What do we do with baby boomers who didn't save for retirement?

I don’t know anyone like that.
Since retiring, I realize how well I did plan, though I always thought I didn’t plan well.

Everyone’s circumstance is different. Not having retirement is not always based on poor decisions. Hopefully most have family that can help but for those who do not it can get complicated. Many in my generation will not have any retirement when the time comes.

I’m a young boomer, turning 55 next month who was tanked by this economy a few years ago. At 46 I had 130k in the bank and now am insolvent for the first time in the history of my life.
There are many middle aged people that do not have enough saved for retirement for many reasons. I lost my work, was unable to find new,sustainable work for almost 3 years and was forced to live off my savings, temp jobs and had to give up my home of 7 years.

Go here and read about how the economy has wiped out thousands and thousands of middle aged people. www.overfiftyandoutofwork.com
A midlife divorce and the recession took me down, it can happen to anyone in these economic times. The older boomers in their 60’s now are a different demographic than the younger boomers as well but many of them have suffered grave and irretrievable losses as well. There is no one size fits all and one should never pass judgement without the facts.

All of my grandparents had a retirement plan in place and my aunts and uncles do not. If this is the trend in other families, I don’t see how this country will be able to afford them.

You should worry about yourself, not others.

I don’t see this as being a “trend” in most families, you would do well to reread @Coloma‘s post.

I would hope, however it plays out, that you, @Esteban1, whatever generation you belong to, would deal with the Boomers with more compassion than your word choice would indicate that you feel.

If I am misreading your tone, I apologize.

My question has nothing to do with people hit by the recent recession. It pertains to having not prepared for retirement.

Taxpayer funded retirement homes. Nothing flashy, just respecting human dignity.
As stated in Article 1, Paragraph 1 of the German Constitution:
“Human dignity shall be inviolable. To respect and protect it shall be the duty of all state authority.”

@ragingloli well said but funny to see Germans referring to human dignity. But I guess that is an entirely different kettle of fish. Not relevant at the moment!

@Esteban1 Yes, it is a “trend” if you wish to call it so. The average 50 yr. old has less than 50k saved for retirement. The high cost of living, funding childrens education, often being further taxed by caring for aging parents, it is a sign of the times.
Also, age discrimination for older workers that found themselves laid off or downsized in their professions at the peak or near peak of their careers.

I have a friend right now that is 51, divorced with 3 teenagers and she just landed a job after over 2 years of searching, and down to her last month of living expenses. She had been an accountant for 18 years for a large retail store chain and as I too experienced, she sent out hundreds of resumes, had a few actual interviews and then nothing. If you haven’t walked a few hundred miles in the shoes of others you don’t have a leg to stand on.
Fewer and fewer companies provide pension plans and maybe if Mr. Obaminism wasn’t about to give amnesty to 5 fucking million illegals we could take better care of our own aging population of workers that are being thrown to the wolves after a lifetime of contributions.

I am now living with friends on their 10 acre ranch property in exchange for house sitting duties when they travel and all around help as well as working part time. More and more boomers, especially single people are going to gravitate to more creative, communal living situations.
It’s a win/win and I predict more and more people in my age demographic will take this road less traveled. More Golden Girls & boys seeking alternatives to going it alone in their advancing age. We here at the ranch are planning a Pistachio orchard, have a cherry orchard, gardens, and are seeking other ways to become more self sustaining because it is only going to get worse.

By 2050 the senior population will be at an all time high in the history of humanity. What we are seeing is not an isolated situation, the hoards of boomers going back to communal living that was popular in the 60’s & 70’s is going to explode.

@ZEPHYRA
Unlike the colonies, Germany learned its lessons after WW2.

@coloma you would not stick up for my uncles. One of them collects $160 a month in social security because he thought music was his calling and my other uncle is trying to get on disability because he’s 60 and didn’t pay into social security. And don’t even get me started about my aunt….

