My grandfather was a postman in NY - he got to retire at 60.
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I have mixed feelings about this sort of thing.
I can’t muster much sympathy or respect for fashionably dressed people who weep and moan about the crushing of their dreams because their bubble-worlds of unacknowledged privilege were penetrated by real-world events like 9/11 and TARP, forcing them to acknowledge reality. I probably should, but I just can’t.
But there’s an Amazon warehouse just down the street, and I know people who’ve worked there… ugh.
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Guard labour currently accounts for 1/4 of the American workforce by some estimates. This is bad in so many ways.
I’m not going to blame all Boomers for ending up like this, because a lot of them were definitely scammed by the system they supported and fostered since 1980. But, yes, that general attitude toward their “lazy” children and grandchildren does seem to be out there.
The numbers I’ve seen about savings rates are pretty frightening to me as someone in my 40s. It is important to note that a large portion of those Americans who have no retirement savings are living so precariously from paycheque to paycheque that they can’t afford to save.
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I’m waiting for the crime wave where retired people with no money start robing banks, because prison is better than starving.
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Now you’ll never get a glowing BB review with a link to . . . Amazon.
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Note to self: Begin new art project enrobing banks in chocolate…
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Sort of. You also get to do another bit of grim math. If you run a fund that is kicking out $48k/year on $250k in principal for retirement, you can structure it so that you (the fund manager) keeps the principal when the retiree passes away. Sort of (or exactly?) like those “reverse mortgages”.
It is still pretty far fetched though, if you assume you can actually get 10% that leaves you 28k behind in the first year, reducing the principal to 230k. You run out of money sometime in year 8 this way. Another 50K gets you to year 11.
Wow, this works out even more poorly then I had thought. If you assume you retire at 60 and need money until 80 you need $400k. And again that is assuming 10% which I think is unrealistic.
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It continues to amaze me that, in this era of “small government austerity,” government work is the only rational work to pursue. It’s the only job left where you get a pension – getting a government job is like winning the lottery now.
That situation can’t last. American workers have long been determined to take away benefits that other workers enjoy, rather than demand those same benefits from their employers. The race to the bottom ends in an RV.
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Agreed. I was just using the base calculation, generously assuming (unlike you and @atl above) that this sleazeball fund manager wasn’t drawing down principal and counting on the guy to die close to broke a mere 5-8 years after retirement. And we’re still leaving out whatever fees the manager was charging to deliver this “guaranteed” return.
As it is, this gentleman is still alive and completely broke, living in a leaky camper (“not even a Blue Bird! sniff”) and doing seasonal migrant work that would break the back and spirit of someone half his age.
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And this is why I’m a mutualist or at least anti-propertarian anarchist.
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- checks Lottery ticket… *
nope, still haven’t got enough for retirement.
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my grandfather in law - who had ~ $1M or so in cash at age 85 or so - he wasn’t going to run out of money and some schiester sold him an annuity. Burned, net, 300K of his assets so that fuck could get $6K or something in commissions
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THIS illustrates why it is naive to pin one’s hopes for survival upon chasing pieces of magic paper. If the symbol set was religion instead of money, so many materialists would be fighting instead of expressing weary resignation. But hey, paper is real, so it must be legit. Feel free to kill the messenger, if it makes you feel better.
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I think the government imposed limits, but I remember companies during the dotcom boom investing all of an employee’s 401(k) and matching funds in the company’s own stock. Now it can be more like 70%, so … progress?
Seriously, if someone believes that much in his employer, 10% is more than enough of a vote of confidence.
That would only happen if the Know-Nothings got the public pension and healthcare systems they secretly want: “non-socialist” because they’re only given to “deserving” Real Americans (i.e. white, Xtian, straight, not living in a coastal city).
Wow, sorry to hear that. That’s the nature of sociopathic small-time salesmen – as bent as they are, they’re not clever enough to do something like skim off a bit of that $300k, but they are slick enough to close the sale. It fits in with Sam Spade’s maxim that “the cheaper the crook, the gaudier the patter.”
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I should also add, that it was in many ways the perfect job for him in those days. Moneywise it was a hand to mouth existence, and yet it was a secure civil service job in hard economic times and he being chatty and gregarious and often ended up picking or dropping things off for country people who often paid with food, butter, eggs and many’s the time they invited him in for a drink. According to my mom the extra food definitely helped during the war.
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For my well educated, cultured grandfather; it was a job you could get if you were from Puerto Rico back in the day.
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Similar to places like mexico city, where the city core is now surrounded by a vast, despair filled slum.
Depends on where they live: in places like texas and arizona, prisons are basically labor camps where people die from malnutrition and/or heat exhaustion all the time.
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They’re so much fun that the absurd rental fee turns out to be something you just write off as cheap per thrill. Don’t buy one.
We had those at a former workplace. I thought they were quite informative and helpful. Some people might be glad of a job at Amazon, until they are replaced by robots of course.
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