This Is What Life Without Retirement Savings Looks Like
Many seniors are stuck with lives of never-ending work—a fate that could befall millions in the coming decades.
CORONA, Calif.—Roberta Gordon never thought she’d still be alive at age 76. She definitely didn’t think she’d still be working. But every Saturday, she goes down to the local grocery store and hands out samples, earning $50 a day, because she needs the money.
“I’m a working woman again,” she told me, in the common room of the senior apartment complex where she now lives, here in California’s Inland Empire. Gordon has worked dozens of odd jobs throughout her life—as a house cleaner, a home health aide, a telemarketer, a librarian, a fundraiser—but at many times in her life, she didn’t have a steady job that paid into Social Security. She didn’t receive a pension. And she definitely wasn’t making enough to put aside money for retirement.
So now, at 76, she earns $915 a month through Social Security and through Supplemental Security Income, or SSI, a program for low-income seniors. Her rent, which she has had to cover solo since her roommate died in August, is $1,040 a month. She’s been taking on credit-card debt to cover the gap, and to pay for utilities, food, and other essentials. She often goes to a church food bank for supplies.
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These initiatives can make the difference between having a home—and some semblance of stability—and not. Roberta Gordon, in Corona, was barely scraping by when I talked to her. A few months later, she was much more stable. Why? She’d gotten off a wait list and been accepted into the housing-voucher program known as Section 8, which reduces the amount of income she has to put towards housing. She’s still working at 76, but she feels a little more secure now that she has more help. She knows, at least, that she’s one of the lucky ones—able, in her older years, to keep food on the table and a roof over her head.
https://www.theatlantic.com/business/archive/2018/02/pensions-safety-net-california/553970/
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The Northwest Washington lifestyle trap: $500,000 in income and still can’t save
Washington-based financial adviser Lori Atwood has untangled many a financial mystery for her 400 clients, like this gut-buster: How does a family of four drop $500 in one month at McDonald’s?
That’s a lot of Big Macs and Filet-O-Fishes. But when you have a husband and wife with high-powered jobs working 10 or 12 hours a day, who feels like cooking?
Atwood’s mission isn’t all about writing wills, picking life or term insurance, and improving your credit score.
It’s about controlling spending habits and learning to live within — or ideally below — one’s means. She calls it “trapped by the lifestyle.”
“People are stuck on this treadmill, working, working, working,” said the 50-year-old University of Pennsylvania graduate. “They make $250,000, $500,000 a year and they don’t know where their money is going. They don’t have any savings. It is true but ridiculous.”
it all goes to keeping up their lifestyle, children, debt, etc. They can't get ahead and they don't know how to scale down.
Welcome to DU!
But not a day goes by that I don't miss him - think of something I need to ask him about a hundred things, just what he thinks about something or I want to share a joke or a memory. Some days are worse than others, and life obviously goes on, but he's never far from my thoughts. And, yes, he paid for my college, and I do appreciate it, but I'd trade that for just a little more time. He never got the chance to retire, I used to imagine what I could do for him when he got older, but that time never came. It's not an obsession, just something that weighs on my heart. I only had one Dad and I miss him an awful lot. 
aw shit, poor old woman...... You know that's what CONservatives are thinking and saying. Heartless bastards that they are! The vast majority of them are born half-way between third base and home-plate and they think they've hit a home run. 
