Posted on 02/23/2014 8:23:59 AM PST by Signalman
Thousands of retired and current Detroit workers face pension cuts as deep as 34%, and some say they aren't sure how they'll make ends meet if the plan announced Friday is approved.
"They have worried me from the day they started this mess. You sit on pins and needles all the time," said 69-year-old Donald Smith, who retired in 2005 after decades of work as a civilian detention officer and other general city jobs.
For Smith, the cuts could mean a loss of around $300 a month from his $889 in monthly pension benefits, even as he already struggles to pay for rent, groceries and medical bills. Between his pension and Social Security, Smith currently lives on less than $23,000 a year.
"If they go and cut that, how am I going to live off of that?" he said, "I can't live on what I get now."
At the same time, retirees could face increased medical bills due to proposed deep cuts to their retiree healthcare benefits.
(Excerpt) Read more at money.cnn.com ...
If he truly worked “decades” that is a fairly meager pension for a civil servant.
Of course the devil may be in the details.
Considering he can’t live on what he gets now, any cut would be superfluous.
Maybe a reverse mortgage would help... I mean with Detroit property values being what they are.
Perhaps Donald should have planned better for his old age. Maybe even saved some of his income over the years. It’s not like getting old is an unexpected event.
I think I would start raiding the bank accounts and personal properties of the city council members and union leadership who approved impossible deals.
Your mistake is thinking that the Democrats who promised you the pension to buy your vote back then care about whether you live now.
he retired at 50!!! i think i see the problem right there...
Your mistake is thinking that the Democrats who promised you the pension to buy your vote back then care about whether you live now.
They’ll make sure he keeps voting long after he’s gone.
I don’t understand how you get a public employee pension AND social security. I thought that if you got a public employee pension you didn’t even pay into social security.
that is the way it is in California and the unions in Michigan are at least as strong as they are in California
he retired at ??
2014-2005=9
69-9=60
Yes it is. CNN must have spent months finding this guy.
Fixed it...
Guy has been retired for 9 years which means he retired at age 60...
G.A.S. meter is busted...
The average city employee pension is $19k. For police, $30k, not inlcuding cola. Throw in some of the higher pensions of $100k, and the obvious groundwork has been laid for the commons there to be pissed with the cuts.
Pension being reduced? Do you normally plan for something like that. If the stock market was to totally crash, do we plan for that? If currency becomes inflated into wheelbarrows, do we plan for that?
I'm retired and I'm in good financial condition, but I never would think that I have prepared for every contingency and that I couldn't end up like this guy.
He may have earned enough quarters to collect SS if he worked at all in the private sector.
Also, I believe some state and local government employees do participate in SS.
His pension based on those numbers now is slightly over 10K. He was on a defined benefit plan and worked decades meaning more than 20 years. To me that seems like a small number and if accurate, cutting that pension a third is not realistic. Perhaps pensions at that meager amount should be excluded from the decrease. Incidently, the average pension of general employees in Detroit is about 18.5K per year.
If there is not money to pay these meager pension costs, somebody der been skimming da pot for der own benefit I think. Perhaps the politicians who made this mess up should be sued for their entire pensions citing they violated their fiduciary responsibility to their employees.
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