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Laboring Longer a Growing Trend For Americans
AxSpark writes "More and more Americans have the tendency to work after retirement and this number is growing day by day. Last year this number was 6 million people of 65 and over working. The reason for that is quite evident: pensions are not enough for sufficient living."
It could be that a lot of people are still healthy enough to continue working after age 65... and some people actually want to!
I plan on working past retirement, but not doing what the pointy haired boss wants, but what I want. Just because I retire does not mean I have to sit at home, or be on a permanent vacation.
"My immediate reaction is "WTF? What kind of moron doesn't make things 64-bit safe to begin with?" Linus
No problem, just privatize social security! We can trust GOP lobbyists to put our money in the next Enron and secure our financial future, right?! In all seriousness, "people" are too dumb to plan for retirement on their own. That, and a combination of being stretched too thin financially. That extra $5/week from lower taxes goes into the gas tank, not the 401k. Before everyone gets all uppity about "omg people just need to be responsible, not MY PROBLEM that they cant plan for retirement!" you are entirely correct - its not your fault that most people (whom have never been properly educated on the subject nor had such education/information easily accessible to them) are unable to plan for retirement. Its not their fault either.
The reason for that is quite evident: pensions are not enough for sufficient living.
Or: expenses are not enough under control for sufficient living. We all spend too much money on frivolous nonsense during spring and summer of life, but we don't have to.
(Not blaming anyone personally, I'm the first to realise I might have a big problem if all the drinking and smoking just doesn't kill me in time.)
If only people didn't look to government solutions and planned for own retirements.
Sure, some people are going to keep working because they need the money, but that's hardly proof of the fundamental reason for the trend. I think it's much more likely that it's related to the fact that people are living longer and healthier, and a lot of people (most?) don't want to just lie around the house.
In the "old days", 65 was one foot in the grave. These days, there are a lot more healthy 65 year olds that aren't content to believe that life is over and you might as well start waiting to die.
Sometimes it's best to just let stupid people be stupid.
Neither are hobbies.
Just sayin'.
If you didn't earn enough money to support yourself in the lifestyle you want, you have no right to that lifestyle. I'm sick of the entitlement attitude that permeates this society. The day that the American Dream went from a dream of liberty, to a house, 2 cars, middle class family, dog, cat, etc. was the day that this country sold itself out to the highest bidder. If Ben Franklin were alive, he'd probably add a corollary to his infamous quip about security: they that lust after wealth more than liberty deserve neither; it was from that lust for economic equality, unearned money and sense of entitlement that most of the horrors of the 20th century were born.
Ask the oldies why they're working, they cannot afford the medical insurance on their own. My neighbor recently turned 80, his health insurance is $1200/month. Ask around, you'll find all the crusties doing crap jobs are doing it purely for medical coverage. Good job we're the richest country in the world, imagine how bad our system would be if weren't the most powerful nation on earth.
it seemed logical to me that if we as a race are living longer, we would want/need to work longer and the retirement age would increase in accordance. But this has already been discussed as a national issue here in the UK and now I'm older I've always been left scratching my head because it seemed so obvious/natural back then. I can't see how as a society if we live to 100, we could still retire at 60/65 and expect the state to give us cash for another 35 years as opposed to say 30 years ago people were living fewer years past the retirement age and so required less money.
Jonathanjk.com
pensions are not enough for sufficient living."
Not everyone can have a house. Not everyone can have a car. Not everyone can live close to all the cool stuff in a city. That definition of "sufficient" is clearly debatable.
Certainly sufficient for survival is not what was meant. Sufficient for a comfortable existence relative to history? I don't think that is what is meant either. I think sufficient in this case means "as good or better than everyone else."
This insufferable materialism is killing us by inches. There's not a lot of inertia behind avoiding it either. I've never seen so many people fall so willingly into slavery.
Baby Boomers are retiring in large numbers, many of them in good health with longer life expectancies. Many Baby Boomers spent their lives physically active and with a real work ethic, starting their own businesses in many cases. Some invested well; others didn't. The recent changes in the economy mean some retirees' pensions and investments aren't going as far as they did, though presumably others' investments are doing well. So the fact that more people are working past retirement doesn't mean just one cause. Some are bored and want something to do, some need more income to last longer retirements, some need more money to make up for poor investments, etc.
Tic-Tac-Toe, Global Thermonuclear War, and relationships all have the same winning move.
If only people could afford too.
They'd invest it in some awesome way, like giving your money to China to plan for your future of not having to be a slave to the Chinese when they call in the debt!
Hooray for big government! Who's with me!?
Perhaps a major driver is a lack of savings (indeed, "negative" household savings in many cases)...
