MUST SEE DFP headline: "Will I ever be able to RETIRE?" - part 1 of 3

[Bozita]

http://www.freep.com/apps/pbcs.dll/article?AID=/20100912/BUSINESS07/9120513/1318/Retirement-hopes-turning-to-dust-for-millions-in-U.S.&template=fullarticle

POSTED: SEPT. 12, 2010

FREE PRESS SERIES
Millions of Americans confront uncertain futures
BY JOHN GALLAGHER
FREE PRESS BUSINESS WRITER

Part 1 of a 3-part series


Growing old has never been for wimps. But now it’s really getting tough.

A comfortable retirement, that mainstay of the American dream, is falling out of reach for millions of Americans, a legacy of the disastrous 2008 recession.

Many people who expected by now to be on the brink of their next, leisurely life are instead hoping to hang onto jobs, if they still have them. Never much on saving, these Americans in their 50s and early 60s have seen their retirement plans evaporate at an alarming rate in the housing bust, stock market crash and corporate bankruptcies that erased pensions.

How bad is it? If you are near retirement, the 2008 recession may never end for you. You may be working well into your 70s.

The Center for Retirement Research at Boston College calculates a National Retirement Risk Index showing the percentage of Americans in danger of growing poorer in their senior years. That index now stands at 51% — up dramatically from 31% in 1983.

“People are going to feel vulnerable when they should feel comfortable,” said Alicia Munnell, center director.

more...

[Hawkowl]

1. No.

The plan is to work until you are too sick or old and then die quickly. This is a bipartisan plan formulated by the catfood commission established by President Obama.

[HughBeaumont]

2. Well . . . America is going to pay a grave price for being slooooow learners.

I don't know what else to tell you on this one.

Perfect example - The "disastrous 2008 recession" (really, unbridled "Trickle-down" capitalism's "end game") wasn't repaired within 2 years, even though it took over 30 to come to it's ultimate climax. What do the American people see as the solution to this, according to polling and our complicit media? Putting the very party that AIDED, ABETTED and USHERED IN this shitmess in the FIRST place back in congressional power, so we can look backward to Gingrich Redux all over again. Makes sense, really.

I really, REALLY feel sorry for the guy in the photo. My goal for my one and only kid is going to be to get him through college student-loan free. I don't even envy that guy's dilemma.

[dkf]

3. Yet what are savings? They represent the extra labor you did that you did not consume.

Is it any wonder that in a time of over consumption, there are no savings and thus no retirement?

[FirstLight]

5. people are consuming savings because

wages are flatlined and they need every bit of income to survive. savings is a myth from the 60's...my dad will never understand that.

[nashville_brook]

4. retirement age is 67 for people my age, while jobs go to younger and less experienced workers.

i'm looking forward to a lot of hardship no matter what.

[vduhr]

8. I've worked since I was 17, just out of High School

and, except for short periods of times when I was married and raising my son, always had a paying job. I divorced when I was 25, and have always worked since then...never had the opportunity to go to college, but I have gained enough experience to at least earn a decent wage, albeit not a big wage, but always enough to support myself. I'll be 61 next month and I had hoped to take my SS at 62 and work part-time until I could take full SS, regardless that my budget would be tight. I'm tired of working, and both of my parents died in their early 70's, so if longevity (or lack of) is hereditary (lots of cancer and heart disease in my genes), I didn't want to work full-time until 67, then die a few years later! Now, I'm getting scared that I will be forced to work until I'm 70 if, from what I am reading lately about the possiblity of the SS retirement age being raised, I may have to. If I have to work for another 8 years, it will literally kill me before then. I want to be able to enjoy spending time with my grandchild while he's still little. I want to be able to keep my house clean and in order, without being so tired from holding down a job that I don't have the energy to do anything else. I don't want my twilight years to go by quickly because the days are speeding by 5-days out of 7 while I look forward to the weekends to be free. AND...I don't want to have to put up with the bullshit of office politics and mentality (the movie Office Space isn't too far off it's depiction). I'm tired, tired, tired and I want to retire!

I've been a supporter of Obama in most things, but...If Obama's cat food commission succeeds in making cuts to SS and raising the retirement age, that will be the straw. I won't vote Republican for sure, but will certainly be looking very closely at other candidates in 2012.

[NorthCarolina]

6. Short answer..NO

[wcast]

7. So let me see if I have this right

One family, where the husband earns 6 figures, and his wife is a school teacher, can't retire? They are only earning between $150,000 to $200,000 a year. Am I supposed to feel sorry for them? And then the second family, the husband wants to retire at 53 years of age, but heaven forbid, he'll have to work longer to put his twin girls through college.

And from those two "horrific" examples, the article transitions to talking about how cushy that 74 year old has it, because he only took minor trims to his retirement. What is the point of this article? If it's to push for pensions and increased benefits for all, I say have at it, but it's not what I got out of the story. In America, there are the haves and the have-nots. But for some reason, the rich always have us fight each other, labeling us, the 80% that control very little of the nation's wealth, as have or have-nots. I have a pension and health insurance, now I'm a have. You don't, you're a have-not. Meanwhile, the people with the real money are raking it in hand over fist.

Very few people are intellectually curious, and easily follow others down the path and over the cliff. Those at bottom profess to hate unions, although they can't tell you why. Hate welfare and government run insurance, but can't wait to get theirs when they retire. Firmly believe that only Republicans follow God. Only have use for emotion, not fact. This is what we are fighting against.