For decades we were warned that when the Baby Boomers started to retire that this country would be facing a retirement crisis of unprecedented magnitude. Well, that day has arrived ladies and gentlemen. Back on January 1st, the Baby Boomers began to retire and more than 10,000 of them will be retiring every single day for years to come. Most of them have not saved up nearly enough money for retirement. At the same time, private sector pension plans are failing all over the place, hundreds of state and local government pension plans from coast to coast are woefully underfunded, and the Social Security system is on the road to complete and total disaster. A massive wave of humanity is hitting retirement age at a moment in history when the U.S. economy is coming apart at the seams. We do not have the resources to keep the promises that we made to the Baby Boomers, and most of them have not made adequate preparations for retirement. What we have is a gigantic mess on our hands, and millions of Baby Boomers are going to find retirement to be very bitter and very painful.
A lot of younger Americans just assume that Social Security is enough to take care of the needs of elderly Americans. But that is just not the case.
Have you ever tried to live solely on a Social Security check?
It is not easy. The truth is that those checks are just not that large.
The following comes directly from the Social Security Administration....
The average monthly Social Security benefit for a retired worker was about $1,177 at the beginning of 2011.
Could you live on less than 300 dollars a week?
And keep in mind that the $1,177 monthly figure is just an average. Many receive a lot less than that.
In addition, Social Security benefits have been seriously squeezed by inflation in recent years. The cost of food and other basics has risen briskly and Social Security benefits have not.
Today, many elderly Americans have to make a choice between buying food, heating their homes or buying medicine that they need. They simply do not have enough money to do all of them.
It would have been nice if all of the Baby Boomers had been busy saving money for retirement all these years, but that just did not happen. In fact, the Baby Boomers as a group are trillions of dollars short of what they need for retirement.
So why doesn't the U.S. government step in to help them out?
Well, the reality of the situation is that the U.S. government is flat broke. The federal government is now over 15 trillion dollars in debt. During the Obama administration so far, the U.S. government has accumulated more new debt than it did from the time that George Washington took office to the time that Bill Clinton took office.
Lawmakers are already looking at ways to make the Social Security program less costly. No, the federal government is not going to be riding to the rescue.
In fact, it will be a minor miracle if the Social Security program is able to survive until the end of this decade, and it will be a major miracle if the Social Security program is able to survive until 2030.
As for myself, I do not believe that I will ever see a single penny from Social Security, and many other working age Americans feel the same way.
Retirement is supposed to be a fun time, but sadly most Americans that are approaching retirement age are not going to have any "golden years" to look forward to.
Rather, millions of elderly Americans are going to find the years ahead absolutely agonizing as they struggle just to survive.
The following are 25 bitter and painful facts about the coming Baby Boomer retirement crisis that will blow your mind....
#1 According to the Employee Benefit Research Institute, 46 percent of all American workers have less than $10,000 saved for retirement, and 29 percent of all American workers have less than $1,000 saved for retirement.
#2 According to a recent poll conducted by Americans for Secure Retirement, 88 percent of all Americans are worried about "maintaining a comfortable standard of living in retirement". Last year, that figure was at 73 percent.
#3 A study conducted by Boston College's Center for Retirement Research has found that American workers are $6.6 trillion short of what they need to retire comfortably.
#4 Today, one out of every six elderly Americans lives below the federal poverty line.
#5 On January 1st, 2011 the very first Baby Boomers started to retire. For almost the next 20 years, more than 10,000 Baby Boomers will be retiring every single day.
#6 At the moment, only about 13 percent of all Americans are 65 years of age or older. By 2030, that number will soar to 18 percent.
#7 Right now, there are somewhere around 40 million senior citizens. By 2050 that number is projected to increase to 89 million.
#8 Back in 1991, half of all American workers planned to retire before they reached the age of 65. Today, that number has declined to 23 percent.
#9 According to one recent survey, 74 percent of American workers expect to continue working once they are "retired".
#10 According to a recent AARP survey of Baby Boomers, 40 percent of them plan to work "until they drop".
#11 A poll conducted by CESI Debt Solutions found that 56 percent of American retirees still had outstanding debts when they retired.
#12 A study by a law professor at the University of Michigan found that Americans that are 55 years of age or older now account for 20 percent of all bankruptcies in the United States. Back in 2001, they only accounted for 12 percent of all bankruptcies.
#13 Between 1991 and 2007 the number of Americans between the ages of 65 and 74 that filed for bankruptcy rose by a staggering 178 percent.
#14 What is causing most of these bankruptcies among the elderly? The number one cause is medical bills. According to a report published in The American Journal of Medicine, medical bills are a major factor in more than 60 percent of the personal bankruptcies in the United States. Of those bankruptcies that were caused by medical bills, approximately 75 percent of them involved individuals that actually did have health insurance.
#15 Public retirement funds all over the United States are woefully underfunded. For example, it has been reported that the $33.7 billion Illinois Teachers Retirement System is 61% underfunded and is on the verge of complete collapse.
#16 Most U.S. states have huge pension obligations which threaten to bankrupt them. For example, pension consultant Girard Miller told California's Little Hoover Commission that state and local government bodies in the state of California have $325 billion in combined unfunded pension liabilities. When you break that down, it comes to $22,000 for every single working adult in the state of California.
#17 Robert Novy-Marx of the University of Chicago and Joshua D. Rauh of Northwestern's Kellogg School of Management have calculated the combined pension liability for all 50 U.S. states. What they found was that the 50 states are collectively facing $5.17 trillion in pension obligations, but they only have $1.94 trillion set aside in state pension funds. That is a difference of 3.2 trillion dollars. So where in the world is all of that extra money going to come from?
