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SG,
Just a thought, since you're looking for all options...my sister was forced to retire early and she makes several hundred dollars or more a week as a dog sitter in her home. If you can find a small, in-town property that has a back yard (hers isn't all that big, you can fence it in and let it be known quietly around town you look after pets. Of course you do have to take time to love and care for them, and this is not everyone's cup of tea, but it beats a stand-up job.
The law is the law. Just because its an adverse personal problem for you doesn't mean that you have the right to violate the law. It is what it is.
The law is the law? Nothing's written in stone. My problem stems from the fact that the law is whatever they say it is at any given moment. I took out that student loan in the early 1970's. At the time there was a ten year statute of limitations on the collection of defaulted loans. At that time Social Security was sacrosanct - nobody, not even the Federal Government, could touch your benefit payments. In the 1990's all that changed. The statute of limitations was repealed retroactively. Also, Social Security was no longer off limits. The first $750 is protected but they can take everything over that until the debt is paid. Thankfully(?), since my early retirement benefit amount is less than that, I will not be affected.
They've been taking my tax refunds as offsets for years but my tax liability and what was withheld from income were so evenly matched that they only got pocket change. (They even took my diddly-squat stimulus check but I expected that.) One crazy thing about all this is that they waited until I was near retirement age before they informed me of all this. I hadn't realized that the law had been jiggered because I've spent most of my life without newspapers, tv or radio. The bill I was presented with (30 years after the fact) was $21K - that's $8K principal and $12K interest and fees. They're not going to get a penny of it!
Of course, that's the law at this moment. They may do away with the protected $750. They may open up s.s. benefits to private creditors. Who knows what they'll do?
In general I have very little respect for their laws. In 1969 I was invited to go to VietNam to kill or be killed in order to fulfill someone's imperial ambitions. I not-so-politely declined the offer. That was illegal. Think I cared? The laws are made by the rich and powerful to further their own ends. Even the U.S. Constitution was doctored from Jefferson's original version to protect the "rights" of slaveholders.
The case of your daughter being threatened with debtors' prison in the 20th century is a new one on me. Just goes to show - the lunatics are running the asylum.
Yeah, this is another area where I'm trying to find or compile a list of possible retirement destinations ranked by availability of rent assistance. ...my criteria are completely different from what these books consider important...The availability of resources for the downwardly mobile means everything.[/font][/color]
I'm attempting to develop a "retirement under duress guide" using the same kind of logic but geared towards people who find themselves in a situation similar to mine.
Then definitely look into rural Illinois, particularly western, west-central and probably far southern Illinois. (I'm most familiar with western and west-central.) Henry County, for example, has five HUD apartment complexes for seniors, and their rent equals 30% of their income (minus any medical expenses).
Most of these complexes provide transportation, such as vans that will take the seniors wherever they need to go in town (dr, shopping, etc.); I don't believe there's a charge for this.
As for other programs for the downwardly mobile, you can look into Illinois Cares Rx and the Illinois circuit breaker program. I'm sure every state has some programs like this, that pay utility bills and prescriptions, or give discounts for car license plates, etc., to low-income seniors. Illiinois also has some sort of property tax discount program for seniors, but I don't know the details. NY state also has a similar program.
There also can be assistance at the county and town level. My mother's town has a food pantry, for instance, that is so much more than food; they have an attic literally full of equipment for the handicapped, and they _gave_ me like-new equipment for her when she needed it last year. Their only requirement was that we give it back to them when we were done with it. No time limits. No donations requested. No bartering or volunteering in return. Just "take it and bring it back when you're done." Which we did.
At the county level, we received discounted housekeeping help (free help is available but Mom didn't qualify; long story).
I'm certain a lot of people are interested in such a guide as you're putting together. (Maybe you can publish it and sell it?) My own businesses hit the skids two years ago. I finally found a job --not in my line of work, since no one's hiring in that business -- and it pays less than half what I was making before. As a result, my retirement account is a joke.
If you can find a small, in-town property that has a back yard (hers isn't all that big, you can fence it in and let it be known quietly around town you look after pets.
I took one of your earlier posts to heart and decided, whatever I do, I'm not even going to think of buying a house. There are legal and financial impediments to doing that anyway.
The law is the law? Nothing's written in stone. My problem stems from the fact that the law is whatever they say it is at any given moment. I took out that student loan in the early 1970's. At the time there was a ten year statute of limitations on the collection of defaulted loans. At that time Social Security was sacrosanct - nobody, not even the Federal Government, could touch your benefit payments. In the 1990's all that changed. The statute of limitations was repealed retroactively. Also, Social Security was no longer off limits. The first $750 is protected but they can take everything over that until the debt is paid. Thankfully(?), since my early retirement benefit amount is less than that, I will not be affected.
They've been taking my tax refunds as offsets for years but my tax liability and what was withheld from income were so evenly matched that they only got pocket change. (They even took my diddly-squat stimulus check but I expected that.) One crazy thing about all this is that they waited until I was near retirement age before they informed me of all this. I hadn't realized that the law had been jiggered because I've spent most of my life without newspapers, tv or radio. The bill I was presented with (30 years after the fact) was $21K - that's $8K principal and $12K interest and fees. They're not going to get a penny of it!
Of course, that's the law at this moment. They may do away with the protected $750. They may open up s.s. benefits to private creditors. Who knows what they'll do?