It must also be said, that the sad fact is that many people are never blessed with a career earning them enough that would allow them to save for the future, as hard as they might try.
Do you want society to fuck them further in the arse than it already has?
And even if someone has made “bad choices”. Do you want to punish them for it by letting them starve or freeze to death under a bridge?
Holding such a position betrays a mind consumed by inhumanity.

@ZEPHYRA Germany is not made up of modern-day Hitlers, you know? You’d be hard pressed to find a state more ill-at-ease with its own past.

No-one is doubting that Germany still has to re-gain a lot of trust. To make a country’s history the individual citizen’s responsibility, though, is neither logical nor smart. Are you comfortable with your nation’s history?

@ragingloli Makes a very good point, the working poor are at critical mass. 3 Apples costs you $4.00 at the grocery store these days. A loaf of bread can easily be almost $5.00, a box of cereal the same. One of the things I miss the most about having money was the freedom to blow through the grocery store without concern, now I have to pay attention to every dollar I spend. A family of even 3 that is supposed to be eating 6–10 servings of fruit and vegetables a day could easily spend hundreds a month of produce alone.

@Esteban1 How did your uncle avoid paying into Social Security? The only way one can do that is to be in an alternative plan like teacher’s retirement programs or Railroad Retirement.

You are a bit callous to discount the effect of the economy. 2007/2008 took my retirement account down by 50%. If I had retired then, my savings would have been drastically reduced. As it is, I will have to work well into my late 60s, provided I can keep working!

Too many people have been hit hard as has happened to @Coloma, a person who has worked hard and cheerfully yet was blinded by others.

I never thought I would say this: I agree with @ragingloli.

My uncles played music and worked here and there under the table. The recession had no affect on them.

My concern is that I am not alone when it comes to having lazy baby boomer uncles. Most people are worried about a couple million immigrants looking for work, while I’m more worried about 10s of millions of broke baby boomers.

@Esteban1 I look around and it scared the cr*p out of me. I paid in and saved. I’m set but, if you look at my house and standard of living, you wouldn’t know it. I am not flashy. I drive crap cars. I keep my heat low and turn the water on and off when I shower. I don’t have cable TV or HBO or Cinemax or Sports or…
However I have acquaintances who live much better than I and don’t have pot to piss in. They are in debt to their eyeballs yet they have the giant screen in the living room with a billion channels of junk.

I’m afraid one way or the other I will end up paying for those selfish slugs.

There’s this company that makes a food product called Soylent .

Their web site doesn’t exactly spell out the ingredients.

Out of curiosity, @Esteban1, how old are you?
And where do you get your figures? (“10s of millions of broke baby boomers”)

@zenvelo Haha…yep, when I think of all my former employers and clients in my old biz. that all said the same thing, that I brought a cheerful and optimistic approach to my work….well…not anymore. Fuck it all, I’m am now a blonde bandito hiding out in the hills. I’ll save my cheerfulness for the horses that appreciate she who brings the cookies, they won’t kick my ass to the curb. lol

What’s retirement? I’m only kind of joking. About half of the workforce at our local Walmart is over retirement age.

We can build tiny home communities on golf courses. Golf courses are such a waste of land.

I’m in my 30s. And yes, the population of broke baby boomers is easily in the 10s of millions. If the baby boomers make up more than 10% of the country, that leaves a shitload of people depending on my generation to take care of them.

You are already paying for people with children who can’t afford them, and people who are not employable because they blew off school. You are even paying for people who are not even citizens. Why not the boomers as well?

Anyway, the boomers represent a huge voting bloc, so no matter what you think, they will vote to get the goodies for about 20 more years.

@Esteban1 Be careful, you never know what could happen to you. If you become sick or disabled the financial shoe will be on someone elses foot to help care for you.
My daughter is 27, very bright, has 2 jobs and her IT boyfriend just got laid off from Apple and they are struggling. Don’t count your chickens before they hatch. ANYONE can be taken down in a heartbeat depending on the situation.

The trials and tribulations of a welfare state. Some one has to work and who ever that is, must support everyone else.