#18 According to the Congressional Budget Office, the Social Security system paid out more in benefits than it received in payroll taxes in 2010. That was not supposed to happen until at least 2016. Sadly, in the years ahead these "Social Security deficits" are scheduled to become absolutely nightmarish as hordes of Baby Boomers retire.
#19 In 1950, each retiree's Social Security benefit was paid for by 16 U.S. workers. According to new data from the U.S. Bureau of Labor Statistics, there are now only 1.75 full-time private sector workers for each person that is receiving Social Security benefits in the United States.
#20 The U.S. government now says that the Medicare trust fund will run out five years faster than they were projecting just last year.
#21 The total cost of just three federal government programs - the Department of Defense, Social Security and Medicare - exceeded the total amount of taxes brought in during fiscal 2010 by 10 billion dollars. In the years ahead expenses related to Social Security and Medicare are projected to skyrocket dramatically.
#22 The Pension Benefit Guaranty Corporation is the agency of the federal government that pays monthly retirement benefits to hundreds of thousands of retirees that were covered under defined benefit pension plans that failed. The retirement crisis has barely even begun and the PBGC is already dead broke. The PBGC says that it ran a deficit of $26 billion during the fiscal year that just ended and that it will probably need a huge bailout from the federal government.
#23 According to a survey by careerbuilder.com, 36 percent of all Americans say that they don't contribute anything at all to retirement savings.
#24 More than 30 percent of all investors in the United States that are currently in their sixties have more than 80 percent of their 401k plans invested in equities. So what is going to happen to them if the stock market crashes?
#25 A survey taken earlier this year found that 20 percent of all U.S. workers admitted that they had postponed their planned retirement age at least once during the last 12 months. Back in 2008, that number was only at 14 percent.
Our politicians should have addressed the retirement crisis decades ago before we got to the point of being in debt up to our eyeballs.
It is being projected that the U.S. national debt will hit 344% of GDP by the year 2050, and the Congressional Budget Office says that U.S. government debt held by the public will reach a staggering 716% of GDP by the year 2080.
Obviously those figures will never be reached because our financial system would totally collapse long before then.
So what do we do?
We have tens of millions of elderly Americans that are completely and totally dependent on Social Security and Medicare, but those programs also threaten to bankrupt us as a nation.
Anyone that believes that there is a "quick fix" to these issues is being naive.
The "supercommittee" was supposed to address this problem, but they failed so spectacularly that they have become a national joke.
Sadly, most of our politicians just keep kicking the can down the road. They hope that somehow things will just magically "work out".
Well, the truth is that things are not going to "work out". The poverty level among the elderly is going to continue to increase. Pension plans all over this nation are going to continue to fail in staggering numbers. Social Security and Medicare are going to bleed more red ink with each passing year.
Something should have been done about this problem a long, long time ago.
But it wasn't.
This crisis was ignored, dealing with it was put off time after time and all the doomsayers were laughed at.
Now the crisis is here, and we are all going to pay the price.
i have never believed that social security would be
available when it comes time to retire so my brother
and i started to buy property in 2003 and have put together a nice real estate portfolio which is affordable tax wise but also a opportunity to increase the value of the property which can work two ways selling the property when it comes for retirement and having money to carry over if there is no social security and yes i am well aware of the bullshit that goes along with owning property which is why we have a good real estate attorney and/or retiring on our property and becoming totally self-sufficent which would greatly diminish
the need to have alot of money on hand for amenities
and i also have what i need to hold onto it if need be and yes alot of people may not have been in the position to do this but what it is is what it is but
i feel that i had the hindsight twenty years ago when i turned 30yrs old that this country was headed
down the highway to hell and i planned not to be on it so if shtf at least my family and friends will have somewhere to go and be safe it is never to late to prepare.
“It’s mourning in America”….
(Reagan 1984 Campaign TV Advertisement)
Geez… wish I had learned to read back then.
Good job on what retirees should know!
Trouble is, the retirees are not going to listen. For most of their lives, they haven’t paid any attention to anything but their lives. Government is there and let it stay there. We are here, have worked and now we are retiring to do just what we want to and we have earned it and the money, the pensions due us for these leisure years.
The blind faith in their future is remarkable. All the talk about government running out of money, debts rising, defaults happening…it is all like a sitcom on TV and they don’t like it so they turn it off with media and with their friends and family. It is all nonsense!
80 million more retirees will be joining them shortly. None of them believe their lives are changing.
What’s going to happen? The riot in the street boys are shrill but they have no effect with the rest of us. People expect that what is theirs will stay theirs, no matter what!
I think they’re right! That is what happens when governments go…the people stay as they are and work it through. I saw it in Europe and Asia after WWII. The people in Greece have seen it every ten years since.
Today, the currency really doesn’t matter but the plastic does. I am sure that plastic will survive. It buys what we need even now, more than greenbacks. In fact, you can use it anywhere in the world and it will translate into value because it is what you buy that is important. That plastic can be a card, an ipad or a phone and the computer will keep track of it for the market.
Think about it. Isn’t that the way we have lived the last twenty years…why we never account in government, et al. Debts…what’s that? Investments? For what. Wipe them out…they are just paper now anyway, lost energy! We live, we work, we get paid.
Gov’t always plays a part in our lives- for better or worse. However, the biggest flaw was Pres. Reagan recreating the three-legged stool for retirement: Gov’t responsibility:Social Security; personal responsibility: 401K and Corporate responsibility: a private sector pension. Why did Pres. Reagan essentially force the private sector to take on 2/3 responsibility, while Gov’t employees, maintain healthy pension benefits and health care packages?? Additionally, has any one completed ananalysis of CEO pay acceleration and the elimination of employee pensions?
