Nereus

jeffro66
company I work for people been retiring like crazy last 2 years there not replacing them either but they all got there full pensions 401k not sure how it will be when I get there I am in the 1966 range but plan on going till I am 65 if health will hold,

Same - nobody is being replaced at my work, staff are reduced by attrition yet there's more work to do than ever, and the rest of us are somehow expected to cover it. Wages are stagnant (although we just got an across the board 2% pay rise - our first pay rise in 5 years), and health care premiums are insane and increase hugely every year - fortunately work covers 80% of that. There has been two people promoted in the last 7 years and this is out of a few hundred staff, and morale is in the trash. Despite the media and government telling us the economy is looking better and there are more jobs out there, it simply is not true - we have never been worse off, there are not heaps of jobs, and what is available is either part time (so they don't have to pay health insurance) or the pay is even worse - the average starting salary for my qualifications is now nearly half of what it was 10 years ago. Who can even think of retiring?
 
sigh.
 

same here the work is still there with less than half work force when hired on 8 years ago I got customers calling all the time wonting help I am one person really annoying I wont to help them all then the management we got now wont allow much over time ugh!!!

were buying small home will have it paid for in 5years not doing the 30 year thing at my age owner financed with some good people that I know!

Income redistribution is not the answer, punishing hard successful people by taking away their property is not the answer.
We have redistributed 17,000,000,000,000.00$ and the poverty % has only gone down less than 2%.
Paying people 50,000$+ a year in bennies to stay home and not work is no incentive to go out and make a living.
Some have been on public assistance all their lives and so have their children and now their grandchildren. It has to stop.
Social security is now paying out more than it brings in. Many years ago there were more workers to people collection.
When it first started there were 159 workers for every one person collecting, now there are only 2.8 people working per person collecting.  https://www.ssa.gov/history/ratios.html
 
I hate to be the one to tell you this but, your SS money is not there. The government stole it from you. They spent it. They redistributed it. It is GONE
There is, now ever was a " Social Security lock box" You paid 7.5% and your employer paid 7.5% of your pay into the "General treasury fund"
They spent it, sorry. Not only did they spend it, they borrowed another 20,000,000,000,000.00$ and spent that too. 20 TRILLION dollars is the amount of the US national debt right now
Hate to tell you but there is another 100,000,000,000,000.00++ dollars in unfunded liabilities the US government will have to come up with sooner or later.
The debt with out a balanced budget will be 30,000,000,000,000.00$ in 10 years.
Do you know if you took every dime of money from every billionaire and millionaire it would hardly put a dent in the national debt? Just not that many of them. One trillion is a LOT of money.
We pay 250,000,000,000.00$ a year just to service the interest of the national debt. Interest rates are going higher, so expect that to climb.
Now you know why the interest rates have been so low over the last 15 years or so. 7-10% interest used to be the norm.
Now people who work hard and try to save money get diddly squat for interest on their hard earned money.
So the money went into the stock market where you can make a little more with dividends. That drove stock prices up.
I guess that is good for hard workers who saved and invested.
 
INFLATION is the killer. The government besides low interest and borrowing, they printed trillions and trillions of dollars. Thank you federal reserve..
So what? Well that has caused inflation. Not all that long ago 1960s a car cost a couple thousand, a nice house was 40,000. Average house was as low as15,000
Prices over the last 20 years have skyrocketed, cars 20-35,000 houses 125-500,000$ a loaf of bread as much as 3.50, its crazy.
Not to mention the price of energy now, electric prices are skyrocketing like he said they would now that we are closing coal plants.
The high cost of electric, the high cost of liability and health insurance, the high cost of distribution of goods, diesel fuel, gas, cost of trucks.......
Regulation nation and all those other cost, plus the workers are making good money in many jobs today. 70$ a hour to bolt down the back seat of a Chevy.  Wonder why jobs go over seas?
Pensions, many big corporations pay as much out in pensions as their labor force is at the moment. just like my local school district pays more people not working than they do working.
My taxes are killing me, that is income redistribution right there, I pay for my neighbors kids to go to school.
 
What is the next bubble to crash? Bond market maybe? All those US treasury bonds and local government/school bond market should tank... Oh my what a mess
How much debt can we withstand before it collapses under its own weight? We only take in so much in taxes, rising interest rates.
Soon the hole budget will be interest on the debt, SS and medicare and military spending. Which we need, the world is a dangerous place.
 
