Any seniors started over from broke? (55, pension, physically, weather)

[allenk893]

I'm interested if anyone here has known any seniors that had to start life completely over from broke? Did they recover?

[tomchard]

Yeah ...the First Time was when my 2nd ex- forgot how to budget our incomes; ended-up filing Chapter 7 ...
The Second Time was after a couple of layoffs from different companies, with a full year of joblessness, in-between. Had to move back-in with my parents. And, I was over 55 when that happened. I was so broke, I had to bum $$$ from friends, in order to cover the cost of relocating to Central FLA from Cali.
All of that led up to me needing to work until I was 72-years-old, to put (just) enough into retirement accounts, so I could afford to retire.

Lord Willin’, I don’t ever want to be that broke, ever-again!

[meo92953]

Yes. Was paid off at 55 at the beginning of the recession. All I could find were temp jobs at 1/3 my salary. Used my pension and savings trying to save my house. Finally filed bankruptcy.

Lived with family and worked when I could until I was finally eligible for social security.I

The good thing that came out of that was that I relearned frugal living.

[StealthRabbit]

My parents lost everything AFTER they were age 55... (bank (sheriff) came and took the house (ranch) during my Lil Sis HS graduation party. Benefit...There were lots of people to help load the truck!

My in-laws lost everything TWICE after retirement (Spec homes during recessions).

They each dug in and started over.

I'm trying to avoid the generational curses!
but... stuff happens. One medical event - poof GONE.
More concerned about a medical even for uninsured adult kid... Poof GONE... (ours and theirs)

Several USA friends (outsourced employment / benefits after age 50) have lost everything due to medical events, leaving surviving spouse impoverished. (with NOTHING, no car, no house).

Benefit... = Homelessness is pretty popular.
Living under a bridge with your grocery cart = River View and no property taxes!

[NoMoreSnowForMe]

Yes. The interesting thing about becoming really poor when you're a senior, is that you qualify for low income housing and Medicaid and other programs for seniors.

I actually have really stable housing I can't get kicked out of without cause now, so I don't have to worry about a landlord kicking me out to raise the rents, etc.

It's not my retirement dream, and I don't have great dental or money for vacations or fancy anything, but I'm safe and secure with basic needs met. So, it's really not the end of the world. Could be much worse.

[TheShadow]

I don't know of any, but was pretty stunned when a few months before our retirement my DH told me he had to loan a co-worker $200 to get him through to payday. We are talking about a fully employed guy in his late 50's, with 25+ years at a state gov't job. I was even more stunned when he told me he'd been making these loans to this guy many times over the last few years. Somehow in all those years he'd never learned to budget, and had apparently not even $200 in savings. He always paid DH back after payday though, which makes me happy because I know my DH would never press him for it.

[galaxyhi]

Well, not quite seniors, but i was coming off welfare to SSDI in 2000, when i was 37. My OH was just out of bankruptcy and 41.my SSDI was finally approved in 2002, payments and Medicare started in 2003.
My OH owned a 1983 old single wide and we both had broken down cars...mine we had to run the heat all the rine, even in summer heat, and had to hard wire the cooling fan, had to put a quart of oil a week, had to add power steering fluid regularly and a few other things to drive it. Havibg money for repairs was out of the question. My OH s car had no heat at all, and had its share of problems. It was always a question of which car to take when we went somewhere depending on the weather.

Neither of us had two nickles to rub together.my OH wasnt working and FIL paid most of my OH s bills out of a small inheritance from my OH s grandmother.

We made it legal in 2002, and renewed in 2012, our 10th anniversary.

Since i had some accounting experience in high school and at the college level and my OH OH doesnt care to pay bills i was elected to control the checkbook. I am also the family cook as i used to cook in 4 star restaurants.

I got us to a point where in 2015 we bougt a house as tge trailer was literally falling apart around us. We have a 14 car we paid cash for, and i still drive my 13 year old minivan, financed, but paid off in 2 years 3 months. We have savings for retirement now too. All of thibgs like this were just dreams when we got together, especially me coming off welfare.

My OH has 2 part time jobs, but neither come with guaranteed hours. One has been fairly good about hours lately, the otger is hit and miss as a health care adjunct to special needs people, where my OH is often at their mercy for hours. If they dont want to go, or are sick, my oh gets no hours. Sucks, but pay is decent for hours worked.

I have gone back to work part time, so I'm now a working person with disabilities ", as my SSDI hasnt really gone up, except for colas. And my eventual SS wont be as much as it could be. Its hard for me to work, but i get through it. I'll be 56 this year and OH just turned 60. I dont know how long i will be able to stand working, ecen at the part time hours. Its really hard on me, but i can also save more fir retirement. My OH knows will have to work to age 70. If i can work to 65, ill be doing good.

Duribg lean times, when hours are short for my OH ( usually winter when heating bills are high) i save sometimes only $0.25/hour worked. But point is i save something.

We wont have any lavish retirement. But will do ok. Im trying to guarantee the other can survive if something happens to one of us. We should be comfortable as a couple, and one should be ok, though may have to resort to some help, especially if a depression happens and funds lose money growth.

Id hate to start over now at this age. I will probably be better off than my OH. My oh has to work to 70 so as to get a decent SS, as my OH had years 9f not working, or years of very low income from working only one part time job. When i was younger, i always worked more than one job, often two full time jobs, so my current SSDI is higher than my OH s SS at age 70, if my OH keeps at it.

( to those who ask invasive questions i refuse to answer, see what i mean by you can find out a lot about people if you read other posts they make???)

