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ABSOLUTELY!!!! Since I put so much of my income into the Thrift Savings Program (the gov equivalent of the IRA or 401K) I actually bring home MORE money being retired (but there is no more going into that retirement account.....)
There could be if you had qualifying accounts that you can convert into it. However I do love the TSP account. I have called the help line to ask how it is withdrawn. I am still 3 months away from retirement but I needed to have those answers for myself before so that I can pass that on to my friends here as they move steadily towards retirement as well.
This time of year reminds me that not having to buy Christmas gifts for staff and coworkers will allow me to retire early. Oh wait, I already retired early. But you get the idea...
There could be if you had qualifying accounts that you can convert into it. However I do love the TSP account. I have called the help line to ask how it is withdrawn. I am still 3 months away from retirement but I needed to have those answers for myself before so that I can pass that on to my friends here as they move steadily towards retirement as well.
No need to call the help line; it's all explained on their website.
And if you want even more information, there's an entire booklet online that you can peruse called Withdrawing Your TSP Account After Leaving Federal Service:
Who and why did they put stipulation on Social Security - It should be simple. - "At age 62, You get your money!!!!" If you want to work beyond that, 'simply deduct Social Security from the pay and add it to the social security retirement pot", than at age 65 or 67 - make a re-adjustment and increase the persons Social Pension, if they have continued to contribute after they began collecting, and chose to continue working.
Why do we allow politicians and their attorneys to "collude everything".
The same with Medicare and Medicaid - at Age 65 - Just cover people - there is no need for people who have worked their entire adult life, to have any limitations nor should there be any contribution UNLESS it is a "fixed rate" which everyone pays except those who get an indigent rating due to low income.
IF the Federal System has began to take over the University Hospitals and put them under Federal Program, and States can administer it, then not only could the University Hospital be an access point to the Senior Citizens, the Feds could have picked up numerous hospitals in state, where so many have simply been closed, "only because the operator could not gouge the public, so they move and build new ones closer to where the young working well to do live.
With ACA- that is a big infusion into medical coverage, which should have mandated rate freezes - so insurance companies can't play the cost escalation game. But, since they play that game - Impose a heavy tax on profits that exceed 30-40%. and put a 90% tax on everything above that. This will force them to cut the crap- when its no benefit in it for them.
Then mandate that the 10% that is not taxed, is re-distributed back to the policy holders.
Then they'd stop paying executives 10's of millions of dollars and pay them rates that respect the perspective of what American workers ear. There is no need, no reason and no logic to pay any Executive 350x more than average employees earn. Nothing that anyone can do in an executive capacity is worth 100's of thousands of dollar PER HOUR. Absolutely Nothing!!!!!!
It will be great when the generation whom are toddlers now come of age, because they are being raised in an era of information and knowledge - they will crack this madness into a billion pieces. We can't because many people simply don't think in the expanded terms to see these things as problems and issues, and we currently live in a society who is too quick to believe and accept anything one in a suit has to say and if they have a title and they are over paid, anything they say, we take it as some life gospel. Sadly, that is the mentality many baby boomers were groomed to accept, they taught their kids to accept it, they taught their kids also to chase status by such means, and their kids in turn, taught it unto their kids to go along with it and support executive greed. It will take the Great Great Grand Kids to bring sensibilities back to business and life. It will take the Great Great Grand Kids to bring back the concept of business existing to serve people. Instead of Business being set up for Stock brokers and Traders to enrich themselves by collusive games, they will also burst the bubble of business thinking that the people purpose is to be indentured to the business.
50-60-70 years ago, the people who are seniors today - lived to build the infrastructure, bridges and power grid, since that time, we've seen executives raise rates, but do nothing to modernize and upgrade these things. All the money President Obama directed toward infrastructure - The opposition of Republican made sure that money was squanders on reports, studies and consultants, until absolutely minuscule amounts even came close to the actual work on infrastructure.
Sadly, the thievery system we allowed to develop, can't even maintain what was built in previous generations.