If taxes become too high, people stop trying, why work so hard if the government will take 70% of my money.
Our family gave up the business when taxes, land and school and income took way too much of any profit we made.
So we ended it, sold the buildings, invested the money and are better off. Why have all that headaches just to give the money to the government.
 
I do not have all the answers, I can tell you redistribution is not the answer. Sooner or later you run out of other peoples money.
This is why people want to come to the US from Cuba and all over the world, not people leaving the US to go to Cuba!!!
Rich people in the US give billions and billions to charity, we are one of the most generous people on the planet.
Food banks, soup kitchens and many many charities for health and shelters and research.
When disasters happen we give, and give a lot. The government sends money to countries in times of need, but the US people dig deep and give even more.
 
 
 

I'm one of those baby boomers born in 46 severed Vietnam 2 tours worked all my life retired at 62... I just don't get where I'm a problem and where why we should be blamed for every living problem wrong no matter what......I just wish ya'll where raised in the 50's...
   

Out the Door at 17 and never, ever looked back.

kaninja
Bill. Income redistribution is the answer.....but not by arbitrarily taking away stuff from people.

You cannot look at median wages since the 70's and just say people started being lazy while the very elite and weathy started working 1000% harder than they had.

There will continue to be a terrible economy, scyrocketing debt, market crashes, beminishing returns, until finally one day trickle down economics is taken behind the barn and shot.

A healthy and vibrant middle class drives the economy. The National Debt is NOT a result of hand outs.....unless you mean subsudies to corporations....then yes, you are correct.

You are wrong in so many ways.
But we will have to agree to disagree.
 

Cool GTX

BF3PRO

Cool GTX
There will be a larger shortage of professionals in healthcare like Family Doctors as a lot of them are Boomers. 

Boomers are also the last generation to see defined pension plans; seems 401k for the most part, except government jobs.

Being prepared to retire requires planning. 

Living below your means and investing for your future is the best way to be prepared.  You'll never know just how long you can continue to work, things happen.  If you can work and are in good health, putting off taking Social Security until at least your full retirement age can make a big difference in your monthly SS check.

Well... I do believe SS took away an incentive to do any of that man... I hear people getting close to that age "can't wait to draw SS"...

I do not remember the exact amount; but you take like a 7% hit for every year you take it early.  So if you are from the take the money early as possible age 62.5 and run ---- if your full retirement age is 66.5 ---- you take a 28% pay Cut ---- better have your own source of income.

I have relatives that retired at age 70 and if I am able to stay in relatively good health, am planning on working until seventy also.

Who is to say if Medicare will even be around by then. As it is, retirees are paying large sums of money whenever they get hospitalized. The future is not looking bright for us average joes.

flasher4q
I'm one of those baby boomers born in 46 severed Vietnam 2 tours worked all my life retired at 62... I just don't get where I'm a problem and where why we should be blamed for every living problem wrong no matter what......I just wish ya'll where raised in the 50's...
   

Don't we all. Seriously. I'm not about to call out any baby boomer as a problem, but your life was way easier money wise. Housing, education, literally everything you had was less expensive compared to income. Wages have flatlined and expenses have skyrocketed. You talk **** to young people still living at home, when housing alone is easily more than a full paycheck. Food? Tack on another few hundred. Phone? Another hundred. Internet? Easily $50+. Car? $100-300. Education? Thousands to tens of thousands. Now do you get how young people have no savings?
 
Want to know what an apartment costs in my area per month? $600-2000 for a 1-2 bedroom apartment. Paycheck at an average starting job in my area? $400-600 a paycheck. Minimum wage is even lower, it's not a living wage. Yeah. A lot of this generation lives at home. Not because they want to. Because they have to. A paper route on summer break doesn't pay for college/a house anymore.
 
We aren't mad at you, we're upset that a standard of living by wage that doesn't exist anymore is held over our heads like it's us being lazy or incompetent.
 
Want us to keep Social Security alive and the economy working? How about wages that match all the **** we have to pay for just to survive. And yes, we need the internet and cell phones to get a job these days.

stalinx20

bill1024

kaninja
Bill. Income redistribution is the answer.....but not by arbitrarily taking away stuff from people.

You cannot look at median wages since the 70's and just say people started being lazy while the very elite and weathy started working 1000% harder than they had.

There will continue to be a terrible economy, scyrocketing debt, market crashes, beminishing returns, until finally one day trickle down economics is taken behind the barn and shot.

A healthy and vibrant middle class drives the economy. The National Debt is NOT a result of hand outs.....unless you mean subsudies to corporations....then yes, you are correct.

You are wrong in so many ways.
But we will have to agree to disagree.
 

