Retirement delayed and broke anyway

[DFW]

16. Being one of the fortunate ones, I feel for those who are caught in this rut

Last edited Mon Sep 11, 2023, 11:39 AM - Edit history (1)

My brother was almost there, as well. He had a good-paying job with a high security clearance in, let's say, "an area of northern Virginia," when all of a sudden, his employer decided to re-structure, and he was suddenly out of a job in his late 50s. He started eating through savings, trying to stave off drastic measures (like selling his house) as long as he could. He is frugal by nature, and had a cushion of a few years, but nowhere nearly enough to retire. Fortunately, his former employer realized that letting him go was a huge mistake, as the productivity in his department suffered noticeably, and they asked him back within 18 months. He just retired at age 67.

My wife was caught in a thankless job (social work), working for a corrupt employer (the Protestant church, Diakonisches Werk). Their purpose was to take in long-term, "hard-to-employ" unemployed people, re-train them if possible, and place them back into the workforce. They were corrupt in that the director had the unemployed do work for him at his house for free, and threatened to kick them out onto the street if they complained. He hated my wife and her co-worker for being "too expensive (i.e. they were there for over a decade, and got government mandated raises)," and for having good relations with the labor department with whom they coordinated job placement. When she had a serious operation at age 60, we sweated for a few days to see if it was cancer again (it wasn't--that came 4 years later), and then her employer offered her an "early retirement package." Even so, it left her without income or health insurance from age 61 to age 65, when her pension and her German version of Medicare kicked in. I was fortunate enough to be able to jump in and pay for her health insurance (about €6600, or $8000 at the time, a year), which was vital, as she got a deadly form of cancer at age 64. She had a drastic operation and a month in the hospital, but was that "one patient in ten thousand" that actually survived this form of cancer, known in German medical circles as "the murderer." Insurance paid for the whole $400,000 package. Her pension, now with an added disability, is about €1200 (about $1320) a month minus taxes. Fortunately, I still work, because in Germany, €1200 a month minus taxes doesn't go far. As the wife of an American citizen, she was also eligible for a small monthly social security benefit. We had absolutely no idea about this. Washington told us this, and we were amazed. They told us to apply, then put us through rings of paperwork and visits to the American consulate in Frankfurt, but she actually got it, which increased her (still taxable) monthly income to about €1900. We are taxed at about 50% all in here, and I am personally taxed at about 73% due to holes in the double taxation treaty (intended to limit individuals to 50% max--sure, I wish), but at least we are not starving.

I am still working full time (we will both be 72 next year), and have been working nonstop for the same outfit since I was recruited in 1975. My employer is American, my wife's employer was German. So, we really can't compare our exact situation to that of anyone we know, but we both know people at the paycheck-to-paycheck level, and have known some who don't even have that (what social worker hasn't?). Not everyone has a free ride by any stretch of the imagination, and some have it downright rough.