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Stealing all the rich folks money won't solve any problems. Getting govt under control good luck with that would solve the problem. We've been on this road for over 100 years now this is just the end result of it. Don't worry though taxing all the illegal immigrants is sure to solve the problem. No this 3% increase did not keep up with my expenses which by the way are not extraordinary they just include basic items everyone on CD has.
OP:
our fixed expenses is rising faster than our income. The HOA annual 5% increase easily surpasses the SS increase. We also have a HOA special assessment and of course other normal expenses. We are still good, as we will be taking the full allowed annuity Income this fiscal 2024 rather than just RMDs.
We are going to take another hit today; DW decided to get us, prepaid cremation. She's wants to beat inflation.
And I thought I was the planner
as always
YMMV
Special Assessment insurance is generally fairly cheap add-on to your home insurance plan. FYI
My SS monthly pays all my basics. HOA, electric, gas and water, groceries and gas with a little bit left over. I have investment income for other stuff. No mortgage or car loan. Debt free. Not bad as I live in the most expensive city in the US.
When my grandmother taught school, she was paid a small salary of $25 a month. When my mother taught school, she started at about $750 a month. My first job out of college paid a little over $3,000 a month. When Grandma passed, she was paying about $280/day for assisted living. As my uncle told me how he put it to her....she had enough money to be fine until she was 100....but she was 99.
Granted, taxes has been a progressively heavier bite each generation....from nothing to perhaps 35%.
My mother now has a pension....and slightly diminished strategic thinking capabilities. In truth, she lives a modest lifestyle and with her home and vehicle paid off, she has a surplus each month....not a big one. She feels rich though because most of her life involved paying a mortgage and for vehicles. I'm trying to warn her that her fixed pension will not buy as much in the future as she's big on donating when in reality she has not real savings, just SS and pension. It's a different mindset though.
A key element to retiring is to have prepaid of reduced consumption. Even here in the US where we have had benign inflation for a very long time, inflation still happens. Social Security has a known shorfall that's been known my entire working life. You've got to own up and make other arrangements.
Probably everybody has had increases in their bills greater than the COLA. This phenomenon applies also to all the federal COLA items...veterans benefits, for example, is based on it also.
Two thirds of wealth during the pandemic has gone to the top 1%.
The top 1% owns 45.6% of all wealth while the bottom 50% owns just 0.75%.
Last year, real wages for 1.7 billion workers went down, while the wealth of billionaires went up $2.7 billion a day since 2020.
Tax the damn rich.
Today, CEOs are paid 399x more than the average worker.
Tax the damn rich.
Corporate greed is when billionaires in agribusiness sector become $382 billion richer during the pandemic by jacking up food prices by 33.6% while 263 million people are pushed into extreme poverty and 62 people in the food industry became billionaires over the past two years.
Tax the damn rich.
If you made 11K a day since America's founding in 1776, you'd have $975 - which is what Jeff Bezos makes every 4 days. And due to Trump's tax cuts, Bezos now pays even lower taxes than the 43 million Americans in poverty.
Tax the damn rich.
Walmart has 76 subsidiaries and $76 billion in assets in tax havens where there are zero Walmart stores. And Walmart got $104 million in tax breaks for the bonuses it paid to 8 top executives 2009 to 2014.
"Since 2020, the richest 1 percent have captured almost two-thirds of all new wealth.
According to a 2021 White House study, the wealthiest 400 billionaire families in the US paid an average federal individual tax rate of of just 8.2 percent. For comparison, the average American taxpayer in the same year paid 13 percent."
Corporations shifted nearly $1 trillion in global profits to tax havens in 2019—depriving countries all over the world of desperately needed tax revenue."
Do you get it now?
And yes, when churches are fleecing their members and getting free money they don't pay taxes on to finance large home, yachts, and private planes, then it's time to tax the damn churches, too. Acquisition Cost of a Lear Jet
$2,340,000 - $2,860,000
The cost of just one Lear jet (on the low end) could give an extra $1000 to 2340 low income retirees. That's an extra $83 a month for one year. That's more then most are getting on COL raises.
So you mean the ultra rich - that is just 3 people - what you seem to want is confiscation not taxing - that is mostly done in 3rd world dictatorships.
Min wage is inconsequential - according to BLS, only about 0.17% currently work for min wages.
The rest seems like rants - again the rich already pay almost all taxes. The average american pays zero in net income tax - those above the average (top 50%) are paying 98% of the tax. The top 1% pay 42% of the tax and are paying an average of 26%, not 8%. The tax rate on investments is 23.6% - the "study" counts income that is not subject to tax (initial investment) to get that silly 8% figure - the data is also from when Obama was in office (2010 to 2018) before the Trump "tax cuts".
BTW - Qualify as a CEO if you want those salaries (and taxes associated).
And the stuff about Lear jets and churches is off the wall out of touch and is not at all related to SS. SS is paid as FICA by employers and employees, it does not come from income taxes. Your average church often has a hard time paying its clergy, let alone a yacht or a private plane. Maybe you don't know but IRS rules require clergy to pay their own FICA as self employed - they are not considered employees.
I am not talking about somewhat discretionary items, but about bills you must pay.
I was shocked to see our year-end property tax bill -- $1100 higher, which means an increase of about $92 per month. Car insurance about $50 higher for a six-month premium, meaning a monthly increase of about $8.00. House insurance about $250 a year higher, which means an monthly increase of about $21.00. Medicare Part B increases totaled $20.00 for both of us. So our recent "no leeway" charges -- unless we revise our insurance policies -- total an extra $141.00 (about) per month, while our SS increase is about $145.00 -- so a whopping $4.00 extra for somewhat discretionary expenses such as food and car gas. WOO-HOO!
But at least we can afford the increased costs (for which I am grateful). but I swear I don't know how many other people can afford inflationary increases -- especially those who are living on Social Security alone!
So, how does your increased COLA payment compare to the increase in your bills?
However, to emphasize, my point in my reply to Rodentraiser was that it is difficult to feel sorry for Jeff Bezos, for example, when the average Amazon work struggles to just pay the monthly utility bills. Yes, people usually choose what income level they will achieve by the choices they make, but I still think feel more sorry for the average factory worker than I do for the person who owns the factory.
Did someone say they feel sorry for Jeff Bezos? I must have missed it.
Of course, there are MANY exceptions, but I think the children of married professionals with university degrees have a much better chance of future success than the children born to a factory worker making $15 or $20 an hour.
I suspect you are right. In your hypothetical example, the hypothetical married professionals with university degrees have higher hypothetical IQs than the hypothetical factory worker making $15 or $20 per hour. Much intelligence is hereditary, of course, so the hypothetical offspring of the hypothetical university degreed parents hypothetically will have higher IQs and hence more likely to achieve success than the hypothetical offspring of the hypothetical factory worker.
Did someone say they feel sorry for Jeff Bezos? I must have missed it.
LOL. No, but many rich people seem to be saying that other rich people are already being unfairly taxed -- maybe I'm wrong, but that sounds to me like they are asking for sympathy.
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. She's wants to beat inflation
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