There is a solution, but it sounds weird. Create as much for yourself and immediate family as possible – from as much raw materials as you can get. That means utilities (methane digester, private power plants, water collection systems), food (garden, orchard, livestock), medicine (chemistry, herbology, fitness), housing (build it yourself, cabin, straw bales), transportation (draft animal, horseless carriage), etc. It’s not easy, but it is possible and done now could soften the blows to come.
Then they come for your land. Read up on Agenda 21!
There is a culture and a people here in America who we need to learn from….the Amish. They are totally self sufficient! They are quite satisfied with their way of life.
I heard someone say make the oil companies pay for our retirement. Great idea!
“Could you live on less than 300 dollars a week?”
Tell you what: my limit is 10 per day, whatever currency. DM, EU. £. It’s basically all the same.
Excluding rent, utilities and vacation.
When I was on social security I put every morning exactly 10 in my wallet. And when it was gone, it was gone. But more often than not at the end of the day there was still something left, which I took out and replaced it with 10. I got around on foot and bicycle. I didn’t have a phone, but I was applying for jobs, so had postage and paper, etc. to pay. Now you can go to the library and use Internet for free.
And I still try to live on 10 a day. But on average I end up at 15 per day. And we have a vacation every year which includes at least 1 long-distance flight.
Everything else goes into savings and investment, and now also into loan repayment. I have a loan for 20 years, with 10 years fixed interest at 3%. And I expect it been paid within these 10 years. I got the house and land at an auction and had the house modernised with 30cm insulation all around and modern underfloor heating and solar heating and triple-glazed windows for less than 1,000 EU per sqm.
And hopefully, my wife will get another cleaning job.
So, at the moment we are sorted. Still 20 years to go till retirement, by which time the house is paid and everything inside as well, the trees are bearing fruits, the veggy patch is thriving, the compost heap sitting in the shadow, and the kids playing in the nettles at the border of the property.
What else can you ask for?
I like you!
you are indeed a wise person living by a good example….but kids playing in nettles? where are you from, and are nettles the same plant to you as they are to us in the states?
Paul, I like your philosophy, but if you come here to Japan (where the retiree problem is a lot worse), your plan will need some adjustment — 10 yen is about twelve and a half cents!
(Make it 1000 yen, Japan’s smallest bill, and you’ve got a good, disciplined budget. Many ‘salarymen’ get this exact amount for lunch each day.)
Let’s make tasty crackers out of old people.
No Liberals taste better they’re a little sour like dill pickles.
Why don’t poor people get a **************** job and feed their own families. I’m rich but I WORKED MY ASS OFF to get to this point. Don’t be hating and expect me to bail your sorry ass out for your laziness and lack of commitment for saving
Tell that to a 96 year old who lost his savings and pension – like my grandfather who worked since he was 13. His global company, that he grew up working for, sold out to cheap labor overseas, liquidated their pensions to bankrupt PBGC for what it was worth @ pennies on the dollar, long after he retired. Every single thing was GONE. All that planning and living through the Depression was WORTHLESS. SS was all that was left and it was a pittance. We took him in, along with my grandmother and filled what they lost through NO fault of their own. (That’s what needs to happen now – more family members stepping up for extended family members, and stop buying into consumer materialism and crap.)
Both of them would’ve have been poor otherwise – and you want him to get a job @ 96 by your logic? God, you people are absolutely sick, and it will come back to bite you in the ….. when your day comes. If that’s the attitude, we’re finished as a country, period. What a statement that all those 18-20 year old boys died in WWII for this kind of attitude now? OR Vietnam, or Gulf War I and current wars. WHY? What a racket.
God bless you for doing the right thing!
Excellent post!
So many people are in this situation. Years after retirement the money changers steal what inflation doesn’t eat up. Then there is the difficulty for those who are stepping up to the plate and helping needy family. Been there myself. My father-in-law was a wheel chair bound, arthritic WWII vet. Lived with my husband and I the last five years of his life. God rest his soul.
Best bet….ignore insensitive comments, and take satisfaction in knowing you are doing the right thing. It’s what you do with your life that matters….not how much money you have. Sounds like you and your grandfather already figured that out.
Yoji,
Maybe you don’t realize it, but not all poor people are lazy bums. Ever spend any time at a veteran hospital? Lot of good people there who have made HUGE sacrifices. Humble people who don’t expect you or anyone else to bail them out. They might be poor as church mice, but they’ve got something you could use a little more of….dignity.
@visionary, You want solutions, http://www.FixSSNow.Org. We list all solutions with unbiased analysis. If we are missing one, tell us what. If we are wrong, tell us where.
We have the failings of our guberment, Walmart Street and the corporate banksters to blame for this crisis. Encouraging everyone to go into debt and not save…you could find articles from the crooked media near daily about this. Why save with interest rates at rock bottom and everyone, including all employers, telling people to invest in the stock market. Now that the criminals have lost all our money, suddenly it’s all OUR fault for not saving enough. I believe we will see desperate senior citizens with nothing left to lose, walking into institutions of their own choosing packed with explosives and returning the favor. If you’re going to force me to visit a death panel, I’m taking those bastards with me! And should I develop some fatal disease, I’ll go looking for anyone who even thinks about such a disgusting and demented means of thanking us seniors for our sacrifices to our future generations.
Imagine….60 million desperate seniors with nothing to lose….even if only 10% are capable of physically doing something, that’s 6 million, highly pissed-off old fogy hit men looking for revenge for such a terrible end to their pointless lives.
Except you bluehairs will be blowing each other up, trying to read the fine print on the detonators, or geting your car-bombs stuck sideways in ditches.
Pneumonia can’t take enough of you to Jesus soon enough.
EARMAN
Are you a psychopath?? I think you need to get off of this blog.
Your comment is particularly offensive to me!
