Retirees up against debt

USA Today via WZZM 13 Grand Rapids ^ | Tuesday, January 23, 2007 | Kathy Chu

[A. Pole]

Articles from USA Today can only have a title and link to the original article.

[rhombus]

I sure see a lot of them in the casinos.

[Sam's Army]

Some of my ancestors died before they got the chance to retire, others never had it as a birthright.

The real question is: Whose taxes should we raise to make everything in life "more better"?

[stylin19a]

Hey...these guys are writing about my retirement plan.

Max out the cards, pull all the equity out of the house then sell it, cash in the life insurance policy, the cd's.
keep he Ira's, and the 401k,
then retire....wait awhile...
then claim bankruptcy.

[Omega Man II]

Yes, it is amazing how much they seem to have to spend on video slots at those Indian casinos.

I walked into one such casino one time (out of curiosity), and saw old women in wheelchairs, with oxygen tanks at their sides, playing the video slot machine games over and over and over and over. The slot machines are designed now so you don't even have to insert money or crank a lever. You load up a casino debit card, stick it in the machine, and then push the button on the machine until the debit card is completely drained.

[Physicist]

In Austin, Ronald and Carol Godwin, 65 and 63, depleted their savings years ago and have since turned to credit cards and home equity to pay medical bills. They're struggling in retirement to pay off loans they took out years ago for a grandchild's college education.

Wait...I think I've identified whose taxes we should raise...

[nascarnation]

"They send you credit cards in the mail, and you take them and use them because you don't have any idea that you're going to get sick one day," Towson says. "I had no plans to retire. I was going to go as long as I could."

This guy was 84 years old.
Now that's an optimist.

[ExtremeUnction]

The article said that a retiree's S/S check didn't cover all of his expenses. It isn't supposed to!

[Sabatier]

"Rising mortgage debt poses a serious threat to seniors' financial well-being, says Craig Copeland of the research institute, because they're "putting at risk their most important asset, their home."

Well, that's an asset you have to figure may very well go to the government or the nursing home at the end of the road. You have to start asset protection via a good lawyer long before you need long-term or nursing home care.

[JustRight]

""I had the impression I'd do more" in retirement, says Hettick, who lives on $1,100 a month from a pension and Social Security.

She thought she'd do more on $1,100 a month? Poor planning then. She's been retired for probably ten years, so she was probably pulling in less than $1,000 a month when she retired. Bad things happen and things get expensive, but poor planning and spending money you should have saved for retirement on luxuries is no reason for me to pity you.

[pabianice]

In Scott Depot, W.Va., Carl Brown, 68, has an impossible decision to make every month because his Social Security check usually doesn't cover all of his mortgage, utility, food and medical costs.

No sh*t! You mean your monthly SS check is supposed to be at least $4,000? Who knew?

[AlaskaErik]

It never ceases to amaze me that supposedly responsible people don't take responsibility for their retirement years. When I retire, my house will be fully paid off. There is no other debt I have to worry about. On top of that, I figure between my wife and myself, we'll have about $7000 a month in retirement income as well as medical coverage. But we planned for all of this.

[Son House]

You have to start asset protection via a good lawyer long before you need long-term or nursing home care.

Yep, I'm always encouraging my parents to hand it over,

another thing these retiree's need to do is pay off the IOU's they borrowed out of SSI, and not leave the debt.

[nascarnation]

Yep, I'm always encouraging my parents to hand it over

Are you avoiding what you consider to be immorally high estate taxes or or intending to shift the burden of their long term care to the taxpayers via medicaid?

[Son House]

Neither, just trying to encourage them to be very conservative, well, mostly Ma, she's one that falls for gambling.

[Physicist]

It never ceases to amaze me that supposedly responsible people don't take responsibility for their retirement years. When I retire, my house will be fully paid off. There is no other debt I have to worry about. On top of that, I figure between my wife and myself, we'll have about $7000 a month in retirement income as well as medical coverage. But we planned for all of this.

Sometimes saints get stung. My folks had it all worked out, but then it turned out that the Bethlehem Steel retirement fund was invested entirely in Bethlehem Steel stock. When the company went south, it took the retirement fund with it.

The real problem nowadays is medical expenses. As technology improves, it becomes more and more possible to buy more life. It doesn't matter whether the cost is low or high: the appetite is infinite, so as long as the opportunity to buy more life is there, it will eventually eat up any amount of financial planning. And OK, a lot of people have insurance, and other people have a strong safety net, but somebody is footing the bill, and that somebody will complain that that geezer's life costs so damn much. (In this article, it just happens to be the geezers.) The only exceptions are the people who are very rich, and those who simply die before they get much in the way of pills and hospital time. Not too many years ago, almost everybody fell into one of those two categories.