I'm So Screwed

http://www.counterpunch.org/tripp08182007.html

Some Thoughts on Retirement

I'm So Screwed

By BEN TRIPP

Not to show off or anything, but I have a day job. Every morning from Monday through Friday I put on a pair of pants and toddle off to an environment I like to call "the workplace" to perform the duties associated with "work". Weekends are pants-optional. I am compensated for the performance of these labors with "money", or in other words abstract units of value that can be exchanged for goods and services, until inflation kicks in. This money of which I speak enters and exits my life in precisely the same quantity, much like beer through an Australian, but on a much smaller scale. All well and good, except it's no longer enough merely to secure an income and spend it until the inevitable illness or bear attack claims one's life, the way it was in Grandpa's time. Our lives may not last all that much longer than they used to, but modern medicine has figured out how to prolong the dying process by as much as thirty years.

Nothing to worry about, in simpler times. You didn't have to invent the reciprocating engine, build a woolen mill, or wipe out an indigenous people in order to live comfortably all your days (some folks went ahead and did these things anyway, though relatively few did all three). You could operate a newsstand or sell shoes and get by. Put a little money in the Savings & Loan for old age, smoke three packs of Chesterfields a day, and die at fifty, leaving a modest inheritance, and people would think you did all right. But these days, if one does not wish to suffer one's waning years in poverty and sorrow, gnawing the marrow out of femurs robbed from the graveyard just to stay alive, one -- and I think we all know who "one" is--must have established a source of funding well beyond such trifles as social security checks and pensions, none of which will probably exist anyway by the time I reach retirement age, if I even get that far. Nowadays (and I don't use the reprehensible word "nowadays" lightly, in company as it is with words like "winsome" and "anyhoo") if we expect to survive until death, we must not only save and invest-we must also be successful.

Success can be defined as one's work having exceeded one's days. If, every day, one makes more progress towards a goal, eventually reaching it, one can be said to have accomplished something. Probably not much, but something. Success is a bigger thing than accomplishment. It is a matter of posterity. A successful person has earned a place in the future beyond his or her own lifetime, whether this is a matter of money alone, or notoriety, or making a difference in the world. Look at Gregor Mendel and his peas, or Jayne Mansfield and her tomatoes: the fruits of their labors live on. John Brown's Body lies a mould'ring in the grave/ But his soul goes tiddly-pom (I forget the exact words). If we can agree on this simple premise, or even where to go for lunch, then we can also agree that I am completely, utterly, almost exhilaratingly unsuccessful. Which is quite an accomplishment, but it won't pay for my old age.

When I say, "I am not prepared for retirement" (and I say this at the age of forty-one, the same age that Julius Caesar became Consul of Rome, Tony Blair became leader of the Labour Party, and William 'Wild Bill' Shakespeare was writing King Lear and Macbeth back-to-back), I do not mean retirement to an attractive five-bedroom en suite home in a palmy New Mexico golf community for wealthy assholes; rather I mean that I am not prepared to retire under any circumstances, ever. In fact if I stop working for more than about a week and a half, I'm ruined. Experts recommend you should have three to six month's living expenses socked away against emergencies, in addition to whatever you're hiding behind the loose brick in the chimneypiece for old age. I have twenty minutes' living expenses socked away. Even a new belt for the vacuum cleaner would break me at this stage in my life, so the idea of saving money for the semi-distant future is absurd. It's not that I've squandered money-I just haven't had any. To me, this is normal. I think it's normal for most guys my age, like hating Phil Collins or having to fart with care to avoid soiling ourselves.


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I don't think it should be considered normal. Unless you are in the bottom 10% or hit by some calamity, I think it's almost inexcusable.

But have never made more than 30K a year. I own nothing and have about $1000 in savings. There is nothing I can do. In my field there is so much competition for jobs that I am simply stuck where I am, near the bottom. I like my job and I do not want to whore myself out to some consulting firm simply for the money, because that goes against the very conservation ethic that made me become a biologist to begin with. I am in fact better off than most, since I have a state job that at least provides a pension. I cannot afford to contribute to a 401K or IRA or any of that stuff. It is not inexcusable; it is simply the way it is.

Personally, hoping for a sugar daddy or the lottery is the only hope for people like me. And maybe the author falls into that category as well.

In fact 10 years ago, I made 19K, so in one sense I have done okay. Before I took this job in 1997, I made 8.50 an hour. With a degree. Working for the state of Florida using said degree. So that is why I don't have investments. I am only finally now climbing out of THAT hole.

I still had savings and was building up equity in my building. Actually I think I was making $5.50 an hour until September 1997. I had to get a factory job to get the raise when my former employer found out he could not replace me for less. I was saving money though, even when I went to graduate school in 1988 and made $5900 a year. I am not sure why it is not always possible to save. Maybe it depends where you started out, because I started saving at 13 when I got my paper-route and had no living expenses. Had about $4,000 when I graduated from high school, back when that would have paid for a year of college - tuition and room and board.

The payments were very high when I started paying them back- probably $400 a month. I had rent for another 300, a car payment at 175. All this on a salary that was $1100 a month at the time. So the rest went to gas, food and electricity.

I didn't work in high school or college except during the summers. I had a full ride in college and only used loans for grad school.

It took me 15 years to pay off my student loans. Now it is electricity that eats my lunch. $140 a month in a one-bedroom apartment. But it is summer in Texas, after all.

Thanks :hi:

:rofl::rofl::rofl::rofl::rofl::rofl:

:hi:

:rofl:

most people i know who retire in their 50s/early 60s do so because they are disabled and/or laid off and can't get hired at another job

people who plan to work until they drop are not in touch w. the reality of the human body or the employer's health insurance liabilities, as in, they don't want older folk on their health insurance plan

For me, it means work as long as I can and then just die. Play in traffic or something. I am serious, I do not intend to live long enough to have to go into a nursing I will no doubt be unable to afford anyway. I will no doubt have no one to help me anyway so I might as well get it over with.

Or maybe I'll just shoot myself before I get too feeble to do it right.