Kaninja is right, the middle class is what helps drive the economy.

 
I never said the middle class does not help drive the economy. It helps, but it is far from the only thing.
The lower class help too, as do the wealthy.
Big government and redistribution of peoples wealth (their property) will not drive the economy.
If we took every penny of millionaires money, it would not be one years worth of spending the USA is now doing.
Lower tax rates and less regulations will help improve the economy.
Lowering taxes is not giving rich people or corporations anything. It is taking less of their property.
Why do so many people think they have a right to have some of others peoples property? Theft, that is what taxes and redistribution is.
JFK lowered taxes and the economy improved. Reagan lowered taxes and we had 30 years of the best economic growth the country ever did see. GW lowered taxes and the economy grew, unemployment went down to a real 5%. We were in a recession at the end of Clinton's terms remember.
The middle class is shrinking, for several reasons.
The percentage of people in poverty is going down, many people are making more than ever before so some of the middle class is raising up.
There are quite a few working off the grid. Working off the books in all cash businesses. That just makes everyone else have to pay more.
So when all of the baby boomers do retire, remember people live a lot longer today vs what they did in 1945 there is no way SS will be sustainable with out major changes. Considering all that money collected is spent, plus another 19 trillion dollars. Gone, all gone.
 
 
 

kaninja
You can't compare the poor of today to people from a few hundred years ago or to people who live outside the U.S.

It all comes down to prosperity and everyone's share of it. There was a time when the wages of the average worker was tied, somewhat loosely, to productivity / prosperity / GDP / etc. That ended abruptly in the 70's and extremely heavy wealth accumulation happened at the top.......and by the top I mean the top .1%. Stagnant wages just plain hurt the economy and the difference is often made up using credit.

I want to see people retire health and happily wealthy to live out their years. I was lucky. I bought my house in 1992 for $90k. It is just a few achres with a modest 3 bedroom house built in 1898. I renovated it and put on additions in 1995. My last mortgage payment will be in April. I purchased that house making $12.50 / hour working at a warehouse. My payments have never been more than $1200 / month.

Fast forward 25 years. Typical warehouse forlift operator around here makes $14- $16 / hour. My property is now assessed at $900k. My neighbour just sold his property for $850k and purchased it for $65k in 1988.

Today I just couldn't do what I did 25 years ago.....and I thought it was hard back then. Even making over 3x as much as I did in 1992 I couldn't purchase a near million dollar property AND save for retirement as I have.

Do my kids have the same opportunity as I did? I could say yes but I would be lying. Purchasing power has been badly erroded.

I am telling my kids to buy a small appartment then save like crazy for retirement.

 
Housing is definitely expensive these days. Granted I'm not expecting to get a house anytime soon, a small apartment or trailer home looks a lot more reasonable for me.
 

RiChess
 
Don't we all. Seriously. I'm not about to call out any baby boomer as a problem, but your life was way easier money wise. Housing, education, literally everything you had was less expensive compared to income. Wages have flatlined and expenses have skyrocketed. You talk **** to young people still living at home, when housing alone is easily more than a full paycheck. Food? Tack on another few hundred. Phone? Another hundred. Internet? Easily $50+. Car? $100-300. Education? Thousands to tens of thousands. Now do you get how young people have no savings?
 
Want to know what an apartment costs in my area per month? $600-2000 for a 1-2 bedroom apartment. Paycheck at an average starting job in my area? $400-600 a paycheck. Minimum wage is even lower, it's not a living wage. Yeah. A lot of this generation lives at home. Not because they want to. Because they have to. A paper route on summer break doesn't pay for college/a house anymore.
 
We aren't mad at you, we're upset that a standard of living by wage that doesn't exist anymore is held over our heads like it's us being lazy or incompetent.
 
Want us to keep Social Security alive and the economy working? How about wages that match all the **** we have to pay for just to survive. And yes, we need the internet and cell phones to get a job these days.

 
This. Inflation is rampant. Money is not worth much these days and everything is expensive.
 
Especially education. You need it more than ever too if you want to be a professional and compete in the market. There is virtually no starting out low end and working your way up like my dad did.
 
