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That's not the point. The point is that nursing home care in old age, or home health care, are far more expensive than anyone imagines, and basic housing costs are always going up. Upon retirement, people can sell their home and move into an apartment, but rent isn't guaranteed to be stable. Groceries are still going up at a surprising rate (in spite of the fact that delivery costs are way down, due to low fuel costs), retirement is expensive, even for the frugal. And a dollar doesn't go as far as it used to 50 years ago. People are still planning their retirement based on the dollar from the mid-20th Century, not on today's shrunken dollars.
^^^^ +1 ^^^^
I agree with you completely. My guess is nursing care and assisted living will escalate in price much more the the CPI. It is simple demographics: The leading edge of the Baby Boom is now retiring. In 20 years they will be be in the market for assisted living and ultimately nursing care (and eventually mortuary services). I doubt the construction of assisted living and nursing care facilities will keep up with the demand. That means the price will go up.
If you want top quality nursing care or assisted living, expect to pay a premium price. It will escalate higher than the average of 5%. For example, one assisted living step-up facility I know if requires a $1.5 million buy-in.
I agree with you completely. My guess is nursing care and assisted living will escalate in price much more the the CPI. It is simple demographics: The leading edge of the Baby Boom is now retiring. In 20 years they will be be in the market for assisted living and ultimately nursing care (and eventually mortuary services). I doubt the construction of assisted living and nursing care facilities will keep up with the demand. That means the price will go up.
The "leading edge" of the baby boomers have been retiring for the past 10 years.
Interesting. Pew does good-quality work, and the Fed employs some of the most diligent, boring, and corruption-proof economists in the country (I know some of these guys - they couldn't fudge data if their lives depended on it), so the spread is unexpected. If anyone here is trained in macro or econometrics I'd like to hear their take on this.
My naive guess is that they are counting different things - maybe one of the data sets excludes IRAs and 401(k)'s, or real estate, both of which are large holdings for affluent people.
There is no way to know the true number obviously.
Me and my wife are both physicians , no kids. Even after decades of working and saving , it would be very hard for us to gather 8 million dollars ( in today's money ) without inheritance ( Assuming a normal upper middle class life and saving for 2 kid's education ) .
Not to mention most people are not lucky enough to maintain high incomes for decades. They get divorced , have medical illnesses , just do not save/invest etc etc. There a a million ways to financial irresponsibility in this mega advertised , consumerist culture we live in.
What I found most surprising is that less than 50 percent of physicians ( 49 to be exact ) had a net worth above 2 mil by the time they were 65. Mind you , this is after working for 30-35 years and earning an income that would put them in the top 2 percent or higher percentiles. And , having an almost unparalleled job security and job availability/flexibility ( If you can be licensed and have a pulse , as a doctor , you will have a job and make hundreds of thousands of dollars per year. This is a consolation for the years of deprivation and abuse we go through so don't hate us for it ).
I can digest the 95th percentile at around 1.8 mil but 8 mil for 1 percent seems just too high. The jump from 95th to 99th should not be so high. Now the jump from 99th to 99.99th , that's a different story.
Thats where you are wrong. I am not marketing it as " Logic " but as a " hunch ".
You are when you are using said hunch to counter someone's logic.
He carted out some numbers to prove a point, and you discounted them based on a hunch which seems related to the usual FED boogeyman evil thing as opposed to any actual knowledge of the statistical methods they used. It is a very poor way to craft an argument.
This is America, not the Austro-Hungarian Empire. If you have a postgraduate education and a professional career, you're upper middle class without all that cr*p. You get to start a new family tradition of taste, manners, family lore, and pedigree.
Perusing America's foundational documents (such as the Federalist Papers), I keep wondering: why is the US Constitution so explicitly egalitarian, and why is there such vitriolic rejection of a titled aristocracy? One difference between European and American attitudes towards government, taxation and the welfare state, is that Europe has been struggling to redress real or perceived injustices of aristocratic privilege, while America rejects such a thing on principle.
