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 ...
That's why socialism has its' appeal, they want equal outcome for all regardless of one's life decisions.
I am 71 and waiting for my boss (she who must be obeyed) to tell me when i can retire. Actually i don;’t do hard work. I’m a RE broker who used to work in prisons.
If someone hates their job it makes sense to find something different if only for reasons of health, but if one loves what they do, it makes a lot of sense to keep doing it. Sitting around the house sweating making payments for the coming month can’t be a lot of fun.
When the job hunt goes longer than a year, sometimes folks have to tap the retirement savings.
I am very sorry about what happened to you. I was lucky, the fire department that I was working for decided that it would save them money to offer incentives to get rid of those of us with more seniority and our retirement system was designed for a career that requires fit younger people to do much of the work. We are still working on down-sizing to fit our new budget... moving to a less expensive place, getting rid of a lot of our stuff, and trying to economize.
But we were able to plan for this. When unexpected negative events occur you can end up losing everything and then look back and realize that things could have been done differently. But this is not a “learning event” in many cases, because much of the time the “knowledge” that people gained will have no value for them going forward.
Many of us are just plain lucky. I have had a lot of close calls in my life. I know that I am lucky to be alive and lucky to still be in good health. I was lucky to have a long career that I was able to advance in. I am lucky to still be in a stable financial situation. I am lucky to still be married to the same woman after all of these years.
All of these things that we think we have earned can go away for reasons we likely would never see coming. Hopefully my luck will continue to hold.
I didn’t read the whole thread so apologies if I’m repeating.
As a retiree I’d simply like to point out to future retirees, avoid no income tax states unless you have a large retirement income, which most don’t. No state income tax means outrageous property taxes. If you planned we’ll you don’t owe much income tax so go to states with income tax and low property taxes. Do the math.
Yep, the bathroom thing is probably the one thing that keeps me from wanting an RV.
If you’re stuck with no income for an extended period due to illness or just unemployed in a really crappy economy and you can’t sell your house, then retirement accounts get raided. It’s not stupidity so much as being trapped in a bad situation. Maybe it would have been better to bail on the mortgage for them in hindsight, but honest people are pretty much hard-wired not to even think that way, and most states have judicial foreclosure so any balance owed would still have haunted them. Have a little sympathy. Bad *hit happens to decent people sometimes, and there was one heck of a lot of it that happened from 2008 through 2014, across wide swathes of this country.
We also need to return to the concept of extended families all helping each other, parents help their children, but it should also be expected of the children to take care of their parents as well.
i do not necessarily agree.
My MIL got herself into debt rather quickly after her hubby died. He left her set for life, but she spent all her $$, lost her house, which had been paid off. She expected us to bail her out. No way was that going to happen.
She was irresponsible as hell.
and my husband works with so many people that are retirement age, but still have to work, because their grown up kids were irresponsible, too. That should not happen.
I understand, in 2008 we ended the year with 250K in debt and we had a mortgage. We could have sold all our assets to repay it but we would have been left with very little. We were 54 years old, a darned bad age to have to start over again.
My husband wasn’t ready to give it up and the bank advanced us 50K to continue on while we remortgaged. 10 years on we are about where we were on our mortgage then. It isn’t so bad because our land has doubled in appreciation since then and with some of the land deals that have gone down lately, maybe even tripled. Our house has been mortgage free for 25 years and our taxes aren’t bad.
Since ‘08 I have actively acquired liquid, physical assets that no-one knows about that could support us easily for a couple of years. Plus we will eventually get our SS and Medicare, in fact Medicare will start for us this year. I also have a nice camp trailer, just in case.
Our plan is to retire in 3 years.
That is pretty much our retirement model. We are a multi-generational household. Though I worry about it a little since my daughter doesn’t want to ‘EVER’ give birth. If she was religious she would be a perfect nun. Learning especially everything in IT, is her passion. Guess that is better than most girls her age (early 20s).
P.S. And Yes, she is also very passionately PRO-LIFE too. Thank goodness.
Is Amazon approaching godlike power over us?
Sad. One word: diversify!
Here's a post I wrote two months before the overall market hit bottom, while GM bonds were on an upswing:
To: jimbo123I see GMW has been rising of late ($4.17). That's GM's $25 minibond, maturing on Confiscation Day, 2041.
In the meantime, it pays 45.3¢ four times a year (unless it doesn't). That's a yield of 43% at the current price. If you'd scarfed it up 21 November last, you could have had a yield of 77.6%. Of course, if GM's still around after the current crisis blows over, you'll be able to bail out at a nice profit well before 2041, if you so desire. On the other hand, not.
Not. That GMW link no longer works. A year later, General Motors was MLC, the Motors Liquidation Company, and GM was the new, Obama-restructured Gubmint Motors.
It was a wild time.
Having our Mother-In-Law living with us when our kids were little saved tons on babysitting and daycare costs.
I was trying to be funny.
I retired early from peace officer work because of a heart attack. I sat around 5 years being angry and eating ice cream, a bad combination. My wife had been an appraiser and then loan officer.
I got my license and then she retired and got here. Nothing I do in RE can match 28 years of prison work for intensity and difficulty. I’ll work till I can do the work anymore. She’s 10 years younger and in much better shape and she is also a broker.
I would think if you had some sort of skills and education, you could get better jobs than this.
It’s why I tell my kids and any college age kids today, you’d better be prepared to work for yourself by the time you reach the age of 40.
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