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Sounds like you should have planned a little better then. It's always someone else's fault. If you worked for 40 years , you could have certainly saved some and invested it ...even if it was $100 a month. Or why didn't you advance more in your career? And you didn't say"were." You said "have been" which implies it's not necessarily happening now or possibly not even in the recent past. And the stock market and "recession" (which really doesn't correlate with stock market gains anyway) is up almost quadruple from where it was at the lows, by the way. The 401kers should be dancing in the streets!!
What an asshat. Did your grandmother fail to plan her retirement? Or was it assumed your Grandfather would provide? Assuming he didnt run off. Females were not encouraged to progress in school leading to college degrees nor encouraged to advance at work. Promotions based on merit? Didnt happen.
Do you know what the average wage was in 1960,70 or 80?
Women have to take time off to have children, which men don't and usually have to supply care to aged parents and in laws. Think about the years a mother might take off to birth and nuture their children and support the husband's career. Then when the elderly parents need care..does the husband stop work to drive the oldies to doctors appointments? No.
Not to mention 401Ks were introduced in the late 70s but not commonly available until the late 80s-90s. In the meantime, defined pension plans had been discarded for all except union members.
In addition to all the previous generations paying for the roads you drive on, the free public education you felt entitled to, free libraries that someone else paid for, police and firemen you expect but dont want to pay for.
If you had a shred of intelligence or humanity, you would be ashamed of what you just posted. But I expect not, since intelligence does not seem to be your forte.
I retired just shy of 4 months ago, and my retirement income (without SS yet) is just at $400 less per month than what I was "bringing home" because of our additional paying into income taxes (and we still had to add $$$$ to send them on 15 April) and the 20% into my TSP account pre taxed every year before I retired....I now put gas into my car on average once per month!
I retired in January 2014 under FERS at 64.5 years old with 22 years of service and I too saw a decrease of approximately $500 a month in take home pay. Although I draw SS, I haven't touched my TSP. I was amazed to see how much was withheld from my pay while working! My weekly net while working was $1,022, now it is $891.
As for the retirement crises, I wonder if some of this is simply people in their 50's who are afraid of the unknown. After all, didn't most of us go through some kind of "panic" before retiring because we were afraid of how much we would get vs. how much we will need? Even though I ran the numbers over and over again, it wasn't until I took the plunge that I realized I will be just fine in retirement.
Also, to get into the 25% bracket *as a retiree*, you'd have to gross $100K or more (including 85% of your SS benefit).
That's not even close to being true unless you're married. Even married couples hit that threshold before grossing $100k if they only take the standard deduction.
For single people, the 25% tax bracket in 2015 begins at just $37,450 of taxable income. For married couples it begins at $74,900. So unless a married couple has $25,100 in deductions and personal exemptions, they're going to hit the 25% bracket with a gross income in the low $90k's.
Quote:
Originally Posted by Larry Siegel
...That's basically optional, and depends on how much you take out of your IRA, unless you're over 70-1/2, in which case the required minimum distribution could get you there (even then, only for part of your money).
Not necessarily. If your retirement income comes from pensions and social security, hitting the 25% marginal tax bracket is not optional at all.
My wife and I are getting over 70% of our retirement income from ss alone, boo hoo!
My benefit is estimated to be $3,050 while my wife's is etimated to be $1,125 for a combined ss benefit of $4,175 TAX FREE. Boo hoo!
If social security was 100% of our income when you figure we would not pay any federal or state taxes that's equivalent to having a full time job paying $67,000 per year here in Georgia. Boo hoo!
So a couple in Georgia living on ~$4,200 monthly SS pays no taxes? How much tax does a minimum wage working schlub pay?
I don't look at ss as a break even or get all my money back thing. I don't know when I am gong to die it could be one year after I retire or 30 years, who knows? What I do know is for however long I am alive and unable to work I want to have enough to live very comfortably.
So a couple in Georgia living on ~$4,200 monthly SS pays no taxes? How much tax does a minimum wage working schlub pay?
$4,200.00/month is $969.97/week
Weekly Gross Pay $969.47
Federal Withholding $79.80
Social Security $60.11
Medicare $14.06 Georgia $51.86 Net Pay $763.64
That's 21% taken out of the schlub's pay yet warning bells go off when seniors are told their social security will be 30% less than when they were working?
