https://www.theguardian.com/us-news/article/2024/jun/01/louisiana-go-fund-me-veteran-cart-pusher
Dillon McCormick, an air force veteran, had been supporting himself by pushing carts in Louisiana’s triple-digit temperatures
90 years old and 233k is a "chance" at retirement...
We can't keep ignoring this shit, it needs fixed and not just by donation websites.
Yup. This is a direct consequence of the removal of pensions and wage suppression. Without meaningful change, even those with healthy 401k savings are likely to have trouble retiring.
That's far more than he'd need to retire unless he just bought a $600,000 house or something, and even then it's probably enough. He can retire now. Woohoo!
At the risk of coming across as insensitive, I really wonder what happened in this guy's life leading up to this. He lived through the "easy times" where boomers were buying houses on a single income, in fact he had a 10 year head start on them. The article says he only receives $1,100 from social security - so does he have $0 savings / investments at 90 years old? Genuinely curious, not taking a shit on him - this will be me at 90 too, if I last that long.
Mental or physical problems, ptsd, whatever. Many ways you can get fucked over by life.
At 90 he would have qualified to retire in 1996. Very strong possibility he outlived his savings. Similar thing happened to a couple of my relatives who reached that age. They owned their homes. They were smaller homes too. But on fixed income the property taxes were awful. We worked it all out in the end. But it was hard getting them to even open up that help was needed.
Believe it or not, there are a lot of poor boomers too. It wasn't all peaches and cream like the agists would have you believe. We're actually facing an explosion of homeless elderly people right now because of the skyrocketing costs of living, especially rent. If you're only getting $1000 per month from SSI, with no hope of ever increasing that amount, you're physically and/or mentally incapable of working, and your rent triples in price, what do you do? They have far fewer options than younger people, so they end up on the street.
Is expecting his life to contain such excesses as to afford a retirement plan more than victim-blaming? It's hard to monday-morning quarterback a lifetime of decisions made in each moment and staying objective while knowing essentially the future for each one.
What if the voices second-guessing every decision we ever made were mutterings from a future society which has the ability to go back in time and doesn't realize we can hear the spectators?
You can try to paint me as a victim blamer all you want. I tried to make it clear that I legitimately wonder. I empathize with his situation, and I bet he would be open to share his stories, cautionary or otherwise, and not act like you are.
Can't tell whether the down-votes are from people who DO like to blame people when their lifetime of choices paint them into a neveretirement corner, or just people who've traveled back in time trying to silence me. I WILL NOT BE SIL
<jdkad&NO_CARRIER
$233,000 is not retirement money.
That’s just over $6k/year in interest at a modest 5%.
Or at his age he can take an extra ~$20k+/yr for a while of straight cash. Might be the better choice.
You might want to check your calculator again. $233k * .05 = 11.65k
I agree that this isnt anywhere close to lavish retirement money but if he withdraws $20k/ year plus takes his full social security payments, he can probably replace the cart pusher wages. So that's still retirement money, just a modest retirement.
Thanks. I probably mashed a wrong button somewhere. 11k+ is definitely better, but still poverty added to his SS benefit.
I mean, he’s 90. So he can safely take $15k/year in addition to his social security (if he lives past 105, he’ll at least be eligible for a care home). That gets him to the $2,500/month point he needs, but he’s completely vulnerable to inflation.
I didn’t want to get into a debate of how long he might live vs how conservative he would need to be with the money. Seems a bit grim of a discussion. I guess he could go out with a bang by spending it all on hookers and blow, but it’s really difficult to gauge how much he could get away with spending to maximize comfort in his remaining years and not leave too much money on the table.
didn’t want to get into a debate of how long he might live vs how conservative he would need to be with the money. Seems a bit grim of a discussion.
That's a conversation we all need to have at some point in our lives. That's literally the heart of retirement planning. Nobody except for the very rich retires without doing that math and making some assumptions.
I’m fine discussing my own mortality. Guessing at someone else’s, even hypothetically, seems like bad form. JMO.
My friend's grandmother at age 90 is in a fancy retirement home and it costs her $90k a year. She had about 400k left and joked she was going to kill herself before she turned 95. She's currently 94 and I'm really concerned.
Fuck these retirement homes. They are literally set up to suck every last dime out of elderly folks retirement funds and then kick them out to some Medicaid group home. Sorry you’ve got this worry on your family’s shoulders.
He's 90 years old. He doesn't need to worry about making that last for decades. He can put it into a 4% money market account, take $50k per year, and will probably have enough to last longer than he needs.
air force veteran
Probably not an officer. Officers get a nice pension package when they retire, enough that they can afford private health insurance and not have to sit in lines at the VA for healthcare. I would absolutely loot officers pensions if I were President. And take all that money, and give it to enlisted.