Anyone depressed about having to delay retirement due to inflation/stock market? (housing, fertility)

[leadfoot4]

Originally Posted by skeddy

postponing retirement effects not only the individual wishing to retire but also people looking for work or wishing to get a promotion.

I understand what you're getting at, but realistically speaking, just about every business that I drive past, has a "help wanted" sign in it's window, so there's very little lack of jobs. And I don't care what anybody says, $15/hr. to start, for a basic job, seems pretty damned good pay.

[Mightyqueen801]

Originally Posted by Wile E. Coyote

I'd be okay with that considering what they do now is keep it all forever. And, they forever raise those property taxes.

My property taxes were $2k 20 years ago; now approaching $5k. Will $10k be affordable in retirement?

I live in NJ, so don't talk to me about property taxes lol. We win the dubious prize of highest in the country. Fortunately, I am only paying taxes on a condo, but I pay close to what you pay on what I am guessing is a SFH.

Mine went up substantially this year.

[miu]

Originally Posted by Wile E. Coyote

I feel your pain. In Oregon, freezing property taxes at age 65 is on the ballot again. The problem is most people are not near enough to 65 and like someone else said parents are certainly not voting to reducing the tax base for schools. It forces one to consider relocating (or at least downsizing). Downsizing does not make sense with the overpricing at the low end at this time.

I think that there should be two categories of tax discounts. For those who produced children, freeze or discount their property taxes at the age of 65. But for any adult that never had any children at all, start discounting their taxes much earlier, like at the age of 55.

We need to encourage people NOT to have children or limit a couple to just one child. And the same goes for migrants. If you are impoverished and want to come to the US for better opportunities, agree not to have large families. Migrants cannot be allowed to move to the US if they are going to be a continual financial drain on the rest of us.

One of the main reasons that developing countries are unable to improve their circumstances is because they keep having large families and increasing their collective population in countries with very limited resources. It's their culture that is holding them back, not former colonialism by white men.

[leadfoot4]

Originally Posted by miu

I think that there should be two categories of tax discounts. For those who produced children, freeze or discount their property taxes at the age of 65. But for any adult that never had any children at all, start discounting their taxes much earlier, like at the age of 55.

Hear, hear!!!

My wife and I were married when we were both "40-ish", and we opted not to have any children. That was 32 years ago, and at that time, our total real estate tax load was $4200. Today, even with the so called "senior discount", our school taxes ALONE are $4100!!! To educate children that we never had.......



(and that's quite an expense, for retirees to have to pay!)

[elnrgby]

Originally Posted by miu

I think that there should be two categories of tax discounts. For those who produced children, freeze or discount their property taxes at the age of 65. But for any adult that never had any children at all, start discounting their taxes much earlier, like at the age of 55.

We need to encourage people NOT to have children or limit a couple to just one child. And the same goes for migrants. If you are impoverished and want to come to the US for better opportunities, agree not to have large families. Migrants cannot be allowed to move to the US if they are going to be a continual financial drain on the rest of us.

One of the main reasons that developing countries are unable to improve their circumstances is because they keep having large families and increasing their collective population in countries with very limited resources. It's their culture that is holding them back, not former colonialism by white men.

I agree with all of the above. I'm an immigrant in the US (escaped from home country not only due to horrible economic conditions, but due to escalating social unrest that eventually turned into a civil war), and I did not have kids, decided to not have kids at all (I'm a woman, 62.5 years old now, have been in the US for almost 40 years). A person that is in some truly catastrophic situation requiring an exile from home country will NOT try to have a large family, probably not even ANY kids, because of simple reluctance to bring kids into a world in which you witnessed (and were lucky to escape) a possibility of THAT kind of stress & suffering - I have a very clear personal knowledge of that. People who come into a host country to colonize it with endless offspring are simply exploiting the host country in the worst possible way, they are not true refugees (either economic or political). A true refugee respects the host country to the maximum & tries hard to do his/her best to recompense it for the life-saving hospitality it offered him/her.

[herringbone]

Originally Posted by miu

I think that there should be two categories of tax discounts. For those who produced children, freeze or discount their property taxes at the age of 65. But for any adult that never had any children at all, start discounting their taxes much earlier, like at the age of 55.

We need to encourage people NOT to have children or limit a couple to just one child. And the same goes for migrants. If you are impoverished and want to come to the US for better opportunities, agree not to have large families. Migrants cannot be allowed to move to the US if they are going to be a continual financial drain on the rest of us.

