Retirement options

[lambchopp59]

Most not available for those my age, Gen-X and younger. Enjoy:

[lambchopp59]

1. Replying to my own thread for a reason I'll explain below

My greatest-generation parents had it made, coddled till their relatively peaceful demise.
I already know all of the 3 options Hasan presents are not options for me and probably many others facing retirement. I've had to drain my retirement savings to get through hard times repeatedly, every time sacrificing what they could have been worth. In 2010, the Bush II housing crash and the job market tanked, I had to drain it all and sacrifice valuable collectibles to get through 6 months. I have no family to rely on being the rejected member for having turned out gay. Wal-Mart parking lots, BLM dry camps in an RV are the best I can hope for. Break a hip? I'm screwed. By the time I'm forced to retire, it's dollar store can chicken and noodles for me, baby, even with the most desperate of catch-up dividends to my retirement account.
Someone posted this in the Bernie group, disallowing commentary for anyone not in that candidate choice.

[Aussie105]

2. Not good

for a first world country.

Won't go into my retirement, but it's a huge contrast. I'm living in a socialist country. One that looks after people.

[lambchopp59]

4. I've considered expatriation as well

But I'll likely take my chances here. Oh, it worries me, partially because the hospitals near where I have in mind looks after the prisoners they have contracts to care for with far more resources than they have to discharge any medicare patient sicker than a mangy, homeless dog.
Should some political and social situations in some Sudamerican countries improve dramatically, admittedly I could afford an apartment, a housekeeper and eat out every other day on my Social Security income there. We may finally get coverage under a socialist umbrella here before that happens.
I get really f*cking upset when I hear Republirats start hawking about "privatizing" Social Security. We all know how that ends up: with the recipient totally f*cked after some greedy bank gets done charging it's fees.
In the first presidential election where my first, coming of age vote for the benevolent Jimmy Carter lost to greedy, out of touch "It's been said I favor the rich, I don't deny it" Ronnie Ray Gun, I threw things at the teevee as he blathered how the Cadillac driving welfare queens were "stealing" from his ilk. I've watched ever since with bewildered wonder at how the neediest of individuals, mesmerized by Fox Noise continue to vote against their own interests.
Meantime, I work on trying to get it through to the thick skulls of many of my generation and younger with more than two teeth and two neurons left to rub together why it is important to get out and
%3Ffit%3Dscale

[Ford_Prefect]

5. Last time I looked we are no longer 1st world...more so a Banana Republic.

[tblue37]

3. K&R for visibility. nt

[PoindexterOglethorpe]

6. It is simply a myth that most people had jobs with good pensions.

Something like 30-35% of all workers ever had a defined benefit pension. A lot more union workers used to have them, but unionized workers were never a majority. Plus, a lot of pension plans had a very long vesting term, sometimes as long as 30 years. If you left the job one day before that, you were out of luck for getting a pension. More recently, companies have systematically underfunded their pensions, and workers are getting a third to a half of what they'd been promised. And now the exact same thing is happening in the public sector.

So it's always been incumbent on workers to save for their own retirement. This is nothing new.

And while Social Security needs to be protected, it was never intended to be a person's only income in retirement.

[TygrBright]

7. He gets one BIG thing wrong in a BIG way.

Social Security is NOT "from the government" as opposed to "savings - that's on you" and 401Ks "from your employer".

THEY ARE ALL (with a very minor exception for employer match contributions to 401Ks) YOUR SAVINGS.

Social Security is YOUR SAVINGS that the government collects from you and manages for you in a gigantic investment and savings pool, but YOU EARNED AND SAVED THAT MONEY. It's not "from the government", it's YOUR SAVINGS.

I've NEVER seen a 401K plan that wasn't based on your employer or your employer's benefits manager collecting YOUR SAVINGS from you and managing it in a big investment pool, with or without their matching contributions, but YOU EARNED AND SAVED much of that money. Most of it is not "from your employer", it's YOUR SAVINGS.

We are saving. We save in the form of Social Security, we save in the form of 401Ks and many of us also save in other forms.

We don't save enough, true.

Why?

Because sixty years ago ONE family member working ONE decent (if not Union, staving off unionization by providing Union-level wages and benefits) full-time job could afford a modest house payment or decent rent, put food on the table, buy clothes and/or uniforms to send a couple of kids to public schools where they weren't at risk of being shot, AND save for their own retirement.

Nowadays TWO family members working SIX part-time jobs can't match that.

This "not saving enough" is not on us.

This "not saving enough" is on the greedy fuckers who've bought politicians, dismantled worker protections, offshored and cheapassed labor to the point of reinstituting effective serfdom.

But WE LET THEM DO IT.

Because white people were so damn' fucking scared of their kids going to school with brown peoples' kids that they moved to the suburbs and drank the Racist Republican Kool-Aid and allowed the oligarchs to run their smash-and-grab scam with only a bunch of cheap plastic consumer crap for us as compensation. And crackerbox McMansion neighborhoods with nary a brown face in sight.

We are dumb, and we are getting what we've piled up for ourselves.

tiredly,
Bright