"The reason for that is quite evident: pensions are not enough for sufficient living."
People are also working 40% or more of their lives to support the political class.
That's why it is irresponsible to have an unfunded system. If workers were paying for their own retirement instead of other people's, then the system would be able to handle population changes a lot better.
We started out with an unfunded system because we had a generation that already needed care. Fine. But instead of using the last 60 years to crawl our way back to a funded system -- say, by making one year of progress for each year we ran the program -- we just decided to run it that way forever. So saving one generation from poverty has saddled us with a system that we can't ever get out of, even though it is a lot worse financially than individual retirements savings.
Western Europe, Russia, Japan will be going into population decline. America is holding steady.
But holding steady isn't good enough if you want to have some huge nanny state (universal health care, Social Security, etc.)
Ironically, the people who support all those expensive long-term program are the ones having the fewest amount of babies.
As to retirement, less young folks mean you'll have to work longer. Unless there is a major leap in productivity.
Except for ending slavery, the Nazis, communism, & securing American independence, war has never solved anything.
If people are living longer, well then they are probably going to need to work longer. Basically the simple economic way to look at retirement is that for the first part of your life, you spend less than 100% of what you make. That is saved for later. Then, when you retire, you stop making anything and start spending out that money you've built up.
All well and good, however the amount you save need to be balanced against how long you are going to retire for. If you live to 66, and work to 65, well then you don't need much savings. Saving 1% per year would probably do just fine. However if you live to 120 and work to 65, well you are going to need some serious savings. You might need to save damn near half your income.
Of course we don't know when we are going to die. However what we do know is that we are likely to live longer. So, the choice is save more or work longer. Well, many probably feel that work longer is a good option. As you said, many people don't just want to lie around the house. So instead you work for a longer period of time.
As life expectancy extends, this is what we as a society will have to deal with. We can either work for longer, or save more when we do work. Can't really have it any other way. You can't have the same retirement for 50 years as you can for 20 saving the same amount of money.
I personally don't see either as a bad option. I've no problem with people who want to live very thrifty lives so that they can stop working at a rather young age. Nor do I think it is bad for people who want to spend more and work for a longer period of time. Hell, maybe some people want to do both.
Regardless, it is a simple fact that as people live longer, they are going to have to deal with retirement differently. That many choose to work longer doesn't surprise me. Hell we have professors that work well in to retirement. These people don't need to work, if you've held a university job for a number of years you get a nice retirement plan. However, they like to work, and the university will allow you to work half time or less once you are retired. We have a number who do just that, some right until death. We had one professor die not long ago. Great guy, and in quite good health. Regularly played sports and such. Not sure his exact age, but over 70. However, one night his heart had simply had enough and stopped in his sleep. He worked his whole life, because he wanted to, not because he had to.
The key phrase there is 'healthy adult life'. Just because people are living to be 80 or 90 these days does not mean they're able to do the things they'd like to at that age. There are plenty of medical conditions that come with aging that, while not life threatening with modern medicine, will keep you from enjoying retirement at that age. Unless you're idea of a rich retirement is playing cards twice a week and going to bingo.
At 70 or 80 you just don't have the energy anymore, and you'll wish you had more time earlier in your life to do the things you wanted to do. At least this is the general feeling I've gotten from the elderly people I've met through my grandparents.
Murphey's fighting Occam, and we're in the stands.
The USA has 10 Trillion dollars in off-balance-sheet liabilities. Because of the way Social Security, Medicaid and Medicare are funded, when people in my age group (I'm 60) really start retiring, it's going to be expensive. There is no money there. If a private company ran it's finances the way the government does, somebody would go to prison.
Ok, ask anyone if they expect to collect Social Security, Medicare and Medicaid; everyone says yes, they paid, they're entitled. However, 80% of the people drawing these benefits will be capable of paying their own expenses. They are not poor. I am all for helping the economically disadvantaged, but why should the government steal money from productive workers and re-distribute it to people who are not needy?
I suspect that sometime in the next eight years, the money will be purposely inflated (making the benefits debt less expensive to pay out), taxes will rise dramatically, the retirement age will be pushed close to age 70, and finally, after all fails, the government will establish a means test, so that only the most desparate will be able to go to the front of the line for benefits.
Privatization of benefits actually worked for Chile. It could work for us, but it is almost too late.
"The mind works quicker than you think!"
There are certainly some people who absolutely cannot afford to plan for their own retirement. That number is certainly much smaller than the number of people who reach age 65 and have not planned for their own retirement.