Quote:
Originally Posted by OldDocKat
Upper class is more a social position. In economic terms, a person worth 3 million liquid, and their home paid for, would qualify
Indeed, every class is a "social" position, as well as a matter of taste and cultural proclivities. Class-membership evolves over generations, which is why suddenly coming into wealth – lottery winnings, stock-options, patent-royalties and the like – matters little. And "social position" doesn't just mean having a private box at the local opera-house. Whether one lives in a dilapidated hut in the forest, or in a mansion in the forest, if one is socially marginalized and excluded, one's class-membership is towards the low end – regardless of money – so long as one fails to partake of social membership. This is a frequent topic of contention over in the Relationships forum. A man with a very impressive number of $M, a fine career and all that, who from lack of social-skills or connections is woefully unable to get a date, is effectively "lower class" (below the working class), regardless of his financial resources.
On a related note, the real animosity in America isn't against the wealthy per se, but against the so-called elites, or what in Eastern-Bloc countries used to be called the "intelligentsia". In America examples of such persons might be university professors, or people in the higher positions of the media or the federal government. Everybody likes the lunch-pail millionaire, who built a $10M business doing landscaping or plumbing. Everybody hates the GS-15 division-chief at the EPA.
There is no way to know the true number obviously.
Me and my wife are both physicians , no kids. Even after decades of working and saving , it would be very hard for us to gather 8 million dollars ( in today's money ) without inheritance ( Assuming a normal upper middle class life and saving for 2 kid's education ) .
Not to mention most people are not lucky enough to maintain high incomes for decades. They get divorced , have medical illnesses , just do not save/invest etc etc. There a a million ways to financial irresponsibility in this mega advertised , consumerist culture we live in.
What I found most surprising is that less than 50 percent of physicians ( 49 to be exact ) had a net worth above 2 mil by the time they were 65. Mind you , this is after working for 30-35 years and earning an income that would put them in the top 2 percent or higher percentiles. And , having an almost unparalleled job security and job availability/flexibility ( If you can be licensed and have a pulse , as a doctor , you will have a job and make hundreds of thousands of dollars per year. This is a consolation for the years of deprivation and abuse we go through so don't hate us for it ).
I can digest the 95th percentile at around 1.8 mil but 8 mil for 1 percent seems just too high. The jump from 95th to 99th should not be so high. Now the jump from 99th to 99.99th , that's a different story.
Me & my wife. Sure. On the internet, everyone is a physician, right?
A vanilla physician with a family practice doesn't make "hundreds of thousands of dollars" these days. On average, they see 93 patients per week. A young guy in a large group practice might see double that. Their group practice has office space overhead, back office/billing overhead, CNA to pay for, malpractice insurance... If they allow Medicaid patients, they lose money on those patients covering the overhead and Medicaid patients sue at the drop of a hat trying to win the malpractice lottery. Medicare pays somewhat better. All the PPO relationships with insurance companies pay the Medicare rate. I don't make enormous money but I make more than my primary care guy. That poor guy is busting his tail for 40 hours every week doing a completely repetitive task job trying to crank through 5 patients per hour. There are far easier ways to earn a living. The only thing that guy has that I don't is a 100% retirement match. If he doesn't burn out and quit, he'll at least retire comfortably after salting away $36K per year pre-tax.
There are specialties that pay far better than that but the bottom half of physicians aren't raking in $200K+. The big for-profit group practices use the family medicine guys to feed the specialists where they make more money. The practice is likely losing money on the front line family medicine guys.
If you want top quality nursing care or assisted living, expect to pay a premium price. It will escalate higher than the average of 5%. For example, one assisted living step-up facility I know if requires a $1.5 million buy-in.
I pay my mom's bills. She has dementia with severe short term memory loss. Her burn rate at an assisted living place is $100K. $20K of that is outside eldercare help so she's not just being warehoused in an apartment with meals and meds brought to her and the place cleaned once per week. I could stuff her in a studio apartment, skip the outside help, and dial that back to $60K but then she'd get zero exercise and would be a shut-in. My sister and I both have travel jobs so a parent with dementia in an in-law apartment isn't an option for either of us.
I figure the burn rate will be similar if she lands in a dementia lockdown ward. The apartment is cheaper but the services increase. A nursing home would be similar.
When the late-Boomers get there and run out of money, I don't see how today's Medicaid for nursing home care is sustainable. Crank up the minimum wage to $15/hour and the problem gets even worse. If you can get $15/hour as a store clerk, you're not going to take a $15/hour CNA job in a nursing home to change adult diapers. The for-profit nursing homes will stop taking Medicaid unless they're allowed to warehouse people in 10 patient wards. 25 years from now, you don't want to run out of money and be looking to the state for geriatric care.
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On the internet, everyone is a physician, right? 