One of the main reasons that developing countries are unable to improve their circumstances is because they keep having large families and increasing their collective population in countries with very limited resources. It's their culture that is holding them back, not former colonialism by white men.

There are those that would say that the opposite should be true, perhaps among them, US state/fed gov.s That is why some policies are enacted to subsidize families with children. US Gov.s are funded in large part by tax revenues from productive citizens. Thus, they need more people to have more children to generate more revenue, not less people to generate less revenue. Declining birth rates have brought us to where we are now- not enough workers paying in, yet an abundance of non-workers getting paid out. How do you think this dilemma will be solved if people are 'rewarded' for producing less workers?

[jbgusa]

Returning to the topic of the OP, I find it difficult to imagine that anyone with knowledge of the late 1920s-early 1930's, or 1970s could ever rely upon the stock market and/or inflation holding within any but very broad ranges.

[herringbone]

Originally Posted by elnrgby

Sorry, didn't mean to reply to myself but to you :-).... see my previous post, right before this one. Btw, in many professions it is not that easy to convert salary into stock options. A neurosurgeon who makes $470k cannot be paid $71k in stock options, a realtor that earns $500k in sale comissions cannot receive them in stock options. When I was in a high tax bracket, worked in CA & paid 12.4% soc security taxes (because I was self-employed, so paid both the employer & employee ss tax), I paid almost 1/2 of my gross income in taxes - no stock options or other loopholes. Why do you think I switched to part-time work & fully retired at 60? That is what high taxes do to professionals: chase them out of full-time work. If my take-home income (after taxes) is almost the same whether I work 6 months or entire year, why would I work the entire year (and after a certain point, why would I work at all?), particularly if the job is extremely stressful?

Exactly. Would not that new proposal for new ss taxation beginning at 400k have the same effect on those high income workers who might choose to retire themselves, as you did?

"Nearly all Social Security reform proposals impose a disproportionate share of the burden of Social
Security reform on workers with relatively high lifetime earnings; that is, they increase the progressivity
of the system. In general, the more progressive is the system, the greater is the adverse impact on work
incentives."
https://home.treasury.gov/system/fil...brief-no-6.pdf

It seems that earners with lower-incomes already have an incentive to retire as early as 62, and what would happen if earners with higher-incomes had more incentive to stop working earlier as well. Wouldn't that just leave the middle class, i.e. 'the donut hole' I think you referred to in a later post, bearing greater burden if both the bottom and top subsets opt out of working as early as possible? Yikes.

Actually, I think that proposal is just pablum for the masses. As you noted in your latter post, the wage bases go up regardless- there is no real 'donut hole,' imho.

Projected Social Security wage base information as provided by the SSA in June 2022
Calendar year Intermediate estimated wage base $
2022 (actual) 147,000
2023 155,100
2024 165,300
2025 173,400
2026 180,600
2027 188,100
2028 195,600
2029 203,100
2030 210,600
2031 218,400
https://taxnews.ey.com/news/2022-087...3-through-2031

[elnrgby]

Originally Posted by herringbone

There are those that would say that the opposite should be true, perhaps among them, US state/fed gov.s That is why some policies are enacted to subsidize families with children. US Gov.s are funded in large part by tax revenues from productive citizens. Thus, they need more people to have more children to generate more revenue, not less people to generate less revenue. Declining birth rates have brought us to where we are now- not enough workers paying in, yet an abundance of non-workers getting paid out. How do you think this dilemma will be solved if people are 'rewarded' for producing less workers?

Many jobs have been automated, and the process will continue. In the US, the largest fertility rate is found among the poorest women, who often do not work but live on social assistance, and do not produce workers but people who live on generational social assistance and/or in prisons. Meanwhile, countries with lowest birth rates have been thriving for several generations. Lower birth rate has been associated with higher standard of living everywhere, without any known exception.

What brought us where we are now is primarily the fact that the average life expectancy has been extended by 20 years. If most people still died before the age of 75, there would be no problem with maintaining social security benefits for everyone.

[herringbone]

Originally Posted by jbgusa

Returning to the topic of the OP, I find it difficult to imagine that anyone with knowledge of the late 1920s-early 1930's, or 1970s could ever rely upon the stock market and/or inflation holding within any but very broad ranges.

Apologies.

As to the topic, people have been 'conditioned,' to believe that the markets can only go higher over time. I doubt that many people see stocks as what they truly are: marketable securities, and as such, have an "inherent risk": the amount of risk that exists in the absence of controls.