Where do affluent retirees get their income? (federal, retired, friends)
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The affluent retirees that I know worked at very high paying jobs or they inherited money on top of their pension. They usually had both people working. Most of my friends are single and are not affluent.
WE figured very early that we would never have pensions -- we were right. We didn't have 401k's until about the 90's in our jobs. We saved through plain savings and IRAs. AS soon as a 401K was available we chucked as much as we could into them at the most aggressive funds they had. (Which were jokes)
In 1998, we became self employed and I took that 401K money OUT via transfer and did my own thing with it... YAHOO!!!!
Now that we are self employed -- we have IRAs and SEP-IRA.
I've determined I will always have equities of some sort, and I'm aiming for an income of 60-75K a year.
same ,here ,always planned around what we created for ourselves is what we will end up with. it would have been nice to have a nice juicy pension but it just wasn't in the cards.
Pensions are nice. Both my wife and I have them, plus SS and savings. I work 10 hours a week so I have been able to max out my IRA contributions every year even though I am retired. Now that 70.5 is looming, I'll probably give up working for money and just do volunteer work somewhere. The home has been paid off since 2008, we have no debt of any kind and our pensions include subsidized Medicare supplemental insurance. We don't need a six figure income to be comfortable.
Building up retirement savings required years of enforced frugality, but it's really nice to have that cushion.
I think we're in that same boat. You're right, IMO, about not needing a 6 figure income to be comfortable- ours is in the high 5's though. But we've been frugal all our lives- it comes as second nature, as we've had to get through some pretty lean years along the way, but I always insisted that we make those contributions to the IRAs and other investments, and we worked extra when we needed to. It's so nice now to have that cushion, isn't it?
I have noticed that people I have as coworkers, friends or acquaintances, who still have 20-30 years worth of pensions ARE the new "riche" in retirement. It doesn't mean that people without pensions can't have nice retirements, but these folks who retire with 40-75% in pensions and have good medical coverage are very well off in retirement. They have essentially no financial worries compared to those who are relying on investment returns. In this era of higher medical costs, the average retired couple who has no retirement medical benefit will use up one person's SS on the couple's medical expenses every year, in effect cutting their SS benefit in half.
I lived in NJ for most of my adult life and there teachers who taught 30 years and retired at 55 routinely got/get pensions of over 60K per year plus insanely good medical coverage. How can that be sustained in perpetuity by citizens--it's a bit like a pyramid scheme where the taxpayers are at the bottom of the pyramid and never get their reward... And in cases of civil servants, it's a shame that many municipalities gave unrealistic pension benefit promises that they couldn't maintain/guarantee. However, it's unlikely that any of those pension recipients will ever need food stamps, even if their benefits change.
You're not really retired if you're working -- ANY hours a week for pay or compensation.
Certainly you've heard of the phrase "semi-retired". The poster to whom you were responding said he works ten hours a week. There is a world of difference between having a full-time job and working ten hours a week. That poster is more retired than not, in terms of finances, work load, amount of free time, etc. Does the term "semi-retired" do the trick for you, or do you wish to continue the semantic hair-splitting?
Certainly you've heard of the phrase "semi-retired". The poster to whom you were responding said he works ten hours a week. There is a world of difference between having a full-time job and working ten hours a week. That poster is more retired than not, in terms of finances, work load, amount of free time, etc. Does the term "semi-retired" do the trick for you, or do you wish to continue the semantic hair-splitting?
I should also have included the phrase "some weeks" in my working schedule info. I didn't work at all last week because I visited friends a long ways away. If I have other stuff to do, I don't work. They are glad to have me for whatever time I can spare. When us old people retire we take decades of experience and expertise with us. It's not hard to find a position where work consists of writing training manuals and teaching an organization how to do things efficiently.
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