We need someone who has the force to do what Eisenhower did, when he built the Freeways, He set it up as a government project, and made sure that it was done. They made sure contractors completed their task, they monitored the thieves in the contractor business, and they pushed the program forward and today we have a freeway system.
Now days, the projects are all over budget, and behind time with excessive delays, and a massive list of robbery style 'change orders", Change Orders has become the programmed method of stealing. When we make the designers and architects firms pay the expense of Change Orders, then the Change Order game will stop immediately.
When we fix these type of things, we will also fix the other messes we've allowed. Such as the robbery games that plague public service programs, medicare, medicaid and the insure game madness. We will fix the banking madness and we will fix the corrupt politician insanity.
We simply need to understand what is "Economic Treason", how it functions and what it destroys - It will take the Great Great Grand kids of people living today, to truly come to terms and address it.
Today many of the people in the Retire pools, has been hoodwinked and can only think about, the weakness of their pensions, the encroachment of medical co pays and premimums.. This is constructive distractions, to keep people from having the clarity of focus to address the madness that was developed over the past 60 yrs in the systems of this nation.
We are responsible in big ways for our current conditions - Everyone wanted the "Ozzie and Harriet" life, and we were willing to gouge anything to live the "TV script imagery" and that of the "Soap Opera" fiction. It made American lose a sense of value, it made it lose a sense of family. Soap opera's taught america to thirst for infidelity and divorce, ravage anything for money and try and live some care free fictional script of emulating Soap Opera drama.
We don't want to accept how much TV influenced the change in us, but we became obsessed to be at the TV at certain time to catch certain show, this insured our indoctrination programming was working.
Most people are still today, unaware of the subliminal message TV producers paid psychologist vast sums to come up with means to influence and manipulate people, their concepts and ultimately their actions. It resulted to change their concept of morals and ethics went straight out the window.
Who knows what the future will bring, but many who are retired now, are not at all pleased with what the future they once dreams up, has produced as being their current day reality.
Our foods have too much toxins, medicines being advertised right along side class action suits about the very same medicine and the advertising continues while the class action continues to add more people to the lawsuit. It's like pure insanity.
At present is is not going to get in better in the near time, because we have a political arena filled with a cycle of nuts all with some extremist views, none of which address the need for society to fix its problems.
Retirement has a great deal to do with age and stage of one's position within being retired. It also can and in some cases have much to do with how someone became retired, as well, in some cases why they became retired.
I see a great many people working as clerks at stores whom probably never would have taken these type of jobs before, even if they'd retired decades ago, because many retired people simply did not take the kind of jobs people take now days.
Most of the jobs many retired people now take, are in some cases jobs that use to go to "after school work kids".
We have a vast number of people in various stages of their retirement years, some who worked many years at the once upon a time 'community mom and pop owned facilities, which had no pensions, there are people who at one time did house work for others, which provided no pension and retirement benefits of any sort. What about the countless people who worked in peoples home, where no social security was deducted from their pay? At some point, they simply became too old, or too sickly to work.
There are so many small companies who employed so many people, who provided nothing toward retirement, as well as the rate of pay people were paid was never enough to cover living expense and have something to save. There are widows who find they have to find jobs for a great many reasons, as well as widowed men. The word "Retired" covers a great many categories of how people live.
...... These are realities all across American as to the variations of what is "retirement". it is amazing high in areas where there were poor minorities who filled some of those type jobs, and areas where poor whites filled some of those jobs, and single parents filled some of those jobs.
Some of the elements about rate of pay, is far from a factor that many of the people who fill retirement ranks simply cannot relate to. In some cases, even for people who put in 20 yrs at a company, which did not have a pension plan, and they have worked many various jobs prior to the last 20 yrs before retirement, simply did not have retirement benefits. Some states and depending on the rate of ones earning, Social Security Benefits can be very low; if it was not for Medicare and even medicaid helping to pay the co-pay for medicare, some could simply not afford medicare and still afford to eat and cover prescription medications.
I would suggest some take a look also at 'what is the Pension Guarantee Company", many companies simply abandoned their pension plans, turned it over to the Pension Guarantee company, to escape the responsibility of properly funding their pension plan and dealing with the longevity that plan would need to perform.