@Jaxk As opposed to what? What “welfare state”? You would just put people out in the gutter to be hauled off with the street sweeper? (Wait, street sweeper’s are supported by taxes, I guess you’d prefer they just be left out to compost into mulch…)

@zenvelo – Just pointing out the obvious. I’m sure this will all be solved by simply opening up our borders and expanding welfare. Sounds like a solution to me. @Esteban1 said “My uncles played music and worked here and there under the table.” His uncle avoided tax and social security and now needs money from the very taxes he avoided. Maybe we’ll use your solution once you post it.

@Esteban1: I think you misunderstood my question. I didn’t ask how many baby boomers, I asked where you got the figures to assume that there are tens of millions of broke baby boomers. I’m curious about your source.

If anyone misunderstood a question it is you. Go get a calculator.

So much has changed since the 50’s, 60’s and 70’s. Companies no longer provide pensions for their employees after retirement. Jobs come and go in the blink of an eye.

Please answer @canidmajor‘s question @Esteban1. I’m curious how you came up with thenumbers too.

No

probably pulled them out of a hat.

Geez
A calculator won’t tell me your source of information. I’m just wondering where you got your numbers, is all.
You said “If the baby boomers make up more than 10% of the country”, so I am wondering if you figure we all (all 32+ million of us) are broke? Or only 20 million or what? And how do you figure that?
Honestly curious, here, but you don’t seem to want to back up your statement.

And I didn’t even need a calculator to figure out your “more than 10%”!

And since you don’t include the ones slammed by the recession, (as per your second post on thread), how will you differentiate between them and the “unprepared” ones so you know whom to resent?

Try answering my original question. I’m not going to explain a comment when you haven’t even formed an opinion of the question.

@canidmajor I just did quick search and it looks like @Esteban1 ‘s numbers are actually low.
I found a couple of sources. AARP had the worst numbers based upon a Rhode Island study. ⅓ of people 65 and over have no, zero, zilch savings to supplement social security. Yikes! Source.

There are lots of others with similar numbers .This one from End of the American Dream has a lot of different numbers an sources. 40% of Baby boomers figure on working until they drop.

If baby boomers work until they are 70 instead of retiring at 62 their SS checks will be 70% higher. And if they exercise, lose weight, and eat right they can really enjoy the new golden years. 70 can be the old 50.

Thank you @LuckyGuy.

Thanks, @LuckyGuy. That’s exactly the kind of source I was asking about. @Esteban1‘s derisive and confusing wording left me in doubt as to about whom he was talking.
As a general question, yes, I can appreciate the concern, but the use of the word “lazy” describing boomers and the not-referring-to-those-affected-by-the-recession remark left me in doubt as to which boomer demographic he was talking about.

Thank god I live in Australia. I will work until I age out of my job, then do something else a few days a week until the age pension kicks (12 years away), then I’ll move to my partner’s freehold house. Wont they all get social security at the right age for it?

@LuckyGuy Yep, you beat me to it, the american dream has now become the american nightmare for many. Oh, and P.S. to @Esteban1 you say you are in your 30’s, well then, you will be 70ish at the peak of the senior explosion in 2050. If you are looking to have a full retirement I hope you are planning on having at least 4–6 million in assets and savings saved by the time you are 65. That’s how much everyone will need in another 35 years.

A million is nothing, even now, that is only 50k a year for 20 years, hardly lifestyles of the rich and famous. lol

Hmm, it looks like my generation, Generation X, is doing worse than the boomers.

Only one-third of Generation X households had more wealth than their parents held at the same age, even though most earn more

@trailsillustrated you wrote: ” Wont they all get social security at the right age for it?” The Social Security payment depends upon how much the person contributed, how many years they worked and the age they start taking the money.
Let me just speak in broad terms since everyone is different. I can get my full payment if I start collecting SS at age 66. I can take it earlier, as early as age 62 but I will suffer a penalty of ~8% per year. Starting SS at age 62 gives me a ~32 % reduction for life!!! I can take it after age 66 up to age 70 and get an additional 8% per year or an increase of 32% for life. (Remember those number are not perfect. They are close. You have to go to the SS site to get the real ones.)
I really don’t know what my base payment will be – probably near if not the max. Call it $2000/month.

