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About a year before I planned to retire I started living on only the amount the SS estimator said I would get. The rest I put into my savings account. Actually, I was able to live on less than the estimate.
Unfortunately, I was laid off about seven months before I planned to retire. I got unemployment payments for six months, then lived off of the rather meager severance from my job. Now I'm utilizing the money from my 401k (not much). I figure I will have to use some (about 1k) of my savings until I start SS.
I wanted to hold out until age 66, but 65 will have to do. Even though my expenses are small (I can live on 1k/month), I don't want to drain my savings.
After almost 30 years of working for the same company, having my first job at age 14, and basically working full time from age 17, I just didn't have the heart to even look for another job. I did have to 'look' to satisfy Unemployment, if they ever asked if I was trying to find work.
I got no response from the companies I sent my resume to, and Unemployment never contacted me.
Even though I lost my job, I had some peace of mind knowing I could live until SS without having to worry.
I was just job eliminated at the age of 62. Collecting for 26 weeks.
More stringent in Virginia, where I had to file.
They want 2 contacts every week, including the phone numbers of the person contacted, the email addy and the result of the contact.
I'm not sure how much they dig into each contact for proof, but I just never take chances and try to apply to 2 or more jobs every week.
if it was something that was possible for everyone to do , either at their own company or a different one it no longer would be valuable to do .
it is the fact few have the quality's to pull it off and that is why they become more valuable .
So we get to stay in the beach front condo in the tropics on vacation and retire in comfort. That is fine; there should be greater rewards. But there is an undercurrent in this discussion that disturbs me; it seems like some people feel that it's okay if the fast food worker barely survives and if he doesn't get a better job during his career he is undeserving of anything more than a meager retirement at an advanced age. I think that worker should also get to enjoy life. Maybe he has to drive or take a bus to the nearest coast and stay in a motel a couple of blocks from the beach. Retirement housing will probably have to be in an apartment building but asking for it to be near family and maybe have a few activities seems reasonable to me. I don't like the rhetoric that shames the workers who never made it far up the money tree.
on the other hand hand my old company has the opposite problem and is staffed with a lot of older folks who want to work as long as they can and have the bulk of the experience and knowledge in the company .
finding younger workers who are suitable has been a problem .
this is in the electrical wholesale / factory automation industry
Same here.
We can't find anyone close (100 mile radius) younger than 30 that wants to put in the time it takes to learn and take the time to study and pass the test required for certification.
The median age for those having the minimum level of certification to achieve a license is 55 while the median age for senior technicians is 61. I am 67 and 20% of senior level technicians are older than I am.
The good thing about all this is at 67 I can easily find a job if I want/need one but the problem is I am getting to where I don't want to work full time anymore.
Two paths to retirement. Choice or force. The big question is where will the income come from? People are paying hundreds of dollars a month for cell phone service.. There's no money available for short or long term savings.
The retirement realization. Worked 40 plus years and it came to this?
We can't find anyone close (100 mile radius) younger than 30 that wants to put in the time it takes to learn and take the time to study and pass the test required for certification.
The median age for those having the minimum level of certification to achieve a license is 55 while the median age for senior technicians is 61. I am 67 and 20% of senior level technicians are older than I am.
The good thing about all this is at 67 I can easily find a job if I want/need one but the problem is I am getting to where I don't want to work full time anymore.
at 63 i am retired and get calls all the time from competitors who make insane offers for me to work even part time . in fact i got a call from wesco (westinghouse) telling me i can write my own pay check.
there is just such a shortage of folks who can fill slots for one reason or another.
mostly because they can't make it through the pre-screening checks . the other reason is many at this point in our industry are the recycled employees that were let go by other company's and no one really wants them . so there are jobs , just not for them .
Last edited by mathjak107; 04-01-2016 at 09:14 AM..
And the reason is that everybody thinks they should go to college and major in sociology, or political science, or some such. Not many are entering the trade schools and apprenticeships, which is odd since many journey-level jobs pay far more than those college grads will ever make.
People will always need a/c techs and plumbers, linemen,and welding fabricators
And the reason is that everybody thinks they should go to college and major in sociology, or political science, or some such. Not many are entering the trade schools and apprenticeships, which is odd since many journey-level jobs pay far more than those college grads will ever make.
People will always need a/c techs and plumbers, linemen,and welding fabricators
That is true and I don't understand that. I am a tech school graduate (remember those Control Data Institute commercials in the late 70s and early 80s? I learned to program computers in about a year and it cost me less than I make in a week now). I would not say that everybody is going to college for liberal arts; as of 2012 about a third of us in the US have college degrees, but you are spot on that more should go to vocational school; the rate on that is only about 1 in 10: https://nces.ed.gov/programs/digest/...t14_603.20.asp
However, market saturation on those options is still not all that high. We need skilled and unskilled labor to make everything work. We have to account for the fact that a lot of people need to be doing jobs that our economic system has deemed "low value".
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