[Over the hill gang]

Yes we started over with nothing. My husband had retired and a few years later we lost our investments in 2008. He went back to work and we started over. Because of my health I couldn't work anymore but we still scrimped and saved again. Then we both had bigger health issues to deal with and cancer is not cheap. Finally he retired again, we sold our house and bought a nice mobile home in a retirement community. It's paid for and while we aren't living what some consider the dream....it is for us. I feel very blessed.

[vicky3vicky]

We have. Twice.

At 49 years old, we were preparing for an early retirement. Not a lavish one, a fairly modest one by many peoples standards, but a nice, and for us, comfortable, retirement. We knew we had the health and the neccesary attitude[ not sure if that is the right word] to make a few extra dollars here and there to pay for extra luxuries if we wanted. Then my youngest son became ill. Very ill. He has a very rare neurological disorder caused by a stroke before he was even born. Because of the stroke, he has lesions on both sides of his thalamus [ I know, stroke damage to the thalamus is only on one side or the other, unless it was caused by physical trauma. I was physically assaulted a couple of months before LJ was born. And, no, it was not by my husband as he died from CLL several months prior] Now, the thalamus is the part of our brain that tells us that the toe we just stubbed hurts, and signals that we are in pain. My sons' thalamus sends out signals that his body is in extreme pain, even if there is no reason for it. The head neurologist a Childrens' Hospital in Denver described it as "the most excruciating pain humanly possible." It is a very rare, only a handful in the world, with these types of seizures. There is so little known about them, and the theory is that the seizures were triggered by his early puberty hormones, but no one knows for sure. We were given no hope in the western medicine world. So we took him to acupuncturists, eastern medicine doctors, reiki masters, Christian faith healers. We went to shaman and for hoodoo and voodoo. We bought "magic eyes" and prayer rugs, bought every lotion and potion that we knew would not work but "just in case." We took him to France [did not see the Eifel Tower] because we heard they had the best doctors, to South America, to Haiti.
Eventually, maybe through things we were doing, definitely by a "Higher Power", maybe because his hormones were balancing out, we reached a place where, not healed, he has periods of remission.

So, in about two and a half years, we went from about to retire, to a net worth of NEGATIVE $300,000. [ of course it was worth it]

And we started over again. I wanted to start up my licensed daycare again, but the state said no because my son used medical marijuanna [ second child approved in the state of Colorado] so I decided that I would work in the shop with my husband[ and that also worked well because my son could stay in a small travel trailer in the back parking area of the shop] and I would spend my time between the office and the trailer. It worked well because I could put together work orders in the trailer. Automotive repair shops were closing all arround us, but our business was booming because of Bobbys' reputation for fair prices and integrity. Life, and our finances, were looking up. In my spare time, I was actually, for the first time, getting to meet other Autistic people and it was wonderful not to feel as though I was the only one in the world who perceived the world the way that I do. Getting to know others with a similar neurology, I discovered that there were also, like myself, many Autistic people who had sufferred EXTREME abuse by family members.[ I KNOW that most people with Autistic children love them and do not abuse them, but there are monster parents in the world and a disabled child makes a great scapegoat] I started reaching out to others, and even speaking about it.

My family found out that I was telling the "family secrets." and swore they would destroy me for it[believe it or not, this is the uber condensed story] A few weeks later I found out that I had breast cancer. my sister called and told me that she "hoped I didn't expect any family support," and I told her that I would get family support from my "family of choice." She said "we'll see." We decided that, in order to continue saving money, and also because it would be a great place for LJ and I to heal, that we would rent out our house and live in a travel trailor where we had been members since LJ was a toddler, Mountain Air Ranch, a family nudist resort [ because... when you ar e Autistic CLOTHES HURT!] ANd we also knew that we would get support from the family we had chosen, members of the resort. We moved there 3 weeks after my double mastectomy. I was very distressed because my daughter was believing everything my family was saying. Chemo didn't seem near as difficult for me as for most of the women I had met online going through the same thing But other than that, since LJ was doing so much better, it was pretty good. Except that it wasn't.

People were acting strange. Bobby had put up a sign that said "Stop By and HAve Coffee with Vicky," but no one did. Iwould see people, people I had known for years, people I thought were friends, and they would be walking by, and I would say hi, and they would turn and walk away. Bottom line, my family, all in the medical profession, had convinced the people at the ranch that I had a "botched boob job" and was faking cancer. That is when I had a complete and total breakdown. I could not do the books, I could not clean the trailer, I could not cook a meal, I could not brush my teeth, I could not mourn the loss of my breasts and hair, nothing. All I could do is cry. The worst was my daughter believed them too.

that's all I an say on that. Some years passed. Bobby hurt his back. It kept getting worse. I had never been able to figure out how to do the books again. His kids helped him. He needed to retire. I was glad, not just because of his back but because he was acting so differently. We retired, planning to start an Autistic community in Pueblo. Life was good.Bought and fixed up a few houses. After an armed robbery in our home [3 years this MAy] we decided maybe we should move to somewhere safer. Bobby started getting tests to find out why he was behaving so differently. The same week that he was diagnosed with Alzheimers I got a phone call from Bobbys' accountant. Putting everything together, we discovered that Bobby owed the IRS BIGTIME. His kids had been stealing money ever since I stopped doing the books.

So, after selling the houses and paying IRS, we had less than $100,000 left. Took that money, bought this place [2 years ago in May] and, yeah, I would say that life is pretty darn good. Bordering on excellent.

[Hefe]

Perhaps not a senior then but I started over again with literally nothing at 41-42yo. No job, no savings, ltr over, large credit card debt from living on them while I tried to find more work, no place to live & moved in with mom for a year & then began to hit the bricks in a new city where I had no job contacts. A dark period... thank God I didn't get really sick then, that could of finished me.