Based upon a number of sources, my life expectancy is 96. There is a 50% chance I will die before that date and a 50% chance I will live longer. I have way more than ⅓ of my life to go and intend to keep my body in as good a shape as possible and have enough money to enjoy it. I will not take SS until I am forced to.

My foolish sister in law quit her job and took SS when she turned 62. She has doomed herself to a future of poverty. If she had worked one year longer she would have been in so much better shape. Talk to her now and all you hear are her money problems. Sorry! You had a good job. You quit! You made the choice and knew the financial impact! It is not my problem!
I am not going to pay for it.

My folks built a home for $35,000 in 1968. 13 years later it sold for $350,000.
I bought a home in 1983 for $45,000. 13 years later it sold for $48,000.
I saw that Lauren Bacall bought a pent house in 1961. Paid $45,000. It sold recently for millions.
Nothing is the same.

@LuckyGuy You’re right, that was her choice, and that’s fine….IF you are not going to whine about your situation for the rest of your life. haha
Nothing wrong with wanting to slow down and stop and smell the roses a little more, the original age of 62 for collecting SS benefits was intended to save money as many people didn’t make it to that age or much beyond. Lots of people still die in their 50’s and 60’s, it’s an educated guess based on many factors. A lot of people drop dead in the first few years after retirement, sadly that happened to my aunt some years ago.

They both had good careers, built their entire life on retirement to finally have a good time and she, a lifelong health nut, non-smoker, drinker, died of Colon cancer at age 64 within one year of retiring.

@jonsblond Yep, Gen X and the younger boomers are almost an overlap generation. Technically I am a boomer but the cutoff was 1964 and I was born 5 days before 1960.
Same rope we all get to hang ourselves by. haha

I’m a retired boomer. I’ve had several good retirement plans over the years which all had to be liquidated in order to take care of children who were lovingly welcomed into our family after being abandoned by their widowed mother.

We could drag them out back and shoot them, but then we have to deal with the body. ~

I’m a baby boomer. I worked at the same job for 30 years and my department was disbanded. Because I wasn’t 55 years old at the time of my layoff, I did not get a pension. It took me a year to find another job, which was only a temp position, and spent a lot of my savings just to live on. I was laid off from the temp position and it took me 6 months to find another job, so I spent most of what was left of my savings and was ready to cash in my 401K. Luckily I found a full time job but I will never feel secure in any job again. Just because your uncles and aunt didn’t save doesn’t mean that all baby boomers that are in financial dispair brought it on themselves.

A little compassion goes a long way.

Quite frankly ( and no offense @LuckyGuy you know I adore you ) but….I really, really, REALLY hate this crap about 70 is the “new” 50 and 40 is the “new” 20 and 100 is the “new” 80.
Fucking NO IT IS NOT!!!! lol
50 is freaking FIFTY and 80 is freaking EIGHTY!

I feel exactly my chronological age, not younger, not older, a solid 55 with all the aches and pains if already living an active and outdoorsey life. Shit…my hands and wrists are almost worn out from years of riding/saddling, shoveling after horses, slinging around hay and feed bags and bales of shavings, cleaning the goose barn, carrying buckets of water, scooping cat litter boxes. My fingers, hands and wrists are a mess, great, I can live to be 100 and learn to feed myself with my feet.haha
45 years of that and hite water rafting, housework, cooking, dishes, slicing and dicing, raking, shoveling, lifting, turning, spinning, grasping, pulling.

Jeeezus…just let me BE my age. Just NOW while fighting with the metal snappy ring on one of the large containers of horse feed in the barn I exclaimmed out loud ” Ow..that HURT! as my wrist got all poppy and twangy.
Personally I think everyone should just die around 80, before advanced, decrepit, ancient old age sets in. WTF…if we were intended to live to be 120 we would have been born Tortoises. Thank you for the opportunity to rant.

