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Here in Australia, if anyone is interested, a lot of self funded retirees are doing it tough at the moment through no fault of their own, having saved and had good pensions they now find the interests rates are so bad and with the economy as it is at the moment they haven't quite got the lifestyle thay expected, so sooner or later they will have to apply for help from the government. We downsized to a smaller property but in a beautiful rural area, this enabled to us live a good healthy lifestyle and money to spare for some luxuries. I'm not sure how the young will fare when their time comes.
I think a great deal of financial trouble can be attributed to the decline of defined benefit plans. Another factor is the vanishing of private sector unions and the manufacturing base it represents. The focus on short term profits is also a culprit.
The way I see it, it's luck and then some. Some people have made bad financial decisions like buying homes they could not afford or second and third mortgages that eventually have to be paid. There was a lot of high living to be sure in the past but a lot of it was to pay college tuitions and other stuff of life.
I'll be joining the ranks of the retired in six weeks and boy am I scared and excited at the same time. I think I've saved enough and I'm moving to an area of our country where expenses are less than here in NJ. I'll also have a steady annuity coming in. I'm also encouraged by others, on this board and elsewhere, who tell me that water finds it own level. I'll control my expenses to meet my income. I've made my personal and financial choices. It would have been useless to tell me that this day was coming when I was younger. Luck and youthful stupidity have made me somewhat poorer but as Dylan put it "It's alright Ma- I'm only bleeding."
The way I see it, it's luck and then some. Some people have made bad financial decisions like buying homes they could not afford or second and third mortgages that eventually have to be paid. There was a lot of high living to be sure in the past but a lot of it was to pay college tuitions and other stuff of life.
I'll be joining the ranks of the retired in six weeks and boy am I scared and excited at the same time. I think I've saved enough and I'm moving to an area of our country where expenses are less than here in NJ. I'll also have a steady annuity coming in. I'm also encouraged by others, on this board and elsewhere, who tell me that water finds it own level. I'll control my expenses to meet my income. I've made my personal and financial choices. It would have been useless to tell me that this day was coming when I was younger. Luck and youthful stupidity have made me somewhat poorer but as Dylan put it "It's alright Ma- I'm only bleeding."
People using their over-priced, under water homes like ATMs has certainly had an impact and I try hared to sympathize with them but just can't do it. Our home is not an investment. It's our home and we'll never take out a second or line of credit on it.
Don't be scared! Look upon retirement and a move (we did both) as a grand adventure. Have fun with it and relish the experience and all the new ones you'll have wherever you move.
You know what I think? I think those publications can't stop obsessing over baby boomers because it's pretty much the last generation buying newspapers and magazines.
Funny you said that . . . hubby and I were speculating on this just last week. We think most publications are chasing the reading public instead of vice versa.
We no longer subscribe to anything except the WSJ and Smithsonian. Anything else - we can research it online.
Some of these articles are doing nothing more than raising anxiety - "It's tough out there." It has always been "tough out there" for the majority of humans on this planet, yet - amazingly - we seem to have survived.
Folks are resourceful . . . people band together when necessary, too. Perhaps Boomers who have hit on hard times will make boarding houses and small communes the wave of the future.
The study found that more than 50% of those surveyed had saved less than $100,000 for retirement, 19% have saved less than $10,000 and 14 percent do not have a pension, 401(k), IRA or any other retirement savings vehicle.
I think a great deal of financial trouble can be attributed to the decline of defined benefit plans. Another factor is the vanishing of private sector unions and the manufacturing base it represents. The focus on short term profits is also a culprit.
The way I see it, it's luck and then some. Some people have made bad financial decisions like buying homes they could not afford or second and third mortgages that eventually have to be paid. There was a lot of high living to be sure in the past but a lot of it was to pay college tuitions and other stuff of life.
I'll be joining the ranks of the retired in six weeks and boy am I scared and excited at the same time. I think I've saved enough and I'm moving to an area of our country where expenses are less than here in NJ. I'll also have a steady annuity coming in. I'm also encouraged by others, on this board and elsewhere, who tell me that water finds it own level. I'll control my expenses to meet my income. I've made my personal and financial choices. It would have been useless to tell me that this day was coming when I was younger. Luck and youthful stupidity have made me somewhat poorer but as Dylan put it "It's alright Ma- I'm only bleeding."
Good Luck with the move. I did it and retired this year. I have found time is a great thing to have and the way to fill it is to just go with the flow
The study found that more than 50% of those surveyed had saved less than $100,000 for retirement, 19% have saved less than $10,000 and 14 percent do not have a pension, 401(k), IRA or any other retirement savings vehicle.
This is a sad situation. I can understand over the years that people had forgone having a savings habit to pay for their kids college, perhaps thinking that their employer would take care of them with lifelong pensions & medical benefits. However, it became apparent many, many years ago that this would no longer be the case. I always followed a philosophy that said: You can finance a college education, but you can't finance a retirement. And that is exactly what I did with my 3 kids. I borrowed using Federal Plus loans to pay for the first half of their college years and then had them take student loans for the rest. My view was that if they didn't have a financial stake in it, they wouldn't study as hard and apply themselves as seriously after they graduated. It happened to work for me & my kids.
I also saved aggressively starting in my 30's using my company's 401K and taking advantage of their $ for $ match up to a certain point. I had a pension plan that I was part of but it seemed silly not to save on my own as well. The match was such a good deal, how could I not take advantage of it? Back in 2003 after a layoff from that company, I rolled both my lump sum pension money & the 401K into an IRA. I was not comfortable leaving that money with the company which eventually filed chapter 11 in 2009. I wanted control of it myself and so it became part of my retirement savings. I'm now 58 and with continued saving & investing, have been able to build a very large retirement fund for my wife & I which has grown nicely during the up years and weathered the storms in the down years. It is large enough that I have it professionally managed so it is well diversified & rebalanced every quarter. I have no pension coming so I'm very glad that I paid attention to it and stuck to it from a young age. Perhaps because I've always hated to have to work for a living I was thinking of retirement early on but it's a good thing I did. I will continue to work until 61 most likely. Being in my peak earnings years and still being paid very well, why stop now? It also allows me to continue to save at an aggressive level.
I feel extremely fortunate that I am positioned well for retirement in the next few years and yet I have friends the same age who had relatively the same levels of income as me and have saved virtually nothing. It makes me wonder how they thought they were ever going to retire. They sent their kids to expensive colleges paying their way 100%, paid for extravagant weddings, took several expensive vacations every year (even paying for others to join them) and now have nothing left for themselves. Now they're scrambling trying to catch up saving for retirement but time is not on their side. One thing that simply cannot be done is to recover lost time.
It would seem, that the best gift they could have given their children would have been to teach them to be financially self reliant, and to practice the same themselves by planning for retirement so that they would be self reliant in retirement. If you don't pay yourself first and begin building that retirement fund, you'll end up being a financial burden to your children in your senior years. I'm sure that is the last thing my friends wanted to do but it would seem that living only for the here & now and not planning for the future will lead you down this road every time.
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