Baby Boomers’ Retirements in Jeopardy
December 28th, 2010What is this ‘Retirement’ you speak of?
—Generation X
Also, Pookie sent me this set of age distribution charts for the U.S.
If we didn’t know anything else about political and economic doom, this alone should be enough to indicate that bad trouble is ahead. Look at those charts and then consider the unemployed, underemployed and those like Becky and me who have opted to simply get by on much less than the rat-race nut house expects us to.
That’s the freight train, hurtling down the rails with nobody at the controls.
This is the wall:
In other words, the Ponzi scheme wreck is assured, in part, because millions of us who are now supposed to keep it going can’t, or won’t.
I often hear from people who are trying to manage with eldercare situations while working full-time jobs, or while unemployed. My own dad is driving my sister into the madhouse where he belongs. Forget about vague, distant, theoretical doom: When you have elderly people going nuts on you, it’s a whole new ballgame.
I have no idea how this is going to play out. It’s too big of a clusterfuck for me to get my head around.
Via: Time:
Through a combination of procrastination and bad timing, many baby boomers are facing a personal finance disaster just as they’re hoping to retire. Starting in January, more than 10,000 baby boomers a day will turn 65, a pattern that will continue for the next 19 years.
The boomers, who in their youth revolutionized everything from music to race relations, are set to redefine retirement. But a generation that made its mark in the tumultuous 1960s now faces a crisis as it hits its own mid-60s. (See 10 smarter ways to reach your retirement goals.)
“The situation is extremely serious because baby boomers have not saved very effectively for retirement and are still retiring too early,” says Olivia Mitchell, director of the Boettner Center for Pensions and Retirement Research at the University of Pennsylvania.
In some states, startup supportive care businesses for disabled elderly appears to be a bubble sector with very high profits and low oversight ($6000/month for an alzheimer’s patient) but one would need to expect many new entrants to the field and declines in quality: http://seattletimes.nwsource.com/html/seniorsforsale/
The warehousing of the elderly is an excellent racket. Many people work their whole lives just to give it all to some doctors who will keep them in a zombie-like state for as long as possible so they can suck at least $40,000 a year from them in inflated medical costs. Any surviving family members allow this because they feel guilty and because they don’t want to or lack the stomach to care for their elderly parents themselves.
Delaying retirement until 70 or so is patently unfair. The working class is worn out, crippled up, and just trying to hang in there until they are 65. We ought to have at least 5 years of retirement, not go directly from work into a nursing home.
Who started this policy where there is no age limit to heart transplants and surgeries to keep people artificially alive? They never used to do that. Many people stuck and suffering in nursing homes are just being milked by the doctors and pharmaceutical companies. Traditional societies take care of grandma and grandpa until they can’t contribute anymore. Then, they experience a natural and graceful exit.
We need to dissociate ourselves from the tyranny of the medical establishment. twenty years warehoused in some “care” facility is not my idea of a quality life. Many of these poor souls are begging in vain for death.
I applaud the policy change where people will be allowed to be aware of their options.
It might be nice if people would just “off” themselves, and leave their family an inheritance instead of giving it to the nursing/medical industrial complex.
I personally believe in personal ‘expiration dates’….my Mom did it when she found out she had terminal brain cancer, which may sound somewhat redundant but, rather than slowly lose her senses and decline quickly in health, spend lots of money on in-home or hospice care (we work and couldn’t give her the care she would need…) and slowly decline unto death, she took a fistful of morphine and caught the express train out…
I believe what she did was courageous and unselfish and find myself thinking, once the kids are grown, do I want to work forever, or retire with not much to do, and slowly fade away, eating up what little I might endow my kids with? Is there really that much more to experience when I already feel I have led a full, rewarding existence? There is all the propaganda about your ‘golden years, dandling your grandkids on your knee, teaching them to whittle, or fish, passing on your lifetime of wisdom, pondering the mysteries of life, travelling, etc…’ but is that even realistic or necessary? Of course, these are extremely personal decisions and choices…my wife and I have already agreed to DNR’s and termination in case of catastrophic illness or injury; the active decision to choose an ‘expiration date’ is something else, but with my Mom’s example, one I feel more and more appropriate…for me. To each his own, of course…