• givesomefucks@lemmy.world
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    8 months ago

    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.

    • nickwitha_k (he/him)@lemmy.sdf.org
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      8 months ago

      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.

  • eezeebee@lemmy.ca
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    8 months ago

    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.

    • Anticorp@lemmy.world
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      8 months ago

      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.

    • Zipitydew@sh.itjust.works
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      8 months ago

      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.

  • RememberTheApollo_@lemmy.world
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    8 months ago

    $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.

    • Fermion@feddit.nl
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      8 months ago

      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.