Do you want the conservative or progressive answer?

maybe the 1938 answer

@LuckyGuy: your fist link takes me to an “item not found” for the Providence Journal.
The other link, while informative (and a bit scary, yes,) doesn’t seem to cover the reasons why the 36% didn’t contribute to retirement savings. Some may have, indeed, been “lazy”, as @Esteban1 would define all of us, but I think those may have been in the minority. Between the cost of living and inflation rising faster than wages, I know a number of hardworking families that have had to live hand to mouth for a long time.

@Esteban1: I had definitely formed an opinion about the question, it was your rather snide characterization of an entire demographic that I found stupid.
Just how will you decide whom your generation should help support? Do we need to submit resumes? Will you instigate background checks?
You were the one who differentiated the demographic, not I.

I think some people are going to be rooted! We have had mandatory, employer paid superannuation since 1992, but not all employees were included then and it was set at 9%. The superannuation payouts for most people won’t be adequate to fund their retirement and especially since we now live so long. This will be gradually increased to 12% by 2025!!! It was due to reach 12% by 2019, but this government has delayed this.

If you were self-employed, or a stay-at-home mum, you weren’t included in this super plan from 1992. Women who work as homemakers still aren’t included in any way. Women who end up divorced are particularly vulnerable because they were the people who gave up work to have babies and they end up with limited super. Certainly, super is part of a divorce settlement but even after that, many women will find themselves underfinanced for retirement.

I pay a shit load into super to counter the above situation. Most people are oblivious and I guess they will have to be supported by the state. I can’t see how else they will manage. However, that means being doomed to poverty in your retirement I would say.

@canidmajor I swear it was there when I did the search. I will try again.
I found it. Here

Hopefully this works. Yep. It works for me. (If not there are dozens more.)

Thank you, @LuckyGuy, this is an interesting article. And I’m forwarding your links to my kids. :-)

@canidmajor, my children, since they began work in their teens, have paid $10–20 per pay into their super accounts. This means they will be thousands of dollars better off than those who haven’t done this and they don’t miss the money. I’ve counselled them since they started work that there will not be an old aged pension (or not one worth having) when they reach retirement age. As a bonus, the government matches their extra payments (up to a set amount) so they’re actually doubling their money.

I’m not in full agreement that “we have to do something” for people who failed to plan for their own retirement. This does not equate to “we should take them out back and shoot them” or “therefore I choose to simply discard them”; that hyperbole does not improve the debate nor represent a step on any path to a realistic solution – if you think a solution is needed.

The entire concept of “retirement” is a fairly modern one, anyway. Humans have developed as a species for the past half-million years or so (give or take a quarter-million years) without even the concept of the term. We don’t have to retire. In fact, it’s still not a normal practice for most of the world. Most people around most parts of the world do “work until they drop”, or for as long as it is even possible, and then rely on family, charity and whatever government assistance is possible.

But we’re beyond that in the enlightened West, of course. Here it is seen as a mark of our degree of civilization that we have rationalized wholesale theft from younger generations to pay for older generations to live off their labor in return for a very specious promise that they can do the same to their descendants. Well played.

I think that we should stop normalizing the practice of retirement as a goal that people should be congratulated for achieving. I think that we should absolutely end the Ponzi scheme that we call Social Security. I think that if we’re going to determine that the government is going to fund charity for indigent old people who cannot work we should call it by its right name: welfare, and we should fund it out of the General Fund, which is at least not financed by the most regressive tax we have.

Right now Social Security is funded by a flat 12.4% tax on every wage earner (don’t believe the lie that “the employer pays half” – who do you think earned that money?), which obviously hits those who can least afford it the hardest. Since people at the bottom of the wage scale are by definition “needier”, they tend to work longer than the well-off. Since they work more dangerous and physically demanding jobs, they also tend to die earlier than the well-off. Then when they do retire, their benefits tend to be less than the maximum. So: the neediest workers, who have to work the longest careers of all for the lowest wages and the shortest retirements and who frequently die early anyway – those people have to pay the highest percentage of their earnings into a program that they generally won’t benefit from as much as someone who doesn’t need the money as much.