Happy Turkey Day, especially to those 535 turkeys who reside in the House and Senate…
Well OK, Ron Paul isn’t a turkey, and Gabby Giffords gets a sympathy vote from me. The other 533 can boil in a vat of chicken broth.
I will be 52 in a few months and that makes me a tail-end “baby boomer”. Having said that, I can say that most people may age and older are greedy, selfish bullies using the fact that they vote to rob their children and grandchildren.
And stop kidding yourselves….robbery is exactly what it is, but a cowardly form in that instead of sticking the gun directly in the face of younger workers, we have the government doing it for us.
Time for the BABY boomers to grow up and have enough honor and integrity to face the truth. Time for the seniors in this Country to push for treating Socialist Insecurity as a welfare program and demanding that only those who are incapable of working and would starve without it, receive it or any other federal welfare “benefit”.
That would include SSI and food-stamps…the whole kit and caboodle.
Recipients of all ages drawing food-stamps should only be allowed to by staples (beans,rice, grains and flour)and cuts of meat less than $2.00 a pound (and yes it is available) and they need to learn to cook.
Food-stamps should not be usable at “convenience” stores where prices are twice as high.
And yes, it is possible to live quite well (by standards of most of the world) on $1,200.00 a month or even less! But, no you cannot have a McMansion, new car, vacations, eat out all the time or the kind of things millions of whining seniors take for granted.
Unless you have personally saved and invested enough to live the lifestyle you wish, you have no right to demand anyone give a penny towards your survival!
I know this sounds like I have a hard heart….but I myself expect to work until I die, expect “Socialist Insecurity” to fail before I can claim it….and in fact wish my children and grandchildren freedom.
The whole thing was and is a Ponzi scheme and the net result of it it that a couple of generations of Seniors are going to have to make due with less, in proportion to the few generations who collected early.
However, this does not have to be a tragedy. Americans are generally generous people. Seniors and those truly helpless and in extreme need would be taken care of at a level that would be considered luxury by billions on this planet.
If we can face the ugly fact that our own government has screwed us all, we can make rational choices to minimize the damage.
As far as Seniors go, how about small senior communities with cottages housing a couple of seniors each, and a big community center in the middle? How about the most active seniors helping work a community garden for fresh produce? How about community bulk buys of food, toiletries, etc. at warehouse stores? How about every senior not having a car and instead community bus, van or shuttle service to the nearest town?
How about these seniors family, friends, Church and communities helping them in a voluntary manner?
Lastly, how about instead of the government robbing Peter to pay Paul in the form of tax based wealth transfer, and for the most senior of seniors, the government instead give those 70 or above complete tax exemptions from all taxation?
I didn’t realize my 94 year old grandmother was whining about having a McMansion. She’s happy with her family at home – our home – taking care of her and cooking for her, tending to her needs. Whining? Not one damn word out of that Depression survivor, who along w/ my now deceased 96 yo grandfather, ate crap out of the ground that would make your head spin. Just to survive. They weren’t thinking of McMansions or dinners out , you idiot. You might want to draw back your age bracket accusations.
They’re NOT whining, and your overly-broad stroke painting all older people as such is just evil, incorrect and hate-filled. SO glad they stormed the beaches of Normandy to make sure you lived to whine about them and their imaginary desires in old age. Pathetic beyond belief. Sick soul you are, and hope your health holds out so you don’t become one of them and can work until you’re 90+, as it sounds as if you’ll need it.
a User
Amen!
In all fairness to the Boomers (or any other generation within the last hundred years, for that matter), saving for retirement in dollars is/always has been a Sisyphean exercise in futility. Given that the value of the fiat dollar has steadily, relentlessly, and inevitably declined over the last century (to the point where it’s now worth only about five percent of its original, gold-based 1913 value), and given the punitive clauses of the federal tax code (also deliberate) that effectively prevent anyone not already a billionaire from being fully responsible for their own retirement, there is very little else that the Boomers (or anyone else) could really do to guarantee that assets saved for retirement would retain value in time for that day. Granted, savings in precious metals would have been a wise move early in life, but given the ups and downs of the markets for these (and the fact that private ownership of such was illegal for the first third of the years that make up the Boomer generation’s life), this too would have been problematic, at best.
Bottom line: this situation is a catastrophic mess long in the making, the genesis of which predates the Boomers by over two generations. The REAL blame for this mess lies at the feet of the nineteenth-century bankster barons, all of whom were dispatched on their journeys to well-earned eternal damnation long before the inevitable fruits of their deliberately engineered New World Order catastrophe ripened.
I’m SO GLAD these boomers are getting their just due. Just think what havoc they wrecked on this nation from their SELFISH actions. No why divorce and child support are now common? THANKS BOOMERS for showing society that you can have 2,3 or 4 marriages!!! And multiple kids by multiple fathers……THANKS AGAIN! So much for “death to you part”. Know where chronic and incessant DRUG USE came from??? Oh yeah, Boomers, thanks for Woodstock and you whoring “summer of love”, and pot and coke. Know where “consumerism as a religion” came from?? THANKS AGAIN BOOMERS! I am so thankful that most of you will be spending you later years in a fecal-ridden old age home. You deserve it….or worse.
You are disgusting.
What is wrong with you? This 60 year old has been married for 40 years, 35 of those spent as foster parents, and we are continually enjoying helping others. We also saved for our own retirement and are still working and will be till we can’t. We live modestly. We’re both Christians saved in the Jesus Movement days. Stereotypes are for stupid unimaginative people.
As an example of the above story, I submit the following anecdote.
I am friends with 2 couples in their 70s. The first couple had 2 children and no more, because they could support them comfortably. They gave them good morals and great educations. In short, they gave them great lives. When they retired, the 2 children (who now have great jobs) wanted nothing more than to support and help them in their later years.
