I’m 65, spent seven years in the army and I’ve worked for the post office for 40 years.
About the time I started at USPS they did away with civil service and transitioned (don’t freak out republiQans, it’s not that kind) to FERS (the Federal Employees Retirement System). It’ll be great they said. It’s like a three legged stool, they said. You’ll have a postal pension (annuity), Social Security, and the Federal Thrift Saving Plan (think 401k). So instead of retiring from civil service at a max of 80% of your salary, you’ll have this three legged stool, that you control, with a Thrift Savings Plan you can invest any way you want (which has, of course, taken a beating every time republiQans are in charge).
Now….they want to privatize the postal service where I will have an opportunity to work for the private company for half the pay (but without a pension and without a union of course) and while we’re at it let’s destroy Social Security and Medicare too.
Suddenly, that three legged stool is a lot less sturdy. That’s the thing about three legged stools. You kick one or two of the legs out from under it and the whole thing collapses and you’re flat on your ass.
I had planned to work another year or so until I can get my full SS but now I’m afraid I won’t have the retirement we had planned. Nothing extravagant. Just some time and maybe enough money coming in to make the many house repairs I’ve been trying to get to forever so my daughter’s inheritance will have some value and not be a money pit for her.
I’m afraid. Instead of planning for a few retirement years before I shuffle off this mortal coil, I’m staring at a hell of a lot of stress from being betrayed and abandoned by the government I’ve served for half a century. But at least I’ll have the comfort of knowing a bunch of billionaires got another tax cut. Fuck them all!
Oh, and just to weigh my options I decided to look into going ahead and retiring so maybe I could still get a pension if they don’t screw the retirees over as well. I went on the USPS HR web site, clicked on ‘e-retire’ and got a notice that the e-retire page is not available……..I tried to call HR and got a recording saying the wait time was over two hours…….
Oof. I saw the title and immediately thought “Ha! No.” I can literally not even imagine how that would happen. I have lots of debt and right now zero savings (I was fired from a low-paying but stable job last May, and have been living off of the meager savings I HAD accumulated plus my credit cards, which are all getting dangerously close to maxed out).
My skills (I mean everyone’s soon, but mine in particular now) as a translator are no longer needed thanks to AI, and even gig work has been so, so hard to find. Obviously too, it’s unstable. I have no idea how I’m going to pay taxes this year as I’ve needed literally every penny I’ve earned, and taxes (of course) are more expensive if you’re a gig worker since you “own your own business” 🙄 so pay the employer and employee portion. Living in Mexico — I’m a long-term immigrant here — is what’s helped me to get all my basic needs met and live pretty comfortably, but things are getting so much more pricey here too, now.
By the time I’m retirement age (I’m 43 now), I’m pretty sure most people’s jobs will have disappeared…it’s so hard to imagine what the world of work and economics might look like by then. But I often have the dark thought that suicide might really be the only “good” option for once I’m no longer able to work if there’s no way for me to get my basic needs met in terms of even housing and food, to say nothing of healthcare. That’s not depression taking, just realism. I guess we’ll see where we are when we get there. 🫠
Oh, no, I am so sorry to read this. What other job skills do you have? Could you teach English online? I've heard it's possible to make a reasonable income teaching over Zoom etc to Asian students. I hope you can find a new source of income soon.
I did that for quite a while, but then the Chinese government decided it wasn’t going to let foreign teachers teach there online, ha. There are online teaching gigs around, but they’re also just “gigs”…my specialty now is postproduction access, like making subtitles, dubbing scripts, audio description…right now I have a gig doing that and I love it, but again, the type of work I’m good at is never “stable job” work. Fingers crossed that I can keep doing what I’m doing for a while, and that these companies keep actually paying workers even though there’s not anyone left to enforce labor laws.
I did a little of that work at one point for a Fortune 500 company's TV commercials. It turned out to be good training for writing scripts. Have you given that a try? I really, really liked writing radio ads and video scripts. I wish I had a gig doing that. It was very fun and satisfying to write the script, choose the voice actors and music and background sound effects and then direct the whole thing. I miss that!
We are both concerned about sickness in later years. We keep saying "Switzerland" as if we really could or would do it. Both of my parents and both of his suffered/are suffering way too much in their later years. I will not go through that.
You’re definitely not the only one wishing they could afford “Switzerland”….. I have a backup plan, just in case, because I’ve always been a bit morbid like that. It’s somewhat alarming to be finding out, recently, that friends have begun thinking along the same lines….
Single Boomer here, still working full time at age 71. No end in sight. But it’s okay. I consider working a small price to pay for avoiding poverty. Can’t depend on the ol’ Social Security anymore. 🤷🏽♀️
I'm a boomer, maybe check the casual ageism? I lost my decent job at 62 because the parent company (a major media company) shut us down in the pandemic. I had planned to work to at least 70. I cannot get hired. My barely-enough freelance work fell off a cliff in the last two years. I am low-key terrified that I will end up like the man you helped (thank you for doing that). THere is no fun retirement for me though everyone assumes I'm "retired." I'm not. I'm looking for work. Still writing cover letters at 67. Going through months of interviews then not getting hired after the in-person interview finally happens. Trying for low-wage jobs at bookstores and in retail and not getting those either.
I don't own a home; I'm single without kids and you know how hard it is to live on a single salary in writing and editing. I admit I made some poor choices I'd do differently if I could. But I'm also smart, healthy, computer-competent, and able to work, and it ain't happening. Now social security and medicare are very much at risk. I'm in the boat you think is reserved for younger people and that only fosters hate and resentment and scorn for people like me, though I get that it's an easy and cheap shot to take. It still hurts when the smart and interesting people do it and then encourage others to pile on, which I've seen again and again with people I really respected.
Just adding that the boomer comments didn't add anything to the essay. It's powerful and well crafted without them. Totally unnecessary, but hurtful and simply not true for many of us.
It wasn’t meant to be a dig at people in your age group at all and your position is all too familiar to me. However, Boomers as a whole are a generation that largely did benefit from things like pensions and from good investment opportunities coinciding with when that generation was able to invest. For writers, of course, there’s never been a good time.
I am learning other skills because AI is making writing for money harder and harder. It’s crazy being in my late 50s and trying to figure out what the world will pay me for.
I meet up with my sister once a month. She was born in 1961, 7 years before me. She is doing well, living off the generous pension from her old workplace. Soon, she qualifies for the UK state pension — so no money worries. I'm glad for her, but things are very different for me. I'll have a much lower retirement income because I quit work to care for my terminally ill wife, and then I took time out to bring up my children after she died. Now, I'm nearly 57 and not exactly being head-hunted... Oh, and I missed out on the gold-plated workplace pension schemes.
Stability is becoming a worrisome thing these days. I am retired, and living on government pensions. If DOGE takes them from me, I'm screwed. I have a little savings that would last a couple of months before I would have to sell or abandon my house. So, I am making preparations, just in case. The hardest part is trying to figure out where I could go in the world and