Retiring Poor Is NOT as Bad as You Think! (travel, taxes, trailer)
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Kind of depends on which side of the fence you are on, doesn't it? If you have never known "poor" you will not be able to relate. Same with wealthy...... if you have never had wealth, you will not be able to relate.
i have been on both sides of the fence and i can say my opinion is poor sucks !. i would never want to go back to that that way of life again.
I think a better title for the discussion might be "retiring on an income at or near poverty level doesn't have to be miserable". I have run the numbers; with some major caveats having to do with lack of surprises, it is very doable. The problem is that the surprises will happen to some of us. The surprises are unexpected expenses. If you cook store brand food, stay healthy and live in a paid off house that isn't taxed heavily, have no major repairs needed that aren't insured or have a high deductible you can even travel a little on poverty income.
I think a better title for the discussion might be "retiring on an income at or near poverty level doesn't have to be miserable". I have run the numbers; with some major caveats having to do with lack of surprises, it is very doable. The problem is that the surprises will happen to some of us. The surprises are unexpected expenses. If you cook store brand food, stay healthy and live in a paid off house that isn't taxed heavily, have no major repairs needed that aren't insured or have a high deductible you can even travel a little on poverty income.
Living in a paid-off house on a poverty level income is usually considerably easier than renting on a poverty level income.
today credit checks too count heavily. after all , when an employer has to make a snap judgement about you and has little to go on , having poor credit can mean you have a history of poor decisions and choices .
the thinking is if you can't handle your own money what are you going to do with company resources .
whether true ,reasons or not does not matter. all that counts is they may not really care the reason , they just take someone with good credit scores and save themselves the trouble of digging.
A person who cannot handle money and renounces debts through BK can have clean credit 10 years later, while a person who has unforeseen medical issues with loss of wages and consequent bad credit, but doesn't walk away by BK, has indefinite bad credit...
So the deadbeat who filed BK is a better handler of company resources?
Living in a paid-off house on a poverty level income is usually considerably easier than renting on a poverty level income.
For a lot of us it means possibly lowering your sights a little as to what kind of home and where but if you are living in a $200k home that you are still making payments on, you could possibly roll the equity into owning a less expensive home. If you can scrape up enough to get a decent manufactured home, there are plenty of communities where you can live a few blocks from the beach with a pool, club house, some activities and pay rent/HOA/utilities of around $500. Some places I have looked at come in a little under that. No, this doesn't mean that being poor means you can easily retire, just pointing out that with caveats that many of us can do, annual costs can be in the poverty range.
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