IT'S TUESDAY

 

I remember those weeks when I was working outside my home.

BRAVE

 

From someecards.

STILL WORKING IN YOUR 70s AND 80s?

From the Wall Street Journal:

We all think it’s a panacea. If you don’t have enough money saved for retirement, you’ve got a few ways to close the gap between what you have and what you need in your nest egg: Save more, invest more aggressively, and/or work longer.

Well, it turns out that working longer is indeed an option, according to the Employee Benefit Research Institute latest study. The only problem is that the latest research shows that you’ll have to work much longer than you anticipated. In fact, many Americans will have to keep on working well into their 70s and 80s to afford retirement, according to the study, titled “The Impact of Deferring Retirement Age on Retirement Income Adequacy.”

What’s more, it’s even worse for low-income workers, according Jack VanDerhei, one of the co-authors of the study. Those who earned (on average over the course of their careers) less than $11,700 per year, the lowest income quartile, would need to defer retirement till age 84 before 90% of those households would have just a 50% chance of affording retirement.

We are blessed that Grandpère has a good pension, since I took 12 years off from the workplace while my children were young. Although I started working part-time at the age of 16, my wages were quite low. When I finished college and graduate school, I earned a small salary compared to today's wages. And even after I went back to work as my children grew older, I never made a great deal of money. Thus, my Social Security income computed from the average of my wages over the years is low enough that I'd be eligible for public assistance, if I were not married to Grandpère. My marriage saves me from poverty.

Some folks never want to quit working, and that's fine for them, but most of us get tired. What of the workers who do hard physical labor, whose bodies wear out, and they lose the ability to do the work?

All but the wealthy face a very different situation today. I most certainly would make different choices from staying out of the workforce for 12 years, and I'd have paid more attention to striving up the ladder of success in order to earn more money.

How brilliant of me to latch on to Grandpère and hang on to him for what will soon be 50 years. As I looked for a good YouTube version of Maurice Chevalier singing "I'm So Glad That I'm Not Young Anymore", I found the song below, which I like better, because it's all about me.




So I went from serious to silly in my post. So sue me.