am not an architect, but are malls suitable for this? It seems to me that most of the space inside is too far from windows to get daylight. It would be more like storage for the elderly instead of housing.

Could reuse the land though.

I imagine that built for purpose would be cost competitive with remodeling and adapting aging buildings anyway.

Re: Too poor to retire, too young to die (2016)

#105

Post by trothamel »

pc86 wrote: post #28
rayiner wrote: post #20

> But there is little money to see the sights. She earns too much to receive food stamps, and a lot of it goes to groceries. She tries to eat organic food, with her low blood sugar. That rules out cheap but filling Big Macs — as well as the food kitchens whose mass-produced meals, she decided, are unhealthful. Why do newspapers use as examples people who seem to have done everything wrong? Is it because formerly midd…

> In a rural town it would be enough for a decent living. It most certainly would not be. Survivable? Probably. Decent? Absolutely not. And Medicare recipients still have out of pocket requirements, that's the whole reason Medicare supplement insurance exists. The average out of pocket expense for Medicare recipients in 2014 was over $4,000. Tell someone making $1,400 a month they need to budget $350 a month for heal…

Survivable seems right - but when someone makes all the mistakes she makes, do we think that doubling her income would give her a decent living?

It's hard to budget $350/mo when you spend $121 in a single day on food and entertainment.

Really, though, it seems like quite a few of her problems stem from trying to do this when single, without a roommate. With a spouse or roommate many expenses get halved.

Re: Too poor to retire, too young to die (2016)

#106

Post by peterwwillis »

rayiner wrote: post #20

> But there is little money to see the sights. She earns too much to receive food stamps, and a lot of it goes to groceries. She tries to eat organic food, with her low blood sugar. That rules out cheap but filling Big Macs — as well as the food kitchens whose mass-produced meals, she decided, are unhealthful. Why do newspapers use as examples people who seem to have done everything wrong? Is it because formerly midd…

You didn't read the article, because just assuming X amount of money can work for anyone is not even remotely realistic.

She owes $50,000 on her credit cards. Let's assume an 18% interest rate. The minimum she could pay to actually pay off the debt (just enough to even pay the interest) would be $765 per month (54% of her income), which would take 22 years and 1 month to pay off, with $152,024 paid in interest.

She also has a $268 monthly loan payment for her aging rig. That means $1033 a month is going just to debt. And in my area, for someone getting on Medicare with no drug plan, for "original medicare", the estimated annual health and drug costs are $3,880.

So after medicare costs and debt, how much is left for housing, food, transportation, and incidentals, per month?

$60.

She's clearly going to die before she can pay her debt off, so maybe just don't pay the debt and use the $825 total to help pay for housing, food, transportation, and incidentals, all of which are higher when you don't have a residence or stable income. You won't have any credit and the creditors will try whatever they can to come after you, and maybe you can dodge them for a few years until you die.

Can you live off $825 a month? Yes. Will it be decent? Hell no. And if you have any major unexpected bills (such as emergency dental work and repairs on a rig, ballooning past $8000) you're fucked. Which, of course, happened.

Re: Too poor to retire, too young to die (2016)

#107

Post by frgtpsswrdlame »

turc1656 wrote: post #68

"...and faced yet another nasty choice between need and want. Should she go to the dentist, or take a guided tour of buildings designed by her favorite architect, Frank Lloyd Wright? Each cost $100. She picked Frank Lloyd Wright. Her teeth could wait." Wow, with decisions like that it's no wonder that woman is in a bad position. Honestly, though - am I supposed to feel bad for someone like this? You can bet that if I…

Why are we so determined to remove any joy from the lives of the poor? Unless you've exorcised all fun, discretionary activities from your life you're obviously just a bad decision-maker. This kind of thing is about one step from this sort of crap: http://s3.crackedcdn.com/phpimages/article/0/4/8/603048_v2.j...

Re: Too poor to retire, too young to die (2016)

#108

Post by falcolas »

rayiner wrote: post #70
pc86 wrote: post #28

Earlier quoted context omitted.

> In a rural town it would be enough for a decent living. It most certainly would not be. Survivable? Probably. Decent? Absolutely not. And Medicare recipients still have out of pocket requirements, that's the whole reason Medicare supplement insurance exists. The average out of pocket expense for Medicare recipients in 2014 was over $4,000. Tell someone making $1,400 a month they need to budget $350 a month for heal…

You can buy a 5BR house in Sibley IA (downtown, walkable to the grocery store and general store) for $330/month in mortgage. Add $350 in health care and you’ve still got $700 per month. Tight, yes, but definitely decent.

$700 to cover food, (gas, car insurance - probably a requirement in Iowa to do more than go to the stores), entertainment, a house repair fund, clothing, electricity/gas/water/sewer/garbage... That $700 is going to be stretched pretty damned thin.

And that's assuming that insurance covers everything health related (it probably doesn't).

Re: Too poor to retire, too young to die (2016)

#109

Post by linkmotif »

falcolas wrote: post #90
linkmotif wrote: post #56

> That rules out cheap but filling Big Macs Big Macs are neither cheap nor filling. Fast food is extremely expensive. Anyone who’s ever been poor and collected enough to escape poverty understands this. Americans, as parroted by this journalist, don’t know what poverty is. How is it that you have 17,000 dollars per year and still struggle to survive? If you’re poor and eat fast food and keep your home stocked with di…

Big macs provide about ~600 calories and 25g of protein for $4. The whole meal is over 1000 calories for $6. It's hard to beat in terms of speed or price. Nutrition? Yeah, pretty low (though it's a good source of iron and Vitamin A). Sure, I could make a meal with more calories for a little cheaper... but at a high up-front cost in money, and an prep/cook cost in time.

Big Macs are shit salty food that doesn’t make you full and spikes your glycemic load so you’re hungry again in 30 minutes.

The American idea that poor people get to organize their time the same way that non poor people get to organize their time is near the core of the problem. The argument that eating fast food saves you time is deeply troublesome because poor people, while disadvantaged in many ways like having to use public transit or not having transit, generally have the lowest premium on time because their time is worthless.

Re: Too poor to retire, too young to die (2016)

#110

Post by gozur88 »

ianai wrote: post #66
gozur88 wrote: post #44

Earlier quoted context omitted.

How much additional obligation do the rest of us have to people who had their entire child-free lives to save money and didn't, already receive a check from the government every month, and get free health care? Do individuals have no responsibility at all for their own situation?

Yes! You assume she ever had two pennies to push together to put toward saving and that saving would have been enough. All the evidence is to the contrary. Frankly, government spending is completely independent of government income. The government could create whole economies based upon shoveling mountains from one place to another ad naseum without fear of run away inflation or other issues. Some could say that’s wh…

It's difficult for me to believe she was in the workforce for more than forty years and never had an extra dollar to save.
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