I'd caution working people to stay abreast of the status of your Pension Plan and its Funding.
I am not certain of which ones or where, but I've heard friends discuss pension plans making plans to reduce the amount of benefits to be paid.
I also had a friend who retired, when the company turned their plan over the Pension Guarantee Company, the checks he was already receiving was reduced, and then his Medical Co-pay escalated. He eventually ended up seeking out part time work.
When Investors play games with Pension funds investments and loose money, the impact has to fall some place, and eventually it may fall all the ways back to the existing pensioners. Often time they try to change the terms of those who are in Pre-pension years, but that does not prohibit them from making term changes to existing collectors of pension funds.
Point being, "nothing in this system is guaranteed", not that the premise and principle of the program is bad, its because the human factor or crooks, criminals, swindlers, shysters, con-man, inept people as well as all the wall street, and banking shams and games that erode and loot any and every type of investment vehicles they can come close to. .
..........What about the countless people who worked in peoples home, where no social security was deducted from their pay? At some point, they simply became too old, or too sickly to work..........
Another reason not to work "off the books"; and another reason illegal immigrants are not just a minor problem.
A new class of retiree: "Retired, Here Illegally".
I'm out in the bush and my money in town is piling up like cordwood. I'm never in town to spend it and don't need to drop five bucks at the donut shop and/or do something involving money just to pass the time.
I now have Cdn. dollars, US dollars, and even a few Euros. win/win/win.
People have to know when they are fortunate within their retirement years. I'd challenge anyone to go into some of the major metro's or small town and look at the vast volume of the elderly who range in conditions to being in places that would not pass a HUD inspection, to varying degree of comfort and convenience.
Today, there are communities where jobs left long ago, people owned their homes and may have paid it off, but cannot afford the maintenance upkeep for it to be habitable, or in curb appeal presentation. I'd guarantee anyone who visit these post can and will if they look, see homes with over grown vegetation, to falling down garages and many other conditions, and some of these are occupied by senior retired person; sadly some of those person on the meager income have to provide for grand kids due to parents on drugs, in prison or maybe the parent died.
COMPASSION is greatly needed in America today.
When we see the congressional people talking about cutting public assistance benefits, they don't look broad enough, often times they are focused squarely on inner city minorities. But they don't even consider to look at the lack of industry, the mom and pop business that have long ago closed, and the blight left by companies that packed up and left and had no concern to clean up the messes they resulted ultimately to leave.
The supply chain that use to fuel and feed appliance industry, textiles and auto and other things that were once produced in American has left these small town and long ago left major metro's, many in search of slaves on foreign soil who worked for less than what it cost to house and feed a slave in modern day America, which is all the Minimum wage equals. America forgot the many areas where the mills no longer exist, the Mining is gone, the Textiles are gone and many of these were business and industry in the rural and small predominantly white america sectors of the Midwest, the South and all across what was once the rust belt -which is now the rusted over belt. These are people who too, need those public service programs and benefits. So when they talk about cuts, these are vast volumes of people who will equally so be impacted and devastated.
We have more than 170+ million poor whites, 20+ million black, and 25+ million poor Latino and millions more other. If we look at the American Indian area, we are talking about nearly 90% poverty, the other 10% may have been fortunate enough to get some of the Reservation Casino assistance. THIS IS THE REALITY We don't often want to acknowledge nor factor. Added in that reality is, the high number of the Senior Citizen pool of people above the age of 60/65.
Yet, we shipped plane loads of $$$BILLIONS OF DOLLARS TO IRAQ IN "CASH MONEY", not to mention the sum of more than THREE TRILLION spent on building war tools, and the additional Trillions we've spend that is off the books and not talked about.
We allowed Wall Street and Banks to make vanish more than 60 Trillion and then they wiped out the equity in peoples homes playing a game with interest rates, to temp people to leverage their homes all with the delusion to create a pretense that the economy was moving. That came to a head in 2007 !! by 2008, American home owners were either made homeless, upside down on their homes, or could no longer function because of the stifling interest rates.
