Posted on 02/04/2018 8:54:17 AM PST by qaz123
The “workamper” jobs range from helping harvest sugar beets to flipping burgers at baseball spring training games to Amazon’s AMZN, +2.87% “CamperForce,” seasonal employees who can walk the equivalent of 15 miles a day during Christmas season pulling items off warehouse shelves and then returning to frigid campgrounds at night. Living on less than $1,000 a month, in certain cases, some have no hot showers. As Bruder writes, these are “people who never imagined being nomads.” Many saw their savings wiped out during the Great Recession or were foreclosure victims and, writes Bruder, “felt they’d spent too long losing a rigged game.” Some were laid off from high-paying professional jobs. Few have chosen this life. Few think they can find a way out of it. They’re downwardly mobile older Americans in mobile homes
(Excerpt) Read more at marketwatch.com ...
But, on a side note, lets keep importing more and more people from the 3rd world and other places to take jobs. I'm sure these people will welcome them with open arms.
“I am NOMAD.” I miss Star Trek, Seinfeld and Monty Python references on FR.
I would think if you had some sort of skills and education, you could get better jobs than this.
I am a well-off retiree, but if I needed to work and make money, I would get an EA and do tax returns, or something along those lines.
America’s material wealth is still a very recent phenomenon, and while everyone enjoys a life-standard unimaginable 100 years ago (even the poorest Americans have TV, cell phones, air conditioning, etc...) there are many people who simply don’t save, or make other choices.
I got laid off FIVE times after being with one company 22 years. I decided to take some additional personal risk and go for bigger rewards, so I joined a succession of smaller and medium size younger companies. Most startups don't make it and I have a knack of choosing them.
I learned resilience and tenacity. When you get laid off, you exercise your network and find new work. You constantly keep your skills up to date and learn new things. Always be ready to begin job searching again.
If you are lazy, poorly educated, and not too bright, you might wind up in a camper. Life has never been easy. These liberal writers seem to think everybody is owed a cushy lifestyle for little effort or output. Sorry, life doesn't work that way.
Amazon fulfillment workers are worked like dogs. Bezos is a typical liberal. Way left of Center on how you should behave until it affects him then way right of center
A story such as this, should be a wake up call, to manage your life and money wisely.
One guy was a product development manager with McDonald’s? He had to be pulling in some decent pay while he was working. And you wonder how it was he couldn’t get another decent job, even if at lower pay.
Yes I know some people have life crises which get them to such a point in life. My only point is that, hearing such stories, should be a wake up call, to live below your means, save money, avoid credit card debt, avoid risky investments, etc.
Equal outcomes not guaranteed.
Kind of a pompous and smug comment, IMHO. I don’t know anything about any of these people and neither do you. So, there’s no reason to look down your nose at them. You don’t know how they ended up doing what they’re doing. Maybe they had an illness and the bills crushed them. Who the hell are you to judge them.
And I’m sure you worked hard and did what you had to do to be a “well off retiree”. Bravo. Good for you.
What about a guy that works his whole life, saves, does the right thing and then, WHAM, the company he’s worked for, for 30 years declares bankruptcy and he gets sh*t. Oh yeah, he’s just going to go right back to vocational school or get an accounting degree, at 50 or 60 years old, because it’s that easy.
Isn’t that what happened to the Delphi employees when obama was in office and his deal with the unions?
And, I would think getting an, EA(whatever that is) and doing taxes, probably isn’t the best option these days, with things like TurboTax, HRBlock and the Presidents push to simplify the tax code to make it easier for people to do their taxes. So, you go right ahead and do that.
And some times you just lose the roll of the dice in a stream of bad luck. The article mentions the real estate crash, recession (where many in their late 50’s and 60’s lost their jobs.) Those are the years when earnings are high and the kids are out of college so you can sock away a lot of money for retirement.
bmp
When their 401k’s tanked, they cashed them in. That’s what screwed them.
We have a friend who was an engineer and built his own beautiful house on several acres. He and his wife raised wonderful gardens and even built a pond where they raised fish. Unfortunately, they had nearly all of their retirement savings in General Motors bonds which they believed were a very safe investment.
They of course lost all of their retirement savings and eventually their home and property. They even had to take their dog to an animal shelter. All they were left with was their old mini-van and what they could fit it in it. They adopted the nomadic life style that has been described here, working seasonally for Amazon and taking whatever other hob opportunities that they can find.
We have now lost touch with them, but the entire situation has been very sad. A lot of people these days have forgotten the way that the Obama administration interfered in the GM bankruptcy process and basically completely screwed over the bondholders to assist in a complete bailout of the unions who were largely responsible for bringing GM to its knees.
http://www.washingtonpost.com/wp-dyn/content/article/2009/05/25/AR2009052502135.html
The secret is start saving in your 20s and you’ll have a hell of a lot more money for retirement. But that means putting off some big purchases. But the difference in terms of money you’ll have for retirement will be astounding.
Starting to save in your 40s and 50s is way too late.
We will see a huge indigent geriatric population in the hear future. They will be a pitiful burden to society or they will die terribly.
In the past, before real retirement, we just worked until we died or depended on the family to take care of us in our old age. Think Grandpa Walton. Now the Boomers have been thrown to the wolves and most did not have a clue how to manage retirement, how much it actually would take or have the knowledge to not be bilked by the Wall Street Wolves that the new frontier of 401Ks would make even richer. The power of collective bargaining by powerful pension funds disappeared and in a strategy of divide and conquer the Financial Fiends have figured out how to harvest huge amounts of pension savings.
“We saw in the 1980s a shift from pensions to 401(k)s; that was a raw deal for workers. These retirement plans were marketed as an instrument of financial freedom, but they were really transferring risk from the shoulder of the employers to the backs of the workers.”
Boomers are at the vanguard of this new scheme and there is no guarantee for any of them that it will work at all. Risk of longevity and uncertainty of withdrawal rates owing to the ups and downs of the investments has been moved from the many to the individual. There is no provision for spreading of risk. Pension schemes have been available in other countries for quite some time. These do spread risk but are illegal in the United States. I wonder why?
Boomers were often cast aside in the Great Recession as the most expensive employees with the greatest medical liabilities. The worker shortage that is coming will not help them. They will be too old and too feeble to participate.
But I have a BIL who worked for GM and he lives very well. He was a UNION employee. I would say he was a union worked but most of the time he was off on disability of some kind. Funny, he was always able to work his cows and hunt while on disability.
I’ll NEVER ever by another GM or Dodge product for as long as I live. The next vehicles will likely be Toyota products.
“If you are lazy, poorly educated, and not too bright, you might wind up in a camper. “
I actually find the idea quite romantic. Even for those of us with means.
"Capitalism for me, socialism for thee."
It’s a mixed bag. Lots of retiree full time RVers out there that have plenty of money and simply workcamp on the side. Many own RVs that cost as much as any three bedroom home. Others just like to live a simple life on their terms.
Amazon is only one of thousands of work camping job venues. Most simply involve work at private and public RV parks.
Quite a number of the down and out variety are fleeing high cost of living states like California. Most of those wander between the BLM lands in Arizona and Rocky Mountain states season to season.
Most choose the lifestyle. Only a few are truly forced into it.
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