Either way it's kind of a potential problem.

Bryant

After the locust generation has eaten it's last meal.

The problem is Gen X is too small and the Millenials aren't yet earning enough to pay for the Boomer retirement. How the Millenials will fare is anybody's guess, but if they delay having children like we Xers have, it could be problematic.

I guess we will. Who works just 20 or 30 years?

You know, job 1, then change, then change, then get rooted and stay for 30 years and retire.

That's where i'm at. Worked two other places before here, and plan to work 38 years here and buh-bye.
GAC

part to fall to pieces as you age? If they liberalize disability laws then raising the age would not be such a problem. It would of course destroy another arm of the American Dream - to retire while you are still young enough to enjoy it.

By the way is anyone forced to retire at the present age now? Is there anything keeping people who want to from continuing to work?

Don't get me wrong, i wish everyone could walk away in the early 60's and have enough time to enjoy work free life without too many health issues.
I don't do physical labor. I'm way too lazy for that anyway! So, i admit i'm in a different place.

I don't know about forced retirement though. It doesn't happen here. We've had management folks stay until 70 and some retire in the late 50's. So, it's a mixed bag.

have worked longer but after 45 years of lifting and carrying a patient around my back gave out. One of those patients was my own daughter and it was horrible having to give up on her. So I do understand the wish to work longer.

It wasn't a choice I made without knowing all the downsides of the decision. I survived these years by completely scaling back my lifestyle and stretching out the assets I had accumulated. I'll have to take my SS early to get by. The payout will be less per year but manageable. I put my primary retirement funds into an annuity that I can't touch until I'm 67 but will make retirement as comfortable as when I worked for a wage.

Why did I quit? Quite simply, I was killing myself for the benefit of others. I had had enough. I loved what I did, I helped people solve problems and take care of things they needed for their daily lives.
The problem was every effort I made to improve the outcome of my efforts was demeaned or exploited if it didn't provide an immediate result to the bottom line.

I'm really sad that my skills aren't being put to use but the change has started a second life. One where I learn the history that had been denied me for decades. A life where I can share my skills for free for the benefit of those in need.
Can you envision the change in the world if everyone over 50 could retire and use their skills not to sustain themselves but everyone else?
Or just get out of the labor pool to make room for all the kids out there who just want a chance to earn a living wage?

as we like to think of it, is something that has only been around a relatively short time. Prior to the start of Social Security most working people worked pretty much until they died. If they were lucky they had children willing and able to take them in when they could no longer work.

I don't know the precise history of company pensions, but they were never universal, and often didn't amount to very much. There were lots of restrictions on them, and you needed to work at the same company for thirty years, maybe more, to get a decent one. Not very many people did that. By the mid 1950's "traditional" retirement did start to become relatively common, especially because Social Security tended to keep most people from starving in the streets.

In 1969 I went to work for Mohawk Airlines which had a pension plan. But you had to be at least 25 years old and have worked for the company at least two years to enroll. At age 20, I couldn't imagine being that old or have worked that long at the same place. A year or so later they changed their plan so that every employee was automatically enrolled, and the contribution to it was entirely on the company side. I wound up working there for a little over ten years (they became part of Allegheny which you now know as USAir) and now I collect a small pension. All of $172 a month. It ought to be about three times that amount, but USAir was able to blow off significant amounts of their pension obligations with one of their bankruptcies. It's better than nothing, and in my case other sources of income are significantly more than that, but a lot of my former co-workers stayed on for thirty years or more, and they are likewise collecting a third of what they should be.

Which is all the more reason Social Security needs to be untouchable.

My husband and I will be working until we are well into our 70s.

Then there was a massive layoff at my office, so I was forced to retire. Otherwise, though I am 76 now, I would still be working.

My hips hurt most days.

So, I have my own business driving a pilot car for oversize trucks when the weather is warm. I'm 66 now and I believe I still have a few more good driving years ahead of me. My car will need replacing before I quit. We've been together for over 201,860 miles now and it's a comfortable part of me.

