Posted on 11/10/2017 7:15:03 AM PST by huldah1776
In her powerful new book, “Nomadland,” award-winning journalist Jessica Bruder reveals the dark, depressing and sometimes physically painful life of a tribe of men and women in their 50s and 60s who are — as the subtitle says — “surviving America in the twenty-first century.” Not quite homeless, they are “houseless,” living in secondhand RVs, trailers and vans and driving from one location to another to pick up seasonal low-wage jobs, if they can get them, with little or no benefits.
The “workamper” jobs range from helping harvest sugar beets to flipping burgers at baseball spring training games to Amazon’s AMZN, -0.24% “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 ...
Sometimes life choices are right, but other forces destroy the job/profession leaving the worker with nothing or near nothing to use to recover a decent life.
Read recently Muslims are on the verge of overtaking the Jewish in America population wise.
We are going to lose our country.
Boy does that look smelly and gross!
I'd LOVE to retire and cruise around North America in an RV.
I have a client that is barely scraping by on SS and has about 70k in an IRA. She owns a home with a fresh 30 year mortgage and she’s 66. She told me she wants to sell her home because she’s desperate for money.
I asked her why she wasn’t working. I see a lot of people over 70 bagging groceries, as cashiers etc. She’s perfectly able. She whines that no one will hire her. Some people just beg for misery.
Help me out. What numbers are we talking about.
Many older Americans dumpster dive, but I bet it’s not wide-spread.
Many older Americans have Herpes and halitosis, but I’m not sure it makes it a national crisis.
I mean no disrespect for the people trapped in this lifestyle, but I hate articles that make a problem seem like a national crisis.
“Inflation is so high that many more will be in this situation in the future.”
When I reaiize something I used to buy for a nickel, or 24 for a dollar on weekends, is now a 60/70 cent item I am quite scared as the dickens what my kids will live to see, let alone the grandkids....Also recall a new Chevy Bel Air at 1300.00..(1953)
Guess I should get used to 8,9,10 dollar hamburgers.huh?
Most people I know who are old and broke just made some really poor decisions, some were due to greed.
Like cashing in their 401k because the money was just “sitting there”. Or retiring too early because they could. Or trading their retirement savings for an RV. My mother blew through half a million $ in 22 years, just buying books and clothes and supporting my sibling.
“We were considering moving to Mexico”.
Do U recall the ads in Pop Mech and Pop Sci for $300.00 a month retirements in Mexico?
That is nothing new. There have always been nomadic peoples.
In the 1960s and 1970s [and for decades before and probably still today] in agricultural areas, nomadic people followed the harvest routes. They worked in the fields to harvest crops. When a field was cleared, they moved to the next. When an area or region was cleared, the moved to the next.
It was, and probably still is, a way of life for many in ‘fly-over-land’.
Lost everything in 2008? Stocks went down 65%. Money left over had to be for underwater investments.
It’s choices. Unfortunately too many out there do not have the skills or discipline to do the right thing. I say a $1k ‘gift’ into the s&p 500 for every newborn. Absolutely no withdrawals until age 59. That will expose their choices.
Cry me a river. Many of them move because the damn property taxes and cost of living got so high in places like San Francisco and Austin that it was cheaper to buy an RV and escape. They have limited funds for retirement, but what they have will last longer if they don’t have to pay their local and country taxes for the privilege of living in their homes.
No one owns property in America. You can pay every dime of your mortgage off, but if you fall into arrears on your property taxes due to job loss or medical expenses, the county will seize your home and auction it off to someone with connections. This happened over a million times during the Obama years, and we never read a sad story about it then.
I picked up on one word you correctly used as you described how and why bad things happen to good people.
Divorce.
In my life and career, I’ve seen countless cases of divorce forever ruing any and all chances of financial stability.
The divorce lawyers make sure all savings are depleted. Then things get worse.
Better to be unhappily married than miserably divorced. Don’t think so? Then look at the millions of old lonely divorced people who no longer lived quite nicely as they once did; but live miserably in a single wide.
Alone.
Why yes, there IS a Republican in the Whitehouse.
It’s a mixed bag. For many, it’s a choice to be unchained from a desk and reduce the cost of living. Lots of RVers who work/travel full time. Lots of retirees who simply RV full time with a pension income and supplement with part time workcamper income. For some, it’s a necessity. There are quite a few Kalifornia refugees who simply can’t afford to live there anymore and live in their RVs in the deserts of Arizona and Nevada on a meager income.
Probably cost of living.
I’m horrified at the cost of rent in a lot of places and it is pretty high here considering that there are few career possibilities.
Social Security was a way to COMPEL Americans to save for retirement. It ain’t working. Meant only as an income supplement. Those that never needed it get penalized. Millennials have a chance to do it over but they won’t. The frog is boiled. Bummer. They are all under age 35. Plenty of time for them.
I don’t know a single person that fits in that category.
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