Getting old? Senior discounts you must ask for.

[SheilaT]

164. Those of us currently turning 65 were born in 1948.

We did not have 35 year jobs, and the unions disappeared along the way. We entered the workforce in the late 60's or early 70's and the entire world of work was already changing rapidly.

It's our parents' and older siblings' generation who had most of those things.

And in reality, a lifetime job with a good pension at the end was a lot less common than people think. I went to work for an airline when I was twenty years old, and at the time you couldn't even start contributing to the pension plan until you were twenty-five and had already worked there for at least two years. Many, many companies that had pensions were like that. And it would take at least ten years of employment to be vested. I have no idea what the numbers are, but lots of people changed jobs any number of times before they were thirty, back then.

Around the time we, us baby boomers, were settling into a long-term job, the 401k plans came along, and we all know how fabulous they've turned out to be.