The second couple had 5 children – and found it difficult to make ends meet (all the time). They could not give them all of the things they needed and when it came time for college, they said “you’ll have to make your own way.” 4 of the kids did not go to college, and the one that did now resents them. The children now barely make ends meet and most resent their mother and father. After the father died, the mother now lives on welfare due to bankruptcy over medical bills, no pension, etc….kids can’t and won’t support their mom.
MORAL: The future is looking very dismal as most people lived heartily, thought everything was a party, and refused to plan. Time to emigrate.
We need a 2nd industrial revolution in the U.S. The Chinese got rich selling junk to us, lets drill oil everywhere and sell it to them.
Social Security short of funds? Solution: Reduce collections by 2 percent one year and then reduce it by 4 percent the next year. Stupid! Obama calls it a “payroll tax cut”. A tax cut would be a reduction in your Income Taxes, not Social Security. Obama wants to kill off Soc Sec or at least take it even closer to collapsing. Thief. You pay for a program and then they say, sorry it’s broke. Underfunded, overspent, and mismanaged on purpose.
This crisis will end much worse than anyone can fathom. Mad Max will be a walk in the park compared to what we face.
There is a solution, but testosterone has been weaned out of the American male. We need to enforce the law; start the arrest of politicians, judges, bankers, AG’s, and whomever claims to have a power not enumerated in either the state or federal constitutions. The US Constitution is very clear that it is the people who enforce the law, and for decades now we have been led to believe, through our ignorance and ambivalence, that it is the state and judges who make the law. The states closed down all the courts of law, and build a system of tyranny by claiming “police powers”.
Nothing will change until we put our teeth into the matter. Have your state revitalize the Militia, and then re-open the grand jury’s and start the arrests.
There is no other peaceful resolution to this dilemma.
Pray to God that I’m wrong, but I can tell you that I’m not, and your children and grand children will hate you for your lack of understanding.
Hello??
I am so sick of the Government saying SS is struggling because of the people are living longer!The fact is that the politicians have borrowed from this fund and now want everyone to keep paying into it until they decide where they are going to steal the money from to fund SS!I call that embezelment! I am a public employee who works around troubled unlawful youth and I have been there 7 years and only get paid $10.50 an hour and I PAY MY OWN SHARE of my retirement(not the county!) Plus my helth insurance has gotten to the point rather I want to eat or pay for my meds.I am not wanting symathy just want people to know the facts!A VERY SMALL amount of people get their pansions totally paid for them so please don’t think public employees are rich!Al least not here in Ohio……
The SS program was not origionally intended as a retirement program. The money collected from our paychecks is matched by employers, and put into the SS fund. The bills are paid and the rest is put in the general treasury, being replaced with worthless I.O.U.s. The fund was plundered by criminal politicians and spent on their own programs. Not that the time is coming for them to put it back, they are squealing like stuck pigs, trying to pretend SS is a liability of the treasury. If congress was run like a business, they all would be in prison, which is where they deserve to be.
You want an answer to all of this?
1) Start by no longer offering aid to the 40+M mexican infiltraitors that have invaded our country looking for the “easy life” at the expense of the U.S. Tax payer.
2) Offer incintives to U.S. manufactures that have taken operations overseas a good economic reason to come back home. Tax exemptions, hiring incintives, and remove the feel good EPA requirements that forced them to leave to begain with.
3) Allow those that are paying into Social Security to claim the witholdings as a loss on their Federal Taxes. Anyone under 50 will never see a dime of what has been stolen from them. At least throw us a carrot for supporting this criminal machine for all these years.
4) With less than 15 minutes effort, enough dirt could be found on any Congress member to warrent Federal jail time. Fifteen minutes is also enough time to arrest them all. We are being ruled by criminals. Period..
5) Stop complaining about the folks that have beat the system. (The Rich)
You should try to learn the secrets of their ways.. You too could become like them with some effort. Debt is the complete opposite of independance. Stop feeding the pig!
6) If you play by the rules, you will loose by the rules, those are the rules!
It doesn’t matter how much you want Santa Claus to be real. He isn’t. And if you act as if he is, there will be lots of disappointed kids at Christmas. Likewise, you can play the game of “politics” and “government” all you want–thinking that getting the right guy on the throne is going to magically make society work–but sooner or later, you’re going to learn the results of having a giant coercive parasite class. And it looks to be sooner, rather than later. “But golly, my congressman PROMISED he’d keep stealing from other people to give money to me for the rest of my life!” Yeah, and the USSR promised to take care of the people, too. Prepare for The Fall of Rome II, because reality is knocking at the door, and there is no “political” trick that will stop it. If you think voting and “legislation” can somehow trump the laws of mathematics and economics, you’re in for a rude awakening.
I think what most of us have forgotten is personal and family responsibility. We are nearly the only country where everyone has their own home. Many cultures have generational housing. An extended family that supports (emotionally and financially) one another. Grandparents are honored and have an important role in caring for grandchildren, helping with household tasks. Now everyone is so me centered. Parents shove children out of the home or children leave as soon as possible to start their own indebtedness buying things they can’t afford. Living on credit, amassing serious school loans. When the parents reach retirement so centered on “playing”. They spend all their money – now what? The government needs to do something– So wrong!
We need a new model one that is family oriented not wealth oriented. Why work yourself into poor health eating fast food and sitting at a desk for 30 years. No wonder we’re obese and in poor health. Those years would be better spent building close family relationships. If we had multiple generations working together for financial security, we would lead healthier, productive lives not defined by “retirement”
I’m just saying think about how you want to live your life before you reach 65.
