About 25% of Americans age 50 and older expect to never retire, AARP study finds
abcnews.go.com
abcnews.go.com
I am just trying to stay healthy enough to be able to stay sharp enough to work into my 70's. I think the system is "working as intended" honestly - if workers are constantly worried about basic survival, how can they ever organize? It keeps people in line far too often, all the while the wealthiest keep getting wealthier. I have a very hard time taking anyone seriously that says this system is working well (at least in the US).
I'm not even mentioning the fact that if you are <40 there is virtually no chance you are going to get social security benefits - the political elite nowadays don't even try to pretend like that's not a thing anymore.
That's where the retirement money went. If you expect to be able to die without tapping the retirement account, you will have a problem. You need a reverse mortgage or to sell out and go back to renting.
You cant afford a downtown penthouse/mansion on SF & NY with 200k, but you can absolutely buy a home in both locations.
$200k in some cities is not a lot of money
$200k in some cities with 2 kids is really not a lot of money
$200k is not equal to $200k
I read it that way because of this:
>my income has gone up 8x in 10 years and I'm still barely keeping up with the cost of things, barely any real savings, etc.
Salary that low and you're not keeping up, you're falling behind. It's entirely possible to make 8X as much and feel you're barely advancing. While this is progress, it's not very satisfying progress because it feels that falling back into the previous pit is not really ever very far away.
If you live in a high tax and high CoL place now, 80K/year might not be enough to save anything
That plus gas, rent, utilities would leave plenty for food… like ramen and bulk rice.
8 x $14,500 is $116,000.
I won't say that's a lot of money in California (though it is above average), so it's just possible this is true (for those criticizing).
Live Flat Fucking Broke in San Francisco for Only $300 a Day.
Take one person in a non married couple earning $116k and the other unemployed. Strip off taxes, rent, utilities, gas and auto insurance, FOOD. Ain't much left over.
I didn't find a job because of finances but because of being unbelievably bored and unmotivated after the first year.
The worst part is that the two years subjectively felt like they went by in a blink of an eye. That is not really what you want in retirement with what waits for you at the end.
They don't want to let go of stuff they have collected, especially if they think it's valuable. https://www.reddit.com/r/BoomersBeingFools/comments/1btalt6/...
"In the Transamerica survey, 56% of retirees said they retired sooner than they had planned. A much smaller share, 7%, retired later than expected. Only 37% retired on their own schedule."
...
"nearly half of those who retired earlier than planned blamed their health: physical limitations, illness or disability. Roughly two-fifths blamed their jobs: They were laid off, downsized or lured into early retirement, or they were no longer happy at work."
...
"“We ask retirees why they retired sooner than planned and, by and large, it’s due to either personal health issues or employment-related issues. They may get laid off, bought out, reorganized, and it’s extremely difficult for older workers to find work.”"
-- https://www.cincinnati.com/story/news/2024/01/26/the-average...
That's a random survey but you will find many others that say the same thing. If you're planning on never retiring, you're not planning.
Around 20 years ago I lived in La Paz BCS Mexico (small city near Los cabos). There was a decent number of old Caucasian folks chilling out at the malecon (broadwalk) everyday.
That place is more expensive now, but there are others in central/south America with good cost/qol
Pricing out thr locals occurs in wealthier countries too. Very noticable in my country (New Zealand) which encourages wealthy foreigners (Peter Thiel, Shania Twain) to buy up nice real estate over here. Our lefty government slows it down but then our righty government gets in and they open the gates for a couple of million down. A bad deal.
One-off sales are shite economically versus recurring revenue.
New Zealand's dear leaders don't seem to understand the value of selling subscriptions.
Yep. People in Spain started to label what is happening 'colonization'. They complain that the language you hear most in Barcelona city center is neither catalan nor castilian - its English. And some waiters can only speak English - they don't know catalan, castilian, basque, valencian etc. Gentrification is horrible of course - the city centers across Spain have become expensive even for white collar Spanish professionals like engineers, lawyers, doctors.
There is going to be major flashback against rich immigrants at this rate - like how it happened in Lisbon.
https://www.euronews.com/travel/2023/05/12/proto-gentrifies-...
Now the roles inverted somehow: Spaniards/Mexicans don't like people immigrating to THEIR country. Even if they do it legally and inject money to the local economy. Mainly because they are making the cost of living higher than what the locals can afford.
I personally don't care people coming to gentrify Mexico. Globalization cuts both ways, and.
Its simply because that 'injecting money to the local economy' thing is a false proposition. A rich immigrant doesn't buy 100 shoes, 10 cars, or a dozen breads every day. They consume only as much as any other person would do. Their benefit to the local economy is negligible as a result. But...
> Mainly because they are making the cost of living higher than what the locals can afford.
...the difference between the Spanish, the Mexican immigrants in the US and the new wave of (mainly Angloamerican) immigrants in places like Spain is that the latter are rich immigrants. Even in the case of a merely working class American or Brit moving to Spain, the immigrant has much more income or life savings than the average Spaniard due to the high cost of living in the US or the UK etc. So when they come to cheaper places, they directly gentrify even the white-collar professionals from the city centers and coastal areas. If a white collar lawyer and engineer cant cope up with the rising housing costs and food prices, there is no way that the average Spaniard could afford those either.
So in the current dynamic, these rich individuals gentrify the people of the target nation out of their cities entirely, like in the case of Barcelona. Some locals started to call this 'a colonization' recently.
The intersection between “poor countries” and “nice place to live” is limited. I think we’ve largely forgotten organized crime still exists.
North Korea and Russia may be cheap, but they have other drawbacks…
Nah, the income of the average golden visaer or digital nomad is already a few multiples of even some European countries' median wage. The difference is too high. They are gentrifying even parts of Europe.
It just that we’ve severely stretched the definition of middle class and people’s expectations in the US are too high. That’s why immigrants will eat your lunch any day.
Childcare is the one expense that unfortunately hits middle class the hardest, no way around it. I think there’s room there to relax the regulations around childcare a bit (allow at home daycares, relax max number of children limit) - availability at this point might be more important than quality.
In Minneapolis for instance you’d be at 95th percentile HHI.
You are doing very well. You are just overspending.
I personally think of it as an aspirational descriptor, maybe on par with the lifestyle a single union-employed factory laborer could have afforded many decades prior. I don't care if that now requires a 90% income. We're a wealthy country, that's reasonable. If living in the 50th percentile is a fraught subsistence wage...that's a problem!
My guess is $220K for a family of four if you don't already own a house is not excessive at all. Housing is bonkers. Owning the real estate free and clear would make a big difference, but if I "only" had $220K to retire on and had to pay my rent, I'd move somewhere cheaper and I like it here.
The big difference is family of 4 with 2 working (childcare costs) versus only one working - in the former case, living wage (read: middle class wage) for a family of four is ~$164K in SF, and in the latter it is only $113K (as I mentioned in my previous comment).
And that thought makes me as happy as I'm likely to ever be <3