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I also am a thankful for 401k and 403b savings plans along with some matching company contributions and tax advantages. No one said those need to be your only form of savings for retirement. Another advantage of 401k/403b accounts is that it helps you defer spending this money until your retirement years. I keep hearing that the average middle class family has very little put aside for retirement. Meanwhile I am traveling throughout the country and am amazed at the number of young families with huge, expensive RVs. Too many people go into debt to buy toys and of course when doing so they also defer saving for retirement. I get really PO'd about this topic. It seems those of us who saved and got by without the toys are now expected to pony up and help out those who did not.
oooh you would just love this video.
it is a collection of sad cases who either planned poorly , committed their own financial suicide or were just down on their luck.
you really can't tell which since the biased reporting gives no information about any of the sad cases you see but my vote is self inflicted..
it is a collection of folks who are ill-prepared for retirement .
like the cello player who works with the st louis orchestra for 23k a year and is a divorced mom. duh!!!!!!!!! you think at one point she would have said i think i need a real job with real pay?
or the couple down on their luck because the guy got layed off 3x late in life.
i don't know many companies that even let their best of breed go in bad times unless they were closing the doors . here is a guy who got layed off 3x . does he sound like best of breed to you? and to boot buys a big home in the bay area.
the stories of those who can't retire go on and on in this video but somehow i think it is themselves that did it.
it is called broken eggs. it is long and i only managed to get through 1/2 of it before it bored me with their tales of woe and no financial info about those in the film.
however for those city data folks who thrive on every piece of everyone is failing media they can find and post it they can add this piece of work to their collection.
while retirement is so far off when you are younger and you picture yourself older you see this image of a frail old person hobbling along.
the reality is once you are there ,especially if you are in your early 60's you may very well be no differeent than you were ready to do all the things having time allows you,
at 62 i am in the best shape of my life.more than 15 years of being a gym rat and eating well has left me at least for now better then i was 30 years ago.
my arms are the biggest they ever were at 62 .
the point is having all this wonderful time in retirement and little money would really suck for us especially since we have our health to do anything and go anywhere..
the vision of retirement and the ability to do things is usually pictured very wrong by the youngin's.
My husband planned for retirement better than I did, but we're doing just fine and have all our pensions now since I'm 62 and he's 65. We are both fit and healthy and very active (I'm a gym rat) so we travel, travel, travel.
I turned 65 last week, still working in a fairly fast-paced environment, but not long after the first, I hope to cut things back to part-time; I also have a seasonal tax business that helps fill in the gaps. It's also been my experiience that seasonal collection of Unemployment benefits, escpecially when "stretched" with part-time work, is often a better deal than Social Security -- if you can prove your case and qualify.
Some years ago, I bought an older house from a relative's estate, and have been renting it out, since i can usualy find better opportnities "downstate" from my Northeastern Pennsylvania base. And I'm convinced that the recent budget-busting expansion in government programs (foir which both major parties are accountable) is going to have to be addressed in part by runnning the pritinting press and "engineering" a round of double-digit inflation similar to the Seventies -- which fewer and fewer of us are able to recall.
So I'm taking more of my savings out of equities and putting them into "harder" assets. fixing up my property and adding a basement apartment which can be rented out or used for personal reasons, depending upon where (and if) I'm working. Sooner or later, like the dance band on the Titanic the orchestrators of our current economic folly will be called to account; the equities markets wil crash again, but that should set the stage for another 80's-style recovery -- if the Great Deceivers are turned out of power.
Last edited by 2nd trick op; 09-26-2014 at 01:59 PM..
The financial media scares us into thinking that if we don't have this massive nest egg by 65 your doomed.
As mathjack said why do people feel like they have to quit at 65?
My theory is that young people should be planning for tomorrow and the next 10 years, not necessarily when their 65. Life is meant to be lived now. I.E. Don't put all of your eggs in that 65 year old retirement basket!
the problem is many don't put anything in that retirement basket , then they get there and complain they cannot retire or live crappy stressful lives sweating every expense.
life has to be a balance or you win a few battle and lose the war.
with the potential to spend more time retired than we even do working that can consume quite a bit of dough if you want to live out youre goals and dreams in retirement.
we are planning our first years trips we always wanted to do now since i have 10 months left of work.
what a great feeling to be able to go anywhere and do anything you wanted. but that isn't going to happen by tilting things only to lo=oking out 10 years or so.
to us ,we want to live better in retirement than our working years raising a family and scrimping and saving what we could. we want to be rewarded now for not buying that bmw i wanted earlier in life or the very expensive cameras.
like everything in life you think everything is overblown off in the future until you get there yourself. i am still in shock i will be 62 next week, how the heck did that ever happen.
Last edited by mathjak107; 09-29-2014 at 02:11 AM..
I tend to preach about the short term-mid term, because life has a way of slapping you in the face way before retirement and you need to be prepared for those days too.
So now that your retired. Where are you putting your money?
I keep being told to 'put my money where my mouth is'...
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retirement is overblown
