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 ...
Stay out of debt. Go with Dave Ramsey
Most boomers had no idea about this or even how to save. The ones that had company organized 401 plans and contribution sharing and that understood how to use it and did it early enough should come out well. The rest, not so much.
How many people understand that you need to salt away at least 25% of your before tax gross at 6% to be able to afford to retire? Where is the hand book that tells them that? There isn’t one.
How many kids understand that you save for cars and houses and you invest for retirement?
Amen!
No doubt, the donor class will ensure Illegal aliens and H-1B workers are available to pick up the slack. I found out the hard way.
https://www.wired.com/story/meet-camperforce-amazons-nomadic-retiree-army/
And I have been twice wiped out by divorce. Each instance took me to $0 net worth (pre-pay cash to reduce alimony).
Still, between a small pension, SS and VA I’ll have over $4k per month retirement income.
In the big scheme it’s enough to live on, without luxury.
My grandfather survived on FAR less in inflation-adjusted dollars. As did my father.
I see so many who fail to live well today, when they’re healthy, so the can keep their big ‘ol house with pool and 1/2 acre yard when they retire, can barely walk and lose their drivers license.
Retirement has ALWAYS been about downsizing. It’s rational and normal for the human condition.
Far too many cannot accept that.
I realize the author of the article is pushing her agenda, whatever that is. And I’m not a class warfare person, either. If a person is successful and does the right thing, good for them. I’m happy for them. But, I also get irritated with those that spew ... sucks for them that they have no skills or didn’t do this or that.
I lost my job, last year at CSX. Not because I did something wrong. Company had a record year, previous. An Activist Hedge Fund from NYC bought the controlling shares and they brought in Hunter Harrison. His MO is fire as many people as possible, until the RR is barely running, cash out his stock and walk away with about $90 million over 4 years. He’s dead. But, last year, starting in March, they fired around 3000 people. If they keep his strategy, they will fire another 4000 or so. Out of a 27,000+ workforce, they were expecting a 35% attrition rate over the next 5 or so years, just due to retirements, anyway. His strategy was also effecting other companies, that relied on the service, but he wasn’t delivering. Lots and lots of problems. His answer to a Congressional committee was that he answers to the shareholders and their accounts, not to the customers of the railroad nor the other RRs that were also suffering due to his strategy, as they are all interconnected.
My point, after all of that, they’re firing guys with 20+ years on the RR, in their late 40s and 50s. Those guys were staring to see the light at the end of the tunnel to get their “privately funded RR pension”, but Wall St isn’t having that.
Also, go ask the former IT folks at Disney that were forced to train their foreign replacements. I’m sure it’s real easy for them to get right back in the workforce, at their age, competing against some hipster techie right out of college or some H1B visa winner.
I’m not here to be an SJW. I know and fully agree with the concept of, equal opportunity - not equal outcomes.
But, it’s pretty messed up with some of the comments on how these people are nothing. All fun and games until it happens to them.
In January we camped on BLM land, it was $40 for 2 weeks but my husband said you could buy a yearly pass for around $75. At that campground you had access to dumping, trash disposal and fresh water for that fee. There was a pay shower. So you could live for a very small amount.
Life is full of choices. Things “happen”...but then you have choices. You are responsible for those results...only you. Enough of this weakness.
I’m presently designing chips for Samsung in San Diego and living in my newer model 37 foot 5th wheel in a campground ... and loving it. I am 100 feet from the ocean and a beach. I have cable and internet and all other utilities paid for in the rent. The rent is one third of what the apartments are going for around here. My neighbors are pretty much the same type of older people who work various professions ... like teaching, medical, engineering etc. The life style is not for just anyone and requires a bit of getting used to ... but I’ve been doing it since October and am enjoying it. Two things that I don’t like ... first I’m living in Kalifornistan and I have run into some really STUPID liberals here. Second, I had to leave all (wink) of my fire arms in Arizona with Ms Clamper.
I’m thinking that if they are getting less than $1000 a month they were very low wage earners throughout their career
I am doing oK now , went where there is work for me, in fact just got several months out of quality assurance checking the structural elements of a 1.8 million square foot AMAZON distribution facilty building.
there is no easy way forward for me, there will be no "social security", the Yellow Brick road leads to a run down trailer park, knees are bone on bone but I will keep limping along to the finish line ...alone, with no help, no family estranged and dodging the Obamcare ovens...[/sarc] LOL !
http://rvsueandcrew.net/
A retied school teacher from a high-cost area. Sold her home and nearly everything else and then purchased a 17 foot Caista and a used Van to pull it. She had a solar system installed and then hit the road.
The blog has a tag line - Living on less and enjoying it more. She will do well, until there is a heath issue(s). She lives on a pension and some small income from being an Amazon affiliate (link in on blog)
She is not alone in this either. Many 'follow the sun' driving to where the weather suits them. No property taxes, register in the correct state and no State income taxes. With some care, you can go months without paying any parking/lot fees by boondocking. Many have cell-based Internet access - so can stay connected and also make some money..
The web is full of 100s of these Nomads that blog, so there has to be many, many more that don't care to advertise.
As for myself I retired out of the military and had a good job for 10 years, only to be 'downsized'. I've worked lots of 'gigs' since then, never for less that 50K/year base.
All it takes is some hustle and a willingness to try a job. It helps that my house was fully paid off before I got laid off the 1st time.
Some gigs have lasted over a year, others - I quit after less than a month. My current gig started as a contract job and now I work as an P/T employee by choice. Yes, I still pull down over 50K/yr -- working 3 days a week.
All non-Union.
It is entirely possible to live the Nomad life, but again, that life may be impossible for many that that chose to lack an education, have serious medical issues or cannot travel for any number of reasons.
I recognize I have been Blessed.
I hate using govt to force people to do actions but since they tax you on income how about having young workers 20’s automatically enrolled in a retirement savings plan even in small amounts. A few decades of compounding interest will grow the account and result in a nice nest egg at retirement. Disciplined and consistent saving is the key over the long term.
If you are lazy, poorly educated, and not too bright, you might wind up in a camper.
_______________________________
Or if a chronic debilitating disease like rheumatoid arthritis or COPD (and YOU NEVER smoked) claims you, or if you have an accident that destroys your coordination or causes you to become a paraplegic or quadriplegic, or if you have happen to be susceptible to clots and couple lodge in your brain or central retinal artery and you are blind or mute...Then even a camper isn’t an option.
So then society or your kids put you into a home for the AGED and that’s that, buddy.
I just really resent how smug some of you are. Many people are not responsible for what happens to them and the consequences of that “happening”.
The trouble is we no longer have locally extended families unlike many other families in foreign countries so our elderly spend their last day alone, lonely without transportation they can afford often in food deserts....so it goes. I weep for them. And can do nothing for them.
Did you ever give a thought that just maybe they did like it?
I'm not one to play the classwarfare crap
Then don't play it......
If you think an Amazon warehouse is such a hellish place, you should spend a summer in an automotive stamping plant working a 10 or 12 hour shift trying to maintain production quota on a draw die for the Ford van roof or the Lincoln Navigator side body panel or work in a foundry.
I can think of a number of shitty jobs I pulled at my plant during my 35 year career with them and working for Amazon sounds like a piece of cake.......At least it's clean, quiet and you don't have to wash soot out of your nose and oil out of your hair and off your body as soon as you get home.
And we had 35 year + seniority guys in their 60's and early 70's doing that crap their entire career with the company..
It’s what you choose to make it in most cases, but that won’t sell online newspapers, hence the hyperbole about desperate nomads.
So did they not pay into SS?
I don’t doubt that one bit.
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