When I was young, we enjoyed watching seniors retire and draw their Social Security. We were also happy to pay into the fund. Let’s look at this from a point of view no one HAS CONSIDERED. The more seniors that retire and can actually live off their Social Security along with their retirement saving opens up jobs for others. These opening allow a younger work force that can pay into the fund. Yhe next thing that needs to happen is get the governments fingers out of the Social Security Fund. Allow this fund to grow so future generations that paid into it can draw from it. I remember when Social Security first came about. It was established that these funds were to be put into a seperate account and that “NO” government office or governmnt branch was to touch this money. I also remember seeing on television where the democrats had found a loop-hole in the law that allowed them to open the fund and remove the cash. A congress man announced on television that the fund would be opened, money taken out of it inorder to balance the budget of the other government offices. The same congressman also stated that the money would be replaced along with interest and the fund closed up once again. Guess what folks, the fund was opened, money taken out, the fund was never closed again and niether was interest paid to the fund. Now the big one “THE FUND WAS NEVER CLOSED” and our elected representatives continues to this day drawing money from the fund to keep other government offices running. The funds are also being used to pay for “Food Stamps, Welfare and Other Free Government Hand-outs”. The fund is not being used for it’s intended purpose.
Looks like the old rules apply:
Tend to yourself and your loved ones. Noboby else will…
The baby boomers will reap what they sowed. They allowed themselves to get brainwhashed and elected administrations that went on a warmongering rampage for over four decades, that defaulted on the gold-standard (Nixon 1971) to deficit-finance a megalomaniac empire building spree. The Soviet Empire collapsed quite quickly as the population did not swallow state propaganda. The US empire has a gullible population that swallows propaganda hook, line and sinker (with spoonfulls of bait from Hollywood)So it’s taking a bit longer…
I do not keep saying to tax the rich and spread the wealth because I like to hear myself talk.
I know people may not like simple solutions, however, taxing the rich hard and I mean HARD is the solution.
Looks like the OWS agrees with this one as do I.
You are starting to hear much more about the wealth and income inequality and the devastating impacts of this inequality.
I love hearing Bernie Sanders say we need to make the millionaires and billionaires pay more!
The new 2012 phrase=”lets make the millionaires and billionaires pay their fair share before cutting programs that help the poor”
I’m lovin it because it shows I am correct and that those who disagree with me are wrong.
Tax the greedy to help the needy!!!
All debts are paid either by the lenders or the debters. In this case the baby boomers are both. Your apathy has led you to this, you were in control it was your country, you allowed this to happen. Sorry your retirement is going to suck. But you squandered our nations future through your ignorence. The blame is yours not some greedy politician or banker you let them do it. Have fun in your retirement.
I live comfortably on $647 a month SS. I worked really hard for that but I had 4 children to feed. I am almost 66 now (one of the first of the Boomers). I have no bills except rent, insurance and utilities. I paid off credit cards and only buy things now that I can pay for with cash or debit card. I HATE credit cards. They are an invention of the devil. I am in a position now where I want to save more money by buying my own home since there are so many available now doe to the bloodsuckers that have foreclosed on good hard working people that are victims of Obummer’s economy. But I can’t buy a home because I do not have open credit cards. It is horrible that our government can borrow and borrow, bail out banks and fund criminal agencies,using our money, expect us to pay for their indulgences, raise our taxes, take our homes away and then let those same banks and credit companies charge 20+% interest to use our own money!!! What would our government do if we all paid off our own debt, cut up all credit cards and lived on just what we have? I may live in a rented house now but I will have a mansion in heaven waiting on me when Jesus comes back soon in the Rapture.
I hate paying taxes. Period.
Paranoid is right on the money. I worked for a charity that phoned around town asking for miscellaneious goods as donations……….we got piles from lower-middle class neighborhoods, not so much from upper class. The latter, however were not less charitable, they simply didn’t have scads of impulse purchases gone bad!
Shopping is the new feel-good drug. Unfortunately, on limited funds, you can’t shop & save too.
“Again this is a easy one-make the rich pay.”
Ah, no… it is not that easy. The Simpson Bowles committee looked at what revenue the government could get from “taxing the rich” and it is not nearly enough. According to Allan Simpson, if you confiscated all income AND ASSETS from the so called “rich” you would only have enough money to run the government for 8 months. What then? We have no more rich and we still have 1.2 Trillion dollar deficits.
The bottom line is the American people will not agree to pay enough in taxes to pay for the government we have today. In real dollars, the government would have to raise taxes by 60% on all Americans (including the middle class, where most of our wealth is accumulated because of sheer numbers)just to afford the government we have today. Again, American’s will not accept this. And, it gets worse. If you raise taxes by 60% you will destroy economic growth, which means each American tax payer might need to pay and additional 80% or 100% in new taxes just to eliminate today’s deficit. Then we need to consider the estimate 60 Trillion in unfunded government liabilities, which dwarf the current deficit problem.
We have been destroyed by incompetent politicians, it is only a matter of time before the bill comes due.
Why do the nations rage and the people’s plot in vain? ………. toibry.blog.com
SS will not go broke. Instead (in addition to moving the retirement age further back), SS will HAVE to become “means tested.”
If you are prudent enough to save for yourself — IRA’s, pensions, stocks, a home, an unspent inheritance, etc. — you won’t receive your “social insurance.”
But for the young, I like to remind them that all is not lost — they still get the privilege of paying INTO SS for 40-50 years. What an honor!
Okay, here are some ideas for retirement.
They may work for you or they may not.