Let’s have less government “assistance”, shall we? Government “assistance” is killing people. If we’re going to provide welfare, then let’s call it that, means test it and fund it more fairly.

Rather than decrying the failures of government, let’s ask why it is that there are no longer any pension systems in the country outside of civil service? The landscape has shifted and the ground is being pulled from under people who work for a living. Where is the money going? What strata of our society is slipping toward destitution, and who’s fattening up? If ours is such a failed welfare state, and the government so inept, how is it that the top manages scoop up an ever accelerating share of the country’s resources? Isn’t it rather obvious that this scenario is all but impossible without explicit government facilitation in transferring wealth from those who punch a clock to those with portfolios?

I can commiserate with @chyna. Before I retired, I was laid off a good job (I’d been there five years, and my resume showed good jobs with steadily increasing responsibilities and compensation). Suddenly I did not seem to qualify for any similar positions without an extreme commute. I can not prove it, but I strongly feel that it was agism.

@Yetanotheruser Very likely, I experienced the same thing, even when applying for jobs I was grossly UNDER qualified for. I had glowing recommendations, look fairly youthful but nothing would ever come of the few, actual, interviews I got after hundreds of resumes and applications.
Out of at least 80 inquiries I only received 2 follow up rejection email and a letter. I was ready to shoot myself, the feelings of rejection, even though I am not a thin skinned person were horrible. A vicious cycle of getting excited and hopeful only to be crushed. Awful.

My entire life I was always hired on the spot, not anymore.

@stanleybmanly – We have municipalities going bankrupt all over the country as a result of Pension plans that simply can’t be sustained and that is the model you want to use? Those pension plans have been abandoned because they are unsustainable. Many companies have gone to 401Ks for the employees and most contribute to them as well as the employee. But the government screws that up as well. The lower end slaries (the ones that pay little or no income tax) put their money in before tax but when they take it out for retirement they pay the highest tax bracket, often as high as 50%. They would have been better off to put it in a regular account except they wouldn’t get the company matching funds. Again government tax code. If they buy a house and sell it at retirement, again government wants its slice leaving the retiree with little or no retirement money. It is government that has screwed this up and you want to giove them more money and control?

@Jaxk It is government that has screwed this up…

Agreed, because we, the electorate, have democratically elected politicians who have allowed the financial multinationals to write the laws, rules and regulations concerning how things are done.

@Jaxk We are in agreement that it is government that has screwed up, and that municipalities are struggling with pension obligations. Where we disagree is on why this is now the case, and who has seen to it that things are arranged as they are through utilization of the government. The ONLY reason that pension plans are unaffordable is because the government has prioritized profit ahead of the well being of those generating the profits-people who work. It’s just another aspect in the transport of wealth uphill in defiance of gravity. Instead of the government REQUIRING corporations to provide pensions for workers, it is decided that corporations should be allowed to bask in the moral superiority accompanying the enforcement of “personal responsibility” Back in the 80s there was a mad rush to not only eliminate existing pension plans, but the bright green light from the Reagan administration unleashed an unprecedented stampede of looting of those systems already in place and functioning. I would give your assertion that it is nanny state villainy which cripples working people more credence were it not for the fact that their corporate masters (with ample government assistance) are so greedily involved in pocketing their former wages. Likewise, is it merely a coincidence that states and municipalities are starved for revenue when ccorporate profits, executive salaries, the stock market, yacht sales etc. sit at record levels?

Maybe local governments wouldn’t be so starving for money to pay the pensions if huge corporations were made to pay the proper amount of taxes. Instead, because of loopholes in the tax laws and incentives to get the corporations to set up shop, they pay zero or almost zero.

Corporations that pay no taxes:

http://www.cnbc.com/id/101917093#.

@jca, GA for nice link

“Independent Living” facilities are usually on the bad side of town. We eat hot dogs, and mac n’ cheese having about $20 discretionary cash for the month.
That is the only option I know of.

^^^ What? lol

You could support them. You would always have live music available, and if they are used to odd jobs, then I would say your landscaping and minor repairs are solidly taken care of. Do you have kids? Bam! Instant babysitters!