If I wait until 70 mine will be 2500 instead of 1800 at 67. I think it is best to wait. With 2 of you, you may get 5 grand a month. That is a pretty decent retirement.

We're both working part time to supplement our SS income. We're doing ok on far less than 5 grand. It's amazing what can be done with a crock pot.

I make a lot in the crock pot and the meals freeze well and can last the entire month.

if your work is breaking your body or destroying your happiness -- and a lot of work is like that these days, with work environments mentally toxic and physically unhealthy -- then all the extra money you're getting from social security will go to various and sundry medical bills.

and if your work is disappearing out from under you, you may not have a lot of options. one of my p/t jobs is disappearing, and I hated it desperately, so was happy to give them notice and gtfo. the other, better paying, p/t job is downsizing by attitrition, but there are several people there who could retire at any moment, so has better longer term prospects plus I don't hate it.

So, unless the p/t job I'm keeping goes closer to full time, I'm planning to start collecting SS at 62, for about $1400/month. I will continue to work p/t. Anything that brings my earnings over $25 will go into a traditional. I may well actually end up with an increased living income right now, depending on how much work I'm able to get at the hospital. That money will go to home repairs and improvements, until I'm able to sell it and downsize, at which time I'll fully retire.

I'm rolling my pension into a traditional as well, which will be my emergency fund. That way, HP won't be able to raid any more of the pension. They already took a huge chunk when they claimed our DEC's pensions were overfunded. Of course, now they can't afford to pay them (tyvm carly) which is why they offered the early cash-out option.

"probably" if not "absolutely certain."

Count PT work from 16-22....


Only 23 more years.

And with elderly people holding on to jobs, younger people can't get a start on the career ladder to form a decent tax base.

This is a good argument for instituting the mincome fairly quickly so older people can just step out and not have to worry about retirement age. Right now a lot are having to fake it by medical conditions meeting the qualifications for SSDI/SSI before official "retirement age", anyway (which is why they lower the difficulty for getting SSDI/SSI in age tiers).

Yeah, folks get to keep working past age 65. Why is that? Because the wealthiest, greediest motherfuckers to ever walk the planet have convinced people that working until you drop is the paradigm for everyone. Now, if you're a highly-paid CEO whose major job activity is deciding whether to fly to Cabo first class or on the company jet, that's a pretty sweet gig. If you're working at something a little less lucrative and a little more physically demanding, not so much.

I don't remember when we all agreed to work ourselves until death, but I'm pretty sure I would have voted no. Maybe it's time we re-ordered things so that we can all look forward to an earlier and more financially comfortable retirement. Perhaps we could quit outspending everyone else on expensive defense gewgaws that we don't really need? Maybe we could raise or remove the cap on earnings subject to social security withholding? There seems to be plenty of money floating around, but for some reason all the additional Wealth generated by Labor over the last 35 years (during which time worker hours and productivity have gone steadily up, but worker pay has remained stagnant) hasn't gone into the workers' pockets.

Part of me has a nagging suspicion that our society's financial set-up didn't "just happen" and maybe we can change it.

Especially when I get my Social Security statements and my retirement fund balances from my employer.

Luckily, I do have an IRA, but I'm not counting on that either, because I think at some point we're in for a big market crash by the time I can start drawing down on it.

That's why I can't stand those commercials that give people the illusion of being able to walk out the door at 65 (or whatever) and into a comfortable lifestyle. I'm sure some can do that, but I'm pretty sure I won't be one of them.

If not it will be harder but not impossible. It depends on numerous factors.

Uh, which employers in "reality" would that be? Because not a single employer I've ever worked for has thought that way or would even consider thinking that way. They think to the bottom line. In other words, they're cheap! And I've worked for companies across the size spectrum from 7 people total up to 5400+.

"Reconsider" is not in their vocabulary.