Planning for your own retirement requires discipline and sacrifice (unless you make ludicrous amounts of money). Discipline and sacrifice are (generally speaking) in short supply here in America. The less money you make and the more necessary expenses you have (i.e., children) the more discipline and sacrifice is required. That's neither fair or unfair; it's an unavoidable ramification of the fact that not everyone makes the exact same amount of money and not everyone has the same necessary expenses.
There are some people who (for whatever reason) are unable to ever make more than a certain salary. Some of those people will cut their expenses to the bone just to survive and still won't have enough left over to save for retirement. This post is not about those people.
Most people that claim that they can't save for retirement haven't learned to sacrifice to that level or they don't have the discipline to sacrifice to that level. There is a large sense of entitlement and expectation of comfort here in America that is hard to overcome.
If you actually talk to people that are at or near retirement age and quiz them on their spending and saving habits for the past 40 years, you will in almost all cases discover that they either didn't address savings at an early enough age or they didn't sacrifice enough creature comforts to enable them to save sufficiently (and, more likely, both).
Americans need support to help them plan for retirement, because it's a hard thing to do. The kind of support they need is assistance in overcoming the constant bombardment of advertising that instills that sense of entitlement and learning to live within their means. They need assistance in understanding at an early age that they need to start planning for retirement as soon as they enter the workforce, and that it is not something they can put off or do casually but must do consistently and agressively.
What Americans do not need is assistance from the government. Seeing senior citizens at Wal-Mart working as greeters is not a sign that the government has failed its citizens. It is a sign that the culture that produced those senior citizens is not a culture that enables and encourages the kind of responsible behavior that would have led to a different outcome.
Every social ill that can be observed is not a candidate for government involvement. Government should not be brought in to solve the obviously visible symptom of an underlying cultural problem. If a social problem can be solved by people learning to be better and more responsible than they have been in the past, then that is what needs to happen. It is not in any way reasonable for the citizens of a country to say "We have been irresponsible and self-indulgent. We don't want to be responsible, so we would like for our government to provide us with a solution that allows us to continue to be irresponsible."
You need to look at history, not present day. It's not that the boomers didn't have kids - they *delayed* having kids, and had fewer of them. There is a significant dip in the number of births in the late 60's (i was born in '68). I noticed when I was a kid that there seemed to be a lot fewer kids in my grade than the higher and lower grades; their response was that, when I was born, it was very "unfashionable" to have children.
So now the boomers are starting to retire, and their kids are in their 20's, maybe early 30's - not peak earning years. the bulk of the taxes comes from those later in their careers, and there are a lot FEWER of them than there needs to be. So, IF we can get through the next 20 years without bankrupting the system, the boomer's kids will be supporting me. I'm not holding my breath.
As for population growth in the US, it is mostly due to immigration and higher birthrates among immigrant populations. Xenophobia aside, this is a GOOD thing - Japan and Europe are about freaking out right now because they are simply not reproducing enough to support their aging population, but they won't accept immigrants into their society in any meaningful way. Americans are going to have to deal with their caregivers probably speaking a foreign language and having different color skin, but they will deal. Japan is placing their hopes in robots - anything but outsiders. And Europe is placing their faith in...?
"As God is my witness, I thought turkeys could fly." A. Carlson
Looking at your 401k and screaming about how life is unfair because you cannot do whatever you want, and live the perfect, uber-fullfilling life that Madison avenue told you was yours with the right investments, hair products and big ticket purchases. You think life is supposed to be fair? Wake the fuck up, and pay attention in biology class; nothing is fair about the world. It's juvenile to pretend that life is something that it isn't. It's a downright throwback to the sort of temper tantrums that one expects of a toddler, to demand that other people sacrifice what they have, so that you can have what you want, not what you need.
Healthcare eating at your 401k, and making you have to go back to work? Guess what, 200 years ago, you'd probably be losing years off your life instead of off of your 401k because there woudl be no medical services for you to buy that could take care of old age ailments. I swear, the elderly who complain about healthcare, as though it's the right to have cheap healthcare and luxury on their savings remind me of teenagers who say "what do you mean I have to choose between paying rent and buying video games?"
Wise men once said of the retiree, "idle hands are the devil's workshop." Few cliches come within even a mile of the haunting accuracy of that statement as it applies to most retirees.
Maybe if people didn't buy flat panel TVs, new cars, laptops and homes they cannot afford they could live "sufficiently". The inflation of the past 3 decades certainly doesn't help either, but a pension manager is supposed to grow the fund to deal with inflation. I guess you get what you deserve when you trust a stranger to manage your future.
The less you save the longer you must work. It's simple as that. Of course if you want to work later in life, then by all means go ahead. We need some more people to shoulder the social security burden.
“Common sense is not so common.” — Voltaire