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I don't think it is unfair to point out that people often do make a big mess of their own lives through their own stupidity. Learning from others mistakes is a good educational tool.
Thanks for the responses so far. I too have heard all the time about people who had their finances wrecked by medical bills, but I've never known anyone like this. Im sure it does happen, but I also know that hospitals have many millions of dollars that are uncollectable every year that they just have to write off.
The instances that are truly tragic, to me anyway, are the people who assumed they'd be getting an inheritance. By the time you find out you were wrong it is too late to save for retirement.
I was as shocked as anyone when one of my uncles left all his money and worldly goods (many container-loads of antiques and collectibles) to his third wife and her children, and nothing to my cousin, who was an only child. I grew up with that cousin, who has a good heart, and he has had a rough life. He lost his mother, my aunt, earlier than one might expect and his oldest child committed suicide.
I don't think it is unfair to point out that people often do make a big mess of their own lives through their own stupidity. Learning from others mistakes is a good educational tool.
Thanks for the responses so far. I too have heard all the time about people who had their finances wrecked by medical bills, but I've never known anyone like this. Im sure it does happen, but I also know that hospitals have many millions of dollars that are uncollectable every year that they just have to write off.
i have always found i learn not from the mistakes of those who fail but i learn from the mistakes of those who ultimately failed and are successful .
i find there is little to learn or get an action plan from in all these how bad everyone is doing articles .
We've been living in an rv for two years now, and have met a wider variety of people than you would meet in your typical suburb. Ive been surprised at how many struggle financially. Some of them struggle financially, imho, because they retired early and they cant really afford the health insurance.
But thats not the only reason. Some struggle for other reasons. Some men have had substantial portions of their pensions taken because of a divorce settlement.
So I thought it would be an intersting discussion for posters to tell what they know to be other reasons why people, after working their whole adult life are still living paycheck to paycheck.
Are these people you are meeting fellow RVers, or are they more stationary citizens of the locales you are visiting?
(I'm green with envy, my bon voyage is still a couple years away).
I work in the Payroll / Benefits department of a company with around 1000 employees. It is a restaurant so a good portion of the employees, maybe half, are young and still in high school or college. So assume the other 500 are adults and this is their chosen career. Only around 65 of those people elect to join and contribute to the company 401(k) plan. I know some have situations that make it impossible to save for retirement at the moment, but these temporary situations become a permanent excuse and the next thing they know, they are 50 years old and do not have a single dime saved for retirement, and they are still making $12.00 as a line cook because they job hop so much. A lot of them have lists of reasons they can't move up from an hourly server or cook position into a management position. This would boost their incomes and allow them to save but they don't want to work the hours, or they don't want to take a drug test, or they don't want to become "corporate" types, etc. So they get to the point where they can't physically work a cook or server job, and they don't have anything saved for retirement, so all they have is their Social Security check. This isn't everyone's situation but it happens a lot, and I think it will be happening more as the current Gen X'ers age.
Do we really need another thread castigating poor people for being poor?
Oh, they have mortgages.....oh, they just wanted to live the good life without saving, oh, they had too many children, etc., etc., etc.
Yeah, that's why there are so many poor old people! It's their own damn fault!
Yeah, sure why not? It offers the sanctimonious know-it-alls who haven't had the chance to feel superior about themselves recently. So we can afford to be generous.
No offense to the OP but I've ploughed through enough of these so that I'm not going to bother to return to this one.
We have been losing dollars in salary and benefits for the last 50 years. People kept up by borrowing, and putting the whole family to work. Pensions are now pretty much gone. Then you had the crash of 2008 and a lot of people lost their homes and their jobs. The years that were supposed to be high earning turned into chasing $10 per hour McJobs. They couldn't replace what they lost. For most of my working career, the only way to get a substantial raise was to change jobs!
A lot of the people on this forum are much better off than the average person and I applaud them. But this also means they were safe in their offices when the world changed for many of their peers.
Someone mentioned divorce. I have a friend who is still working after 46 years on the job. Not because she wants to be there but because she is waiting for her ex to die. If she retires now, her ex gets part of her pension. If he dies, she keeps it!
RVers are a mixed bag. Some are snow birds/summer north ot mountains, winter in the south. Some have million dollar rigs, but many have 10-20 years old. Some are in campervans and some are like ours, over 40 ft. It can be very expensive, but some figure out how to do it real cheap. Some travel constantly, and some stay in just one or two parks all year. There's a lot of freedom to it.
I tell people, my favorite thing about is, if I don't like the weather, we leave, if we dont like the location we leave, if we dont like the neighbors, we leave. And, yes, we do that. Last week we changed parks because of management was nasty people.
We have just enough with ss and a part time job to get by without draining the nest egg. At some point there will be no part time job, or one of us will die, and at that point some very hard decisions will need to be made. The house with the mortgage will be the first thing to go, but we still should be able to buy a small condo for cash, or maybe decide to rent.
After that we’ll just have to hope the money doesn’t run out before we do.
Thinking about my parents who were probably below average wage earners in the scheme of it all, and they barely made it to their ends...they both lived into 90's and their paid for Eastern moderate nice house never made the huge profits that the California R.E. does where I've been living for over 50 yrs. Anyone buying in California years ago is sitting on a big nest egg and a nice gift for whomever is in their wills.
RVers are a mixed bag. Some are snow birds/summer north ot mountains, winter in the south. Some have million dollar rigs, but many have 10-20 years old. Some are in campervans and some are like ours, over 40 ft. It can be very expensive, but some figure out how to do it real cheap. Some travel constantly, and some stay in just one or two parks all year. There's a lot of freedom to it.
I tell people, my favorite thing about is, if I don't like the weather, we leave, if we dont like the location we leave, if we dont like the neighbors, we leave. And, yes, we do that. Last week we changed parks because of management was nasty people.
If you run into Traveling Robert while out on the road pass on a hello from me one of his Youtuber fans who really enjoys his very entertaining videos.
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