Actually we should rise to the challenge and meet it head-on. Our grandparents certainly did, and mine raised children during that period.
As for retirement, who really needs it. I have arrived at the point where, in my opinion, applying for Social Security looks more and more like playing a lottery game.
Truthfully, I am torn over whether to collect SS until I get to age 75, or at all. I am creating needlepoint designs to sell on Ebay, and since needlepoint was very popular during the last depression, hopefully I can get by with that income.
Also I am divesting myself of things I no longer use or have never used: silk blouses, dresses, dress shoes, collectible handbags, and riding boots, which also go up for sale on Ebay. I'm sure that others can utilize the items.
I don't see this as such a downer. More like an opportunity to excel.
OK - so I'm crazy!
Any baby boomer I know would literally put fingers in their ears and go “La la la laaaa”
Truthfully, I am torn over whether to collect SS until I get to age 75, or at all.
If you paid into it, why wouldn’t you want to collect SS?
You're reading my mind. "Things" are starting to become cumbersome.
Yes, we should sacrifice and give up our SS and Medicare so the Dreamers can have their food stamps and college aid, especially since they need those minority preferences.
Great idea!
No problem. As a penniless baby boomer myself who is soon to turn 65, I view this as an opportunity to practice my two favorite pastimes: sitting on my behind and fishing. ;-)
I'm 61 and just old enough to realize I won't live forever. I've accumulated years of junk(?). I've got boxes of things I haven't looked in for 20 years. It's time to go thru all this stuff I never touch, sort it out and give it away, sell it or trash it.
35 Facts To Scare A Baby Boomer
the source you used:
Zero Hedge
the writer's name Tyler Durden you used,
the link and date 07/28/2013 you used
had to be replaced with the correct information found on the blog where the blog piece was originally published.
If you wish to post an article, please only use the original title; provide a working link to the article where it was first published; provide the correct and original source name; use the name of the original author and the actual date of publication.
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Don't want or need crap from the government, ain't my way.
Xer Ping
Ping list for the discussion of the politics and social (and sometimes nostalgic) aspects that directly effects Generation Reagan / Generation-X (Those born from 1965-1981) including all the spending previous generations are doing that Gen-X and Y will end up paying for.
Freep mail me to be added or dropped. See my home page for details and previous articles.
When the going gets tough — you’re on your own (YOYO).
Invest in cat food producers. Goes good on crackers.
I have “donated” around $300,000 to Social Security and Medicare during my working career.
I found out at age 52 that I have Leukemia and was told my life expectancy was anywhere from 62 to 67, with the caveat that you never know what Medical advances might increase my expected expiration date. So far, so good, I made it to 60.
I will collect my first Social Security payment in 24 months time at age 62 if I live that long. I will end up getting a morsel of the “contributions” I made and the lost investment income that money would have generated being invested for the past 40 + years.
P.S. I love Big Pharma. Without them I wouldn’t have lived long enough to see the first Communist President.
I’m 56. I hope to work while God gives me the strength, though in practical terms at least 70. Watching all the upheavals in the job force, however, I feel like my world is imploding.
Like you, I raise extra money on the side (hoping to sell a few more things). In addition to company pension I have supplementary retirement savings (which Oprah Winfrey once called the “bag lady fund”).
One thing in life I have learned — never get complacent. Hope & pray for the best, plan for the worst — my motto. Hopefully Detroit should be a wake-up call for everyone.
The problem is that social security was supposed to function like an annuity. It wasn’t a handout and wasn’t meant as welfare. It was supposed to function like an investment that you paid into. Unfortunately, Congress spent the money that was to have sustained the coffers of the annuity, and now we’re going bankrupt.
It’s a bit like investing in Enron or another rotten corporation, only there’s no choice, no diversifying of investments, and no real oversight over the federal government.
“1. Right now, there are somewhere around 40 million senior citizens in the United States. By 2050 that number is projected to skyrocket to 89 million.”
By 2050 most Boomers will be dead as most of their parents are now. A rather constant theme among Boomers in my experience is complete lack of concern about what they leave behind after they die.
Huh? By 2050 most of us boomers will be dead and gone. My baby sister who was born in 1963 will be 87.
My eldest daughter (a Gen-Xer) will be 70 in that year. Seems my grand kids will be the ones most concerned with the elderly at mid century.
Isn't three score and ten the cutoff, after which your check doesn't increase?
If you're feeling healthy, delay until 70. If not, sign up early — 66 and whatever if you're doing well, 62 otherwise.
There's a perfectly good explanation for this. The government will be confiscating all those funds soon to plug any revenue gaps that are caused by Obama's economic policies. Gone! in the blink of an eye and nothing but a pittance added to your SS to compensate you afterwards. [As for your decision to make, look at it this way. If you take the money at 62 you'll get about 3/4 of what you'd get at 66. You'll get 4 years of 3/4 payments. So then the question is how long does it take for full payments to catch up to 3/4 payments that started 4 years earlier. In my case IIRC it was about 12 years of 66-level payments - I'd be 78 when it was a lose situation for retiring at 62.]
“The average monthly Social Security benefit for a retired worker was about $1,230 at the beginning of 2012”
More than I’ve ever made. Yeah, life is so tough for boomers.
The problem isn’t seniors - it’s the usual scammers who have decided to use ‘disability’ as the new welfare.