STILL in the midst of this, we never slowed down one minute from Giving China $30 BILLION every month, and we are still giving them 30 billion every month in trade imbalance.
IF we were spending $20-30 billion a month on war games in Iraq and Afghanistan - where is the money now that its not going to Iraq and so much going to Afghanistan? Why can't American INVEST that much on a monthly basis to rebuild America?
What does it take to WAKE UP economist to tell the truth. and Face the fact that Industry needs to come back to America and America needs to set a goal, to produce 40+% of what it consumes on American Soil.
Take all these factors into account and relate it to the poor condition of the General American Retiree's? It's a pure travesty !!!!!
Our big name economist have been trained to accept and promote "Economic Treason" under the banner of claiming "Globalist Economy", while american people struggle, suffer and cities and infrastructure continues to crumble in every category.
The Average American does not wake up everyday, thinking "hey, let gladly dump more money in the "Middle East" !!! We need to focus on fixing this nation, its problems and invest in helping American cities and their people. As long as the Middle East has religious rule and religious division, there is no fixing that, we need to know when to back off and let them fix their issues. Thank goodness President Obama was smart enough not to rush into Egypt and not to rush into Syria and create two more American Wars. if he'd caved to Republican aims, we'd be at war today with massive troops in Egypt and Syria, with billions and billions more drained off to fight non winnable wars.
The mess Bush created in destabilizing the entire region from his lack of listening and understanding exactly what Saddam told him. "That you can't import and install democracy". He told Bush it would take decades to continue SLOWLY making democratic reforms, of which Saddam had been continually doing. But, nope we stomped over their and removed the only man that kept some sense of civility in the country and region. Now its the biggest mess ever and there is no one in sight who has any idea of how to contain it. Yet, here in America our young and our senior citizens suffer economic devastation due to all this madness of Outsourcing followed by Wars on Foreign Lands.
Disregard for the many hard works within our History and respect for Legacy, has been Ignored and disrespected is what brought downfall to our industrial might.
Detroit built much of American via the automobile and the vast supply chain that it took to make it work, and here we are in less than 60 yrs, Detroit filing bankruptcy, while China is all over the globe building up other nations while holding Trillions of debt we owe them. If that is not the most ludicrous thing imaginable.
What America needs is someone with many of the ideals of Theodore Roosevelt !!!! he was not perfect, but he thought about American and its people, put corporation in their place and concerned himself with bettering America.
Quote:
(1). He championed his "Square Deal" domestic policies, promising the average citizen fairness, breaking of trusts, regulation of railroads, and pure food and drugs. Making conservation a top priority, he established myriad new national parks, forests, and monuments intended to preserve the nation's natural resources. In foreign policy, he focused on Central America, where he began construction of the Panama Canal.
(2). Roosevelt took the final step toward believing in racial equality. At the end of his life TR repudiated the Madison Grants and other racists and promised W.E.B. DuBois to work with more energy for racial justice
(3). He is heralded as the architect of the modern presidency, as a world leader who boldly reshaped the office to meet the needs of the new century and redefined America's place in the world.
(4). Roosevelt thought it was particularly important for the government to supervise the workings of the railway to avoid corruption in interstate commerce related to the shipment of coal and other commodities and goods
(5). For his aggressive use of United States antitrust law, he became known as the "trust-buster". He brought 40 antitrust suits, and broke up major companies, such as the largest railroad and Standard Oil, the largest oil company
(6). The Pure Food and Drug Act banned food and drugs that were impure or falsely labeled from being made, sold, and shipped.
(7). Roosevelt "straddled the immigration question", taking the position that "we cannot have too much immigration of the right sort, and we should have none whatever of the wrong sort"
(8). the only wise and honorable and Christian thing to do is to treat each black man and each white man strictly on his merits as a man
We would have no situations today of American reaching Retirement Age and being in the predicaments so many find themselves today.
Last edited by Chance and Change; 12-22-2015 at 07:34 PM..
My dad lives in a suburb of Chicago, IL. He use to drive to work. The train did not go by his work. Anyways he did the math between suits, parking, lunch, gas, health, time, car repair, etc he would make almost the same retired that he did working so he retired.
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