In general I have very little respect for their laws. In 1969 I was invited to go to VietNam to kill or be killed in order to fulfill someone's imperial ambitions. I not-so-politely declined the offer. That was illegal. Think I cared? The laws are made by the rich and powerful to further their own ends. Even the U.S. Constitution was doctored from Jefferson's original version to protect the "rights" of slaveholders.
The case of your daughter being threatened with debtors' prison in the 20th century is a new one on me. Just goes to show - the lunatics are running the asylum.
The laws where changed because too mnay deadbeats endamgered the student loan programs. They wouol have disappeared. But it nothing new they just passed laws to insure less of them have credit i teh future because of teh same problem in thier useage of crdit cards ;etc.
... definitely look into rural Illinois, particularly western, west-central and probably far southern Illinois.
Thanks for all that information, it'll take a while to digest.
Yeah, I got this retirement guide from the library that shows all the "best" retirement locations. The author automatically assumes that everyone is looking for sunshine and beachfront properties so the South and Far West are highlighted and the Northeast, Middle Atlantic and Midwestern states are just grayed out! My intention is to turn that map on its head. Twenty years in Florida hasn't managed to turn me into a vegatable yet but if I stay here for the rest of my life it just might.
I am starting this thread for a specific pupose. I did not register with this site to engage in endless opinionated debate or witty repartee, socialize, write lengthy prose pieces (blogs are for that) or to kill time. What I am seeking is information crucial to deciding where in the U.S. a person on a low fixed income can survive. For me, and probably for alot of people like me, "survive" is the operative term. I don't give a tinker's damn about where to find the best "quality of life". What I want to know is: Can I plan on staying in this country for the rest of my life or should I be learning Spanish and preparing to move to the barrios of Managua, Nicaragua?
It's virtually impossible to find anything useful among all the chitchat and interpersonnal fencing that goes on in these threads. It would take forever to read them all and pan for gold. That's why I'm proposing a thread that addresses the necessity for the kind of good hard factual information required to make intelligent decisions on what may conceivably be a life-or-death matter.
I am continually researching this subject in other venues and will post whatever material I've discovered or compiled from various sources in hope that others will do the same.
Here are a few examples of the the kind of subjects I think are appropriate:
Where are apartment rentals the lowest? Seems a simple enough question but when you include the fact that most people on low fixed incomes will probably not be able to afford a car or car insurance then you find that the availability of public transportation becomes an issue. So then the question becomes: Which metropolitan areas with cheap public transportation also have low apartment rentals? But that's just the beginning. Think about Social Security income. Since alot of people's real income has stagnated or declined in the last few decades their Social Security benefits will reflect that. Federal Supplemental Security Income (SSI) is capped at $674/mo. for a single person but the states are free to add to that. California contributes up to $233 while other states require that you be flat on your back in a nursing home before they'll part with a nickle. The question now becomes: Which metropolitan areas in which states provide the best deal in terms of rent, transportation and SSI? Then there's medicaid and food stamps to consider. Once again, these programs are administered by the states and some would rather euthanize their poorest residents than share the wealth. And on and on it goes.
I can imagine a scheme that ranks U.S. cities purely in terms of "survivabilty" for low income retirees. You see these lists in the media of the "Top Ten Retirement Havens" or some such nonsense all predicated on the assumption that money is no object. Maybe that's true for some but the number of people for whom money (or the lack of it) is the overriding determinant of their future situations is growing fast.
So, send me your facts and I'll send you mine (such as they are) and maybe together we can beat this increasingly harsh and hostile system under which we (try to) live.
OMG. I think part of the problem here is you negative mindset. Do you really live your life thinking like this? That is incredibly sad. INCREDIBLY SAD.
Dude, lighten up a little. Enjoy your life. I would suggest moving to SW Missouri where the cost of living is very low, but good lord, I'd be too afraid I'd run into you and I would be so bummed out that I would jump off a bridge or something.
Also, I have a civil judgement against me. (The plaintiff being one of those banks we taxpayers just bailed out - like no gratitude!) So I have to remain "judgement proof" (not too difficult in my case) for the next twenty years.
You may need to re-invent yourself in more ways than career-wise.
Presented for ENTERTAINMENT purposes and for spinning fantasy resolutions to your dilemma:
Frank M. Ahearn - How To Disappear (http://www.frankahearn.com/disappeararticle.html - broken link)
(Notice I successfully resisted the impulse to insert a cheesy emoticon.)
... I lived in Albuquerque from '78 to '91. It was a boomin' town back then. Recently I got so sick of the economic situation here in the "Sunburn State" that I went back to New Mexico. I was stunned. It wasn't the same place. The computer and electronics companies are all gone. (I met a guy sweeping the street who used to work at Intel.) ...
I saw a great bumper sticker a few years ago: "God, grant me one more bubble before I die. I promise I'll know when to sell."
...it's already too late. So with global warming...
digression warning - you might be interested in reading Nathan Myhrvold's (relatively) inexpensive solution to global warming: pumping sulfur dioxide into the stratosphere via a 7 mile long "garden hose". Sort of like the eruption of Mt. Pinatubo in thePhilippines in 1991. Since you are a technologist, you probably know of his pedigree & that of the patent trolls at Intellectual Ventures. digression mode=off.
My point: it probably is not too late.
Last edited by SportyandMisty; 10-10-2010 at 10:30 PM..
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The Law Is The Law But It Sure Ain't Justice