Working a job I would have to gross $1,260/week in order to have a net pay of $969 (figures are within $10).
As Mark Bridges point out
Quote:
As for the retirement crises, I wonder if some of this is simply people in their 50's who are afraid of the unknown
Yeah, I'm guilty. I prepare a spread sheet, put in all the "what if's" and before long I need more money after retirement than when I was working because of all the "what if's".
There are some, not a lot but some, places where a retired couple can't live very comfortably on $1,000/week take home pay if their home is paid for and they don't have debt. Simple fact is there's a lot of people making a $800/month mortgage taking home $1,000/week plus most of those are raising kids.
For a single person $750/week take home should afford a reasonable standard of living as long especially if no mortgage or debt.
I think about things like "what if my air conditioner goes out?" Yeah, $4,000 for that but "what if" it goes out three months after that?
Women have to take time off to have children, which men don't and usually have to supply care to aged parents and in laws. Think about the years a mother might take off to birth and nuture their children and support the husband's career. Then when the elderly parents need care..does the husband stop work to drive the oldies to doctors appointments? No.
Joliefille,
Many studies have shown that even after taking into accounts all the work-detracting factors, women on the average still earn less than men.
"By looking at a specific and detailed sample of workers (graduates of the University of Michigan Law School) economists Robert Wood, Mary Corcoran and Paul Courant examined the wage gap while matching men and women for possible explanatory factors such as occupation, age, experience, education, time in the workforce, childcare, average hours worked, grades while in college, and other factors. After accounting for all that, women were paid 81.5% of what men "with similar demographic characteristics, family situations, work hours, and work experience" were paid."
Throwing in the facts that women live longer than men and the high rate of divorces (even late in life when the women had very little chance of finding a job if she had been a SAHM! Yes! it is HER FAULT for being SAHM!!!!! - not my opinion just the sentiment that I had seen expressed online), it is not a surprise that there are more senior women than men living in poverty.
Regarding your entire post, I understand your frustration. IMO, everybody looks at the world with different color glasses based on their own experience. Opposing opinions are expected at a public forum. Sometimes I just take a spoonful of salt after reading some extreme statements online and try not to take them personally ;-)
What an asshat. Did your grandmother fail to plan her retirement? Or was it assumed your Grandfather would provide? Assuming he didnt run off. Females were not encouraged to progress in school leading to college degrees nor encouraged to advance at work. Promotions based on merit? Didnt happen.
Do you know what the average wage was in 1960,70 or 80?
Women have to take time off to have children, which men don't and usually have to supply care to aged parents and in laws. Think about the years a mother might take off to birth and nuture their children and support the husband's career. Then when the elderly parents need care..does the husband stop work to drive the oldies to doctors appointments? No.
Not to mention 401Ks were introduced in the late 70s but not commonly available until the late 80s-90s. In the meantime, defined pension plans had been discarded for all except union members.
In addition to all the previous generations paying for the roads you drive on, the free public education you felt entitled to, free libraries that someone else paid for, police and firemen you expect but dont want to pay for.
If you had a shred of intelligence or humanity, you would be ashamed of what you just posted. But I expect not, since intelligence does not seem to be your forte.
Ok, you are right. Women have it unblievably rough. It's always the man's fault and I'm totally insensitive.
And all women are paid less than men even in the same job classifications like teachers and public sector employees.
My original point was that the surveys they do which finds to no surprise that men on average make more than women do not take into account generally that job classifications aren't compared. Public sector employees and teachers as well as most private sector job workers in the same job classifications whether men or women make the same. That was my original point which was then twisted.
There are also many many cases (no, I'm not one of them) in which the divorce left the woman in much better shape than the man. So, while I'm not mitigating anyone's plight, some balance needs to be introduced into this subject.
Here is the deal and few practice this, save for retirement. Due to the power of compounding interest if you were to start when you were 20 years old and put just $2,000 a year into a 403B or 401K and do that for just 6 years and stop doing that, then work until you are 65 you will have over 1 million in your retirement account. Chances are you may have figured out that you need a bit more than that to retire. My plan is the $5million mark for my wife and I. We are doing everything we can to get to that point. No we did not start with a retirement account when we were age 20. So a lot of catching up has been happening over the years.
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My weekly net while working was $1,022, now it is $891. 