My grandparents made little money over their careers yet they all retired in houses they owned, with decent vehicles, food on their table, cable tv. What more do people think they need?

The idea of "retirement" was created 60 years ago when people paid off their houses, drove their car 200,000 miles, had one phone line at their house for $10/month, and it was a big splurge to go out to dinner once a month.

People nowadays think retirement is having a big house with a well manicured lawn, traveling 2-3 months out of the year, leasing a new car every 2 years, going out to eat 5 -10 times per week, etc.

Society is encouraging us to blur the line between living comfortably and living well, and if you aren't prepared to live on $1,800/month single or $3,000 as a couple, then you need to seriously look at your life and reprioritize. "Retirement" is much less about how much you will earn, than how much you really need to spend.

telephone bills were NOT 10 bucks a month..only if you never had to make a long distance call, then it was charged by the minute, and by long distance, I mean the next town that was 5 miles away.

cost more than calling cross-country! I never understood that.

Either health issues or their employer forces them to retire.

http://money.usnews.com/money/retirement/articles/2014/05/12/the-ideal-retirement-age-and-why-you-wont-retire-then

Working Americans expect to retire at age 66, up from 63 in 2002, according to a recent Gallup poll. But most retirees don’t stay on the job nearly that long.

The average retirement age among retirees is 62, Gallup found. And even retirement at age 62 is a recent development. The average retirement age has hovered around 60 for most of the past decade.

[See: 9 Important Ages for Retirement Planning.]

"Americans have two reasons in which they may project a later retirement year. One is financial, and they simply think they will need to work longer because there are fewer pensions, and now people may have a more psychologically positive view of work," says Frank Newport, editor-in-chief of Gallup poll. But a plan to work longer isn’t the same as keeping a job into your mid- or late 60s.

Other surveys have similarly found a significant gap between the age workers anticipate retiring and when they actually leave their jobs. A 2014 Employee Benefit Research Institute survey found that 33 percent of workers expect to retire after age 65, but only 16 percent of retirees report staying on the job that long. Just 9 percent of workers say they are planning to retire before age 60, but 35 percent of retirees say they retired that early. The median retirement age in the survey was 62.

SNIP

Even in at-will states, the EEOC cases that went for the complainant are voluminous thanks to age being a protected class.

Not fool proof, but harder than it would have been 25 years ago.
GAC

Not if they have enough savings to get by.

And I don't know how well those laws work. In Boeing's last round of layoffs, they laid off thousands of older, experienced engineers and replaced them with new, younger, cheaper engineers -- 40% were fresh out of college. This was public information, and yet there was no talk of age discrimination or lawsuits. Boeing did this by laying off the older employees in Seattle and hiring the young ones in other locations, at brand new "centers of excellence." Now that Boeing succeeded in off-loading their experienced engineers, I'm sure other companies will copy their methods.

Not saying you're wrong, though. Just that the law is very specific. If you get rid of someone, for anything other than cause, replacing them in the exact same position with someone younger is illegal.

You are probably correct, that the 60 somethings just didn't bother to sue, because they could live off their savings.

Departments are shut, new ones created, job titles changed, etc.

There's huge financial incentive to get rid of older employees - most larger companies handle their own insurance with a reinsurer for backstop, and the medical costs of older employees really hit the bottom line.

It's still, ultimately, illegal.

for their centers of excellence.

So they laid off thousands of very experienced engineers, and offered some of them a chance to reapply for lower-paying jobs in a different state. Some of these laid off engineers are the only people in the company who know how to read the design documents for the older planes (colleges don't teach students how to read outdated design documents). Many of these older planes are still flying. So if something goes wrong, good luck.

I know two people in other companies this happened to. Corporations can get rid of large numbers of older employees as long as they make it part of a larger scale layoff involving multiple locations.

worked until I was 61 and then retired due to back problems - could no longer lift and carry the client.

