Retirement delayed and broke anyway

[maliaSmith]

12. Retirement delayed

When I was 20, I took a Postal Service job that paid even less than the cannery I was working at. I wisely took the job because it offered retirement, health insurance and paid leave for sick and annual. I was paid less than my college educated friends who scoffed at me for not finishing college, I made 1.95 an hour.
Well, I stayed with my job for 44 years, drove the same VW for 20 years, bought 2 houses in Calif on the Monterey Bay, while still not making a ton of money.

I retired at 64 and as always live on less than I make.

I don't feel one bit sorry for those of my friends, college educated, who made fun of me while I was the first female to deliver mail in my town, married a great guy who was an artist and was the person at home for the kids when they got out of school. We lived on my income which was not much. He supported me when I faced countless acts of sexual discrimination while trying to advance my career and seeing unskilled men get promoted in front of me due to my gender. It took one man, who had faith in my skills to finally get promoted and then when I tried to get a Postmaster job, I faced that same old discrimination. I finally got promoted after I let it slip that I would sue the shit out of the Postal service if I didn't get promoted.

Now I'm retired and have a great retirement.

The woman writing this article made a choice to quit her job. I could have quit my job and made a lot more money in Silicon Valley due to my family's connections to the bigger firms. I was even offered a job after I retired, making a ton of money, but I never wanted to put up with the crap they push.

My advice to young people is, get a job with great benefits and stick with it. In the long run, the benefits far outweigh the temporary higher pay.

My two houses that I bought for a total of 168,000 are now worth more than 2 million.