About being laid off and unwanted when you're 59

The Star (South Chicago) ^ | 4/23/6 | Michael Bowers

[SmithL]

One of my readers is an underemployed 59-year-old man from among us here in the South Suburbs. Call him Harry. He works in information technology. Slowly and wearily, he says: "Once you get past 50, I swear, it gets tough, it gets really tough."

For instance, Harry applied for a job with a city of Chicago department that operates 24 hours a day, seven days a week. He got an offer for some contract work. There were no benefits, but it was a paying job.

A woman from the city called him one Monday morning and wanted to know if he could start at midnight. Harry said he'd like to give his current employer a week's notice. That wasn't good enough. The job was gone. The caller told him: "This is a brave new world. Learn to live with it."

[CindyDawg]

It's more than that. It's the complaing all the time. It's the looking at you like that's a stupid idea or pursing your lips or making some kind of remark like okkkkkkkkkkk or the sighs and getting up slowly. It's frowning and not liking change. When managers dread approaching you, your work days are usually limited IMO.

[CindyDawg]

Well, I think every freshman in highschool, maybe jr high should have to select a "career" and take training classes. When you get out of high school you may plan to be a doctor, lawyer, teacher, nurse, whatever but at least you can make a living at something, along the way.

[hedgetrimmer]

maybe jr high should have to select a "career" and take training classes

What does this mean?

[BillM]

Almost all the really successful people I have known were self taught.

In an interview on C-Span, Mark Steyn (probably the western world's greatest writer) answered a caller that he had learned all he needed by the 8th grade.

I did my graduate work in organic chemistry. I made my fortune designing microcomputer software and hardware (100% self taught).

With the world's greatest access to information and training at your fingertips (Internet) you can become expert in anything you wish. You used to require access to university libraries to do this)

[CindyDawg]

Cooks, Child care workers, House keepers, Nurse Aide, Teachers Aide, Mechanic, Painter, Carpenter helpers etc. It is embarrassing , the lack of skills kid graduate without. Ever Wonder why the new registers tell how much change to give back. Check it out. A lot do not know how to even make change.

[hedgetrimmer]

Almost all the really successful people I have known were self taught.

Not arguing this.

The vast majority of the people in this country are attending schools with curriculums that destroy half or more of their brains and condition them to accept an ever larger, ever more intrusive government. Really successful people should put their brainpower to work to stop this destruction of a free willed, individually responsible society.

[hedgetrimmer]

Cooks, Child care workers, House keepers, Nurse Aide, Teachers Aide, Mechanic, Painter, Carpenter helpers etc

PARENTS should teach their children these things or find adults they know who can help them learn these things in their communities. They are all skills a FREE person needs to stay FREE. If you give ownership of these abilities to communist led public schools, you still may not get them. Most schools will not teach skills that make students responsible individuals, even if the parents ask for it. They are more about molding children to fit into their ideal soviet society, as proven by school-to-work and goals 2000.

[CindyDawg]

This is not a new concept. It was just something that was dropped. Seniors used to work half a day. Schools want to teach everything else. Teach them to work.

[hedgetrimmer]

Teach them to work

Teach them to THINK. Then they can work, invent, study, be productive. American culture cannot survive if we are all Epsilons.

[CindyDawg]

Well I want my kids to think and work. It's hard to retire if you have a bunch of thinkers always holding their hands out. I worked at Jack in the Box for 3 something an hour, and took care of 3 babies while I went to college at my own expense. It's no ones fault but mine that I chose to do things the hard way but one of the benefits was that it made me a stronger person. I chose for my kids to be strong too.

I prefer home school or private church school but I don't "hate" public school. It's broken and not useful to me but I don't "hate" it.Until you can get past all that , you aren't going to hear what I'm saying.

[hedgetrimmer]

Who used the word "hate", you or me?

[CindyDawg]

If you give ownership of these abilities to communist led public schools, you still may not get them. Most schools will not teach skills that make students responsible individuals, even if the parents ask for it. They are more about molding children to fit into their ideal soviet society, as proven by school-to-work and goals 2000

I report. You decide

[subterfuge]

That is the point. No employer is going to be liable for benefits to an older person. The medical/insurance unholy alliance is at work again.

Seems odd. At my workplace, a major defense contractor, we seem to hire anyone who can barely drag themsleves to the elevator to get the the top (2nd) floor. We seem to be under orders to hire overweight women and minorities for the lower end positions. I swear some of these newly hired are a step away from cardiac arrest.

[SLB]

Sounds like there is some disparity in everyone's plans. For someone who has been there and done that, let me tell you the best made plans soon get thrown out the window.

My in-laws both retired in the mid 1980's. They did not have much in savings, but both had SS, he was retired from the Army and civil service. (They had some of the worst spending habits I have seen - Omaha Steaks, Alamo Fruit just to name a couple) She had some serious health problems, Parkinson's Disease, diabetes, legally blind to name a few. She fell and broke a hip so could no longer negotiate the steps in their split level home, so they bought a new house when he was 86 and moved.

They started getting worse and worse health wise until they both required FT health care in the home. That is easy to figure, we had someone there with them 24/7 at $7.00 an hour. That is $168.00 a day or roughly $5000 a month. There take home was not that much so they immediately had to start dipping into their savings. That did not last as long as they did, so it was then up to the family to care for them. That burden fell on the shoulders of my wife which means me.

They both passed away last fall, she was 84 and he was 91. We are just now settling the estate and will have several thousand in debt written off by probate.

The moral of the story. My wife and I are fully funding our Roth IRA, I am a gray area retiree from the national guard which means I will start getting paid for retirement when I am 60 (three years). I am a civil service employee with a Thrift Savings Plan (TSP) account which is also being fully funded and last, I will have social security at least to start with.

When we retire we will be 100% debt free, or at least that is the plan now. We do not plan on touching the Roth or the TSP until we have to, living on the retirement from the national guard, civil service and social security, and leaving the savings to our children as best we can.

Remembering my first paragraph, how about we all check in every few years and let each other know how we are doing?

[capitalist229]

Older workers will get their vengeance when they go on Medicaid and SSRI and bleed the rest of us dry as taxes continue to rise.

Your job may be lost, but your voting privileges are not.

BUMP

[CindyDawg]

At my job it's right the opposite. Most are in shape, all dressed up and look like they just stepped out of a salon. It really puts pressure on me. I wish we could hire a few more fat people.

[hedgetrimmer]

Don't see the word "hate" in there.

You dispute that there are no communists working in our public schools? You dispute that the school to work program is NOT modeled on the soviet unions education system?

[CindyDawg]

You want to talk about how grown kids not working, delays retirement?

[e_castillo]

"I read nothing of the sort in this article about Harry. You are just using him to express a point of view even though there is a vacuum of fact."

Thanks for saying it. The article doesn't even mention how much the guy has made during his lifetime...

[hedgetrimmer]

You want to talk about how grown kids not working, delays retirement?

No its not the topic of the thread.