Right now too many people are forced to cash in their retirements because they have no savings left after they've been wiped out in this economic downturn. They then get hit with a tax that pretty much no one else has to pay, and this tax is something that doesn't really serve as an incentive any more to hold on to this money until they retire, but just as another tax they have to deal with now to survive and hope they have some other money when they retire, or that they continue working when they should be retiring to have money to live then, basically increasing the size of the work force then, and lowering the salaries for everyone when there's more people in the work force.

What we should have instead is a switch from a disincentive of cashing out people's retirement funds to an incentive to hold on to these funds until retirement. That way, at least people aren't penalized now with added taxes just to survive on retirement money. If they can perhaps they can try to hold on to that money so that they can get more money later when they do retire than they would have gotten with today's rules instead of having less money if they try to use retirement money earlier.

Redistribution? YEP! And I would support this quite a bit, if it is written in mind to be in place mostly for those people at the lower end of the wealth/income divide.

Study the rules on IRAs and 401ks... A bit of advice if you're on the verge of wanting to take an early distribution:

1) If you are wanting to take out an IRA early distribution, and you are unemployed, make sure that you try and stay unemployed at least 12 consecutive weeks and keep paying your health insurance during that time, which will help you lower or eliminate this 10% penalty. And remind your congress person that this incentive to stay on unemployment for 3 months or longer is in the tax code now. I would think that both Republicans and Democrats would want to fix this language.

2) If you are wanting to take out a 401k early distribution at some point and are working, make SURE that you have rolled over any older 401ks from earlier plans to your present employer if you worked for them before you were 55 years old and you are now over 55 or over. It will help you if you need to take out money from it and not pay 10% penalty. If you leave that employer and roll it over to another 401k or IRA later, you can have some of that money in a rollover check and some of it in a check that you cash out and don't have to pay any 10% penalty on if you have the plan now under a newer employer.

who has had 2 knee replacements and is undergoing surgery next week related to breast cancer, continues to work at various part-time jobs...in addition to her Social Security and IRA. That's how she's able to keep her house.

I suppose we could eke out an existence if we "retired," but what's the point? It's better to stay active and involved and better your standard of living for as long as you can (in my opinion). Besides, we don't play golf and don't enjoy travel and sure as hell don't want to move to any of the southern states and live under a Republican regime.

I would like to work after SS retirement age, but at a job of my choice parttime. I think my retirement age at the time is 67+. I would do this money notwithstanding, because I can't see not working at all if I'm healthy. Whatever my money situation is I will have to adjust accordingly. I do not have a house or a husband, so it's me, myself and I funding my retirement. I've managed to cobble together some savings, a half-assed pension and another decent pension if my current job lasts until I retire. If not I may have to make do with two crappy pensions and a SS amount that should allow me to eat human food with a roof over my head.

If all goes well, I hope to travel some. I really, really want to travel some.

Then they will charge our families huge fees to dispose of the body and fine them huge fees if we can't afford it. Then jail them to use as nickle-an-hour workers to pay off the fees.

the end of the month that I turn 62 - which for me is this August 31st. The Board recently extended the mandatory retirement age to 67, but you have to be a full time employee on December 31st, 2015 in order to come under that. My department asked HR to extend me, which according to the HR rules they can do, but our VP of HR is being an a$$ and not extending anyone because many of us come under the old retirement plan and would cost the institution a bit more money. Of course the old retirement plan goes bye-bye on December 31, 2015 and we would all come under the new plan, but that doesn't seem to make any difference. I don't know what I'm going to do. My husband refuses to find a job and we have a 13 year old daughter to take care of. I'm looking for other employment, but so far I haven't found anything. To say I'm stressed beyond belief is an understatement. So, yeah, I know all about the "new" retirement.

And I work in a building full of twenty-somethings, nearly all of them saddled with crippling student loans.

Even though they have 40+ years left in the system, they foresee a lifetime of inescapable debt and acutely limited options for investment, after they meet their day to day costs of living.

For myself, I haven't seen retirement as a realistic option since about 20 years ago.