Retirement delayed and broke anyway

[Quanto Magnus]

35. I'm glad that you were able to have that happen

Staying at a single job for 20+ years let alone a lot more does not happen nowadays and hasn't for a long time in many industries.

Layoffs are much more common now for starters and more companies offer little to no raise year over year. Companies will make any excuse they can to not give a pay raise, even with 'excellent' reviews... So does one stay around for that???

Even as an (early) Gen-Xer, that was not really something that could be done. I don't know a single person my age (52) that has been at the same job near their whole career.... I had 1 friend who managed 20 years at one place.... 1 person, but he eventually had to leave his company too.

Times are not just a little different from 40 years ago, they are extremely different. While it's great that you were able to do what you did, your last sentence proves one of the problems that many retired people fail to admit to.

You bought 2 houses for $84K each and they're now worth $1 million each (just averaging on your numbers). I'm guessing you purchased in the 80's, 90's?

Not only did money go further back then, but the relative cost of a house was not so out of whack from salaries as they are now. Salaries have not kept pace with rising costs of everything... Your homes are worth over 10 times what you purchased them for. Salaries are not (in general) 10x what they were, and in most cases they are not even close.

While you were 'not making a ton of money' you were developing your retirement in ways that a vast majority of jobs did not have even then. So you were making decent money, just in a different way (benefits count towards compensation, not just your pay rate. A lot of employers stopped offering retirement because it was such a great benefit to have. Companies even largely stopped 'matching' in the 90's in 401K plans. So on top of vastly increasing prices, employers effectively offered less.

The living paycheck to paycheck is really for so many, your 'simple' solution does not address any of that...

"Oh just get a job and stay there for 40 years!" is not a solution. In fact, those of us who are not Boomers kind of find that attitude insulting, because it completely ignores current times.