1) Housing: I know that the housing market is bad but it isn’t dead yet. Say you have a big house that has lost 25% in value but is still valued at $180,00. Sell it for $100,000 to $120,000 – in this climate you are not going to sell unless the house is perceived as a bargain. The internet is full of homes for $30-60,000, many of them fairly pleasant in safe neighborhoods. Buy one of them, spend $10,000 to upgrade it and put the rest of your house sales cash in gold or a currency fund. Be sure that the house you buy is smallish- eventually, you will more than make up for the loss you took on the sale of your big house thanks to lower upkeep costs, lower house taxes (which are probably going to start rising as govt becomes desperate for revenue) and lower energy bills (energy prices are probably going to rise dramatically, even more so if inflation is eating away at your savings).
2) Housing – Consult with family and friends. Do you know people you could stand living with? Does one of you have a house that could be remodelled to house more people, providing everyone a degree of privacy? If both parties are home-owners, one home could be sold to finance remodelling, with some money left over. As you grow older, you will have a smaller living space, but a built-in support system and lower upkeep/energy bills. But enter with caution – this is a bit like getting married. Make sure you are compatible and that everything is taken care of legally beforehand.
3) Alternative housing – A yurt. Believe it or not, I am not joking In a warm area, it is now possible to live comfortably in a yurt (with eletricity and plumbing) for a fraction of what it would cost to build a house. Find land with water rights and easy access to roads, but check local building codes. Another cheap option is a trailer, but not in a park – on a private plot where you have more privacy. Or look into senior trailer parks.
4) Health – As Benjamin Franklin said “An ounce of prevention is worth a pound of cure”. Lets face it, health costs are one of your biggest worries. You can’t prevent everything, but many problems are caused by/exacerbated by poor nutrition and lack of physical activity. Start a fitness programm now, but don’t push too hard. Life is going to start getting a lot more stressful and the healthier and fitter you are, the better your body will deal with stress – which will mean lower medical bills.
5) Health – Get real. Okay, I do not believe in death panels, but I also do not beleive in coming up with $500,000 for medical bills so that I can extend my life by a couple of years, possibly in miserable conditions. Isn’t this just another way that our society has become greedy? Personally, I want to live to be 100. But rather than stress about how to achieve that goal, I will focus on living a life that I will not regret if I die tonight.
6) Food – Ever heard of gardening? Live in the city? Find a vacant lot, form an organization and get city permission for a community garden. It’s a great way to keep socially active and to build up a support system, as well as to save on food costs while eating healthy food.
7) Beating inflation – Inflation is coming whether we like it or not, and if you are retired or out of work, inflation can really hurt you because whatever savings you have becomes worth less and less. So sit down and take an inventory of all the things you cannot live without over the next 20 years and buy them now while your money is still worth something.
7) Entertainment – Don’t be passive. There is lots of free entertainment, and while it is often difficult or frustrating to learn in the short-term, it is more fun in the long-term.
GARDEN – it gives you something to look forward to during the winter.
LEARN to play a musical instrument – after the initial outlay for the instrument and some sheet music, you will almost never need to spend anything, especially if you learn to play by ear. If you know other people who can play, it is great group entertainment.
LEARN to draw/paint – I am hopeless, but have met people who thought they were also hopless and who turned out to be quite good. Drawing is cheap. If you get fairly good, people love to have pictures of themselves, their families, their pets etc.
SEW/knit/crochet. You can get tons of practically free fabric at a thrift store(in the form of old clothes).
START stocking up on card/board games that you can enjoy with your family and friends when none of you have money for other entertainment.
READ – where I live, there is a thrift store that sells paperbacks for 25 cents (10 cents on Thursdays). I could get 200 books for 20 dollars. Or pay a good price for books, but find books that you might want to read several times over the years.
GET a bike, go for walks, swim, dance, join clubs, get to know your neignors.
9) GET right with God – we don’t live forever, you know.
As more and more people become unemployed or are working as under employed workers, they will come to live with their baby boomer parents. This will further strained the budgets of these parents as they attempt to take care of themselves and their children.
I would love to know the percentage of people drawing SS or SSI that have never paid a dime into the system. Yes, they are out there…multitudes of them. Kids with deficit disorders, etc., get a check and go to a doctor all paid for by the SS administration. No wonder the system is broken. People know that disability from SS pays more, so guess what…we have so many should be academy award winners in society, it has broken the system. I am 56, always paid in, as my parents did. They died prior to ever drawing the first check. I will not draw because I believe the money will not be there. Just sayin..
Why should the rich have to bail anyone out?
What did people do BEFORE social security?
They lived with their families. Most families were large with many children and those children took care of their parents. This has NOTHING to do with the rich and everything to do with families taking care of each other. Taxing the rich and creating more government is not the answer to our problems. Taking care of each other IS the answer.
JEALOUSY OVER WHAT OTHER PEOPLE HAVE WILL NOT SOLVE OUR PROBLEMS. COVETING WHAT YOUR NEIGHBORS HAVE AND THEN DEVISING A WAY TO STEAL IT IS WRONG WRONG WRONG.
As I have said before: the real cause of all this trouble is aging itself. Very well: learn how to slow, stop, reverse, and prevent aging itself, so that, instead of being senile and decrepit at 90, one is still young, vigorous, and robust at 150 or 200.
Aging is much better understood now than it was just 6 years ago. I expect it to be completely understood by 2025 at the latest. From then on, it will only be a problem in chemical engineering.
There is a really good way to deal with this but Amerikans are too lame in general to make any changes before it’s too late. The way: STOP USING FEDERAL RESERVE CURRENCY, starting with all plastic cards. Grow your own food and medicine. Trade with others locally for things you need. Don’t buy things you don’t really need. Don’t buy cheap plastic crap from China. Don’t take pharmaceutical drugs if you don’t need them to save your life. Sell your television or at least don’t believe anything you hear, and refuse to watch Fox “News” at all costs. Make friends with other people your age and figure out a way to live with each other or at least close enough that you can share meals and care. Don’t waste money on cemetery plots or health insurance. Read more and more and read things you don’t necessarily agree with. Realize that things will get worse much faster than you think and figure out how you will cope with that. You can get by with no money but you can’t get by if you don’t have a clue about what’s going on or how it came to be. Question Authority.
