Retirement delayed and broke anyway

[PoindexterOglethorpe]

80. So much free work that women are expected to do.

That sums it up.

I was a stay home mom for some 25 years. It worked out for me. I was glad to be home, to take care of my kids. I also (and this is probably the most important thing) did not have any kind of career or job in place before I had my kids.

I spent those years volunteering at the school, baking stuff, those kinds of things. I NEVER thought that the working moms were less. I had sympathy for them trying to keep up, do what needed to be done for their kids.

You do need to do the math for the number of years you have in. And you get those 35 years over the fifty or so years you are working. You can also go online to Social Security, set up an account, and figure out exactly where you are.

I got my first job at age 17. Worked more or less full time until age 32, when I got married. During my marriage, I had a couple of temp/part time jobs. By the time my marriage ended, I'd gotten a paralegal degree at my nearby community college, then got a couple of part time paralegal jobs. Moved to New Mexico. Got paralegal work there. Was fired for incompetence. Got various other jobs. The important thing is that I filled in the otherwise zero years of working.

Filling in those zero years is huge. My Social Security essentially tripled by going back to work, and then being able to delay taking my own SS until I was 70.