Worse off (as Kaninja stated I believe) it's all expected to be put on credit these days. You don't save money these days, you spend more than you have and acquire debt to pay off later in life. At least that's the paradigm / status quo. There is definitely a part of this economy that thrives on it too. Problem is, it's too big, too many people are in too much debt, it's a house of cards.
 

bill1024
I never said the middle class does not help drive the economy. It helps, but it is far from the only thing.
The lower class help too, as do the wealthy.
Big government and redistribution of peoples wealth (their property) will not drive the economy.
If we took every penny of millionaires money, it would not be one years worth of spending the USA is now doing.
Lower tax rates and less regulations will help improve the economy.
Lowering taxes is not giving rich people or corporations anything. It is taking less of their property.
Why do so many people think they have a right to have some of others peoples property? Theft, that is what taxes and redistribution is.
JFK lowered taxes and the economy improved. Reagan lowered taxes and we had 30 years of the best economic growth the country ever did see. GW lowered taxes and the economy grew, unemployment went down to a real 5%. We were in a recession at the end of Clinton's terms remember.
The middle class is shrinking, for several reasons.
The percentage of people in poverty is going down, many people are making more than ever before so some of the middle class is raising up.
There are quite a few working off the grid. Working off the books in all cash businesses. That just makes everyone else have to pay more.
So when all of the baby boomers do retire, remember people live a lot longer today vs what they did in 1945 there is no way SS will be sustainable with out major changes. Considering all that money collected is spent, plus another 19 trillion dollars. Gone, all gone.

I definitely agree with you that government spending & debt is way out of control, and redistribution of wealth is not going to fix it. Inflation is insane as well. We have an unstable system set up that my age group is inheriting, and I think this discussion is a good indication that we're all feeling the beginning of it's collapse (if we hadn't already been for years). 
 
However, I don't believe in trickle down economics either. Tax cuts for the upper class don't always mean the money they keep gets redistributed or invested. It's wishful thinking IMO, just like the bailouts. Those just got squandered too.
 
The middle class is dying because there isn't enough mobility, thus nothing is filling that gap. Plus our government pays no heed to the middle class, they only worry about the upper class, or the lower class, and expect one or the other to drive the economy and fill all the gaps. The problem I believe is that the economy is a flow, not bottom up, or trickle down. We need solutions that provide opportunity, mobility, and fairness for everyone.  
 
Ultimately, I believe our problem is that we're moving away from the land of opportunity (and many other core American values IMO, but that's beyond the economy), and want to either become some form of socialism, or some sort of aristocracy.
 
I'd say more, but I don't want to derail this into a massively political discussion, and would rather keep it at the scope of the economy.

I know lots of baby boomers that will be retiring in 2017.

As Noted by OP off topic replies are getting a little out of hand --- lets not derail this thread

flasher4q
Oh by the way when I retired I made sure that I was debt free and 8 years later I still don't own a credit card. So it can be done just living off SS, and I got a wooping 4.00 a month increase this year so that tells you how much SS I get....

4.00% I only got a 0.3% increase.
This too: SSA Fact Sheet 2017 Social Security Changes
 "Social Security and Supplemental Security Income (SSI) beneficiaries will receive a 0.3 percent COLA for 2017."

Nereus

bcavnaugh

flasher4q
Oh by the way when I retired I made sure that I was debt free and 8 years later I still don't own a credit card. So it can be done just living off SS, and I got a wooping 4.00 a month increase this year so that tells you how much SS I get....

4.00% I only got a 0.3% increase.
This too: SSA Fact Sheet 2017 Social Security Changes
 "Social Security and Supplemental Security Income (SSI) beneficiaries will receive a 0.3 percent COLA for 2017."

I think Flasher meant $4 increase, not 4% - which is likely the exact same 0.3% increase everyone got.
 

Yep! I missed that one.
That would make since. That is about what I got after the change with the Fed Tax % change.

Before the Baby Boomers The Traditionalists or Silent Generation are the one who made out as far as SS and not really having pay into it.
But more than 87% of the Baby Boomers have paid 20 or more years into SS and over 64% have paid 30 or more years.
 
I have paid more than 20 years into SS and that was not for me, it was for the Traditionalists or Silent Generation.
Now it is time for the iGen, Gen Z or Centennials & Millennials or Gen Y and Last the Generation X to pay SS for the Baby Boomers Generation.
For the most part the Baby Boomers Generation will collect their fair share of the SS they themselves have paid into it.
With this said the Current Working Generations need to keep paying is SS just like the Baby Boomers Generation have done.
This same subject in 30 years with Generation X that is can start with this cycle all over again.
Remember to create your Own Thread though.
So in a since what I have paid into SS is no more then what I will pull out then what I have paid in.
I am not going to live see 100 so that extra money I paid in will go somewhere else and I will be dead so I really do not care who it goes to. 
 
Last those who today that do not pay into SS also cannot Pull from SS so they really are not part of the Mix. But Should Be.