Not watch Fox News? What do you suggest CNN ? Now there’s a bastion of unbiased truth. Of all the news shows, Fox is the only one to present both sides. I’m not saying this as a Republican or Democrat; I’m sick of both of them, but Fox is by far the best of the lot.
Fox…fair and balanced is a joke! You have to be crazy…you have crazy right wing ideas if you only watch fox. Try some international press, independent press and consciously try to look for opposing view points. **************..Fox, really??
Dont watch the liberal-biased news networks.NBC,ABC,CBS,MSNBC, and CNN!
It’s almost comical to see the same facts presented over and over thru the decades while we pack every stadium accross the country every week with 100K “struggling” citizens at 100.00/seat, 30.00 to park your car, and drinking 10.00 beers. Economic crises? Shocking corruption in government? Grow up America.
Dominionist Empire wars on everything and everybody don’t come cheap.
They need to stop giving money to the corrupt mega rich toilets like Mexico while their “Invaders and their Spawn” suck the tax payers dry!
The 10,000 per day figure is based on a 65 yr old retire date. In fact most people in their 60′s are not going to retire but will continue to work ( if they have a job ) or will find another job in order to maintain their life expense levels. Medicine has extended life yes but it has also made the old person at 60 now the old person at 80. Social Security and Medicare are based on the same statistics, so the problem while dire is not yet a world economic killer. The killer is the corrupt ploiticians and banksters that continue to screw the rest of us!
US Senator Bernie Sanders of VT said SS is trillions to the good. It should not be in the deficit. Dean Baker co sponsor of Economy and Policy said that Medicare in it’s 75 year short fall is a quarter of the cost of Iraq and Afghan war. It is .04% of the GDP.
FDR did not put in SS for the elderly, but for the younger people who were going bankrupt taking care of both their parents and their children. Who can afford to take care of their parents today? They are kicking the seniors out in the street to die while giving every thing to the illegal. Senior Killers.
Send the illegal and foreign workers back home for the welfare of all US citizens. Then Obama keeping the wars going to keep his unemployment rate down instead of sending the illegal and foreign workers home, because Soros and Gregorian benefit from amnesty. “Soros who destroyed the US from the inside out and l0 other foreign countries etc.”
The Americans on unemployment benefits can pay for SS or not and not for Medicare at all which hurts the seniors.
Don’t blame the baby boomers blame this US government who wont’ sacrifice their salaries, pensions and perks. Then are for our country being invaded by the illegal aliens. Obama should be impeached for his back door amnesty and other things I could name.
We, meaning the most of the American people, are going to suffer a declining standard of living for generations to come, we are tapped out with no options to play.
We fell asleep while we were on top of the world and find the hangover too much and just want it to go away. We are losing the country our fathers bleed and died for having followed every slick liar to come along.
Lincoln and on have sold us a line and like good fish we bit hard on it. Wave goodbye to the good times.
Many Boomers will get a dose of reality when they try to retire on 100% of their income. If you are currently 5 yrs or less from retirement. The main goal should be to eliminate as much debt as possible. Debt is the #1 reason people will not retire successfully.
As fast as the BOOMER bubble comes. That is as fast as it will go. It’s not permanent, it’s only a passing occurance….
The Boomer generation is one of the most critical demographics in recent history. That’s why they are so important to marketers, sales, and government. It is wise to pay close attention to what they buy and how they vote because it affects all of us.
The reason we have such enormous debt is because we took the dollar off the gold standard. If we returned to the gold standard, it would restrict the federal government’s ability to spend money we don’t have. End the Fed and end the banker manipulation of our economy.
We are completely bankrupt, working Americans are living in poverty, yet we have troops in 100 countries and we are bailing out millionaires on Wall Street with our tax dollars. Washington is not representing our interests. I fear a revolution is coming, and I don’t think it will be very civil.
Here’s some more good news- the Boomers are the first generation to retire on 401(k) & IRA plans instead of pensions. This means that now there will be more people selling stocks than buying them, so you should expect the stock market to be flat or drop from here.
[...] It is being projected that the U.S. trade deficit for 2011 will be 558.2 billion dollars. #30 The retirement crisis in the United States just continues to get worse. According to the Employee Benefit Research [...]
[...] The retirement crisis in the United States just continues to get worse. According to the Employee Benefit Research [...]
[...] The retirement crisis in the United States just continues to get worse. According to the Employee Benefit Research [...]
[...] It is being projected that the U.S. trade deficit for 2011 will be 558.2 billion dollars.#30 The retirement crisis in the United States just continues to get worse. According to the Employee Benefit Research [...]
The tax the rich fools don”t seem to realize if the government took everything from the “rich” it wouldn’t even make a dent in the deficit. The government has borrowed more money than even exists, except as numbers on paper. Expatriate!
You can live well on far less than you imagine. Medical care is just as good in many countries and the economy is better in many places. Our ancestors left Europe for greener pastures in America, perhaps it’s time to leave the parasitical government behind.
This is the inevitable result of supporting the use of force at the foundation of our system. So long as one institution is granted a monopoly of force in a geographical area, total collapse will ensue. It is not the fault of one president or one policy or one welfare program, it is only the use of force to collect and enforce taxes that will always result in destruction. Violence can never be used for good except in self defense.
[...] Americans received a total of approximately 727 billion dollars in Social Security benefits. As the retirement crisis becomes much worse, that dollar figure is projected to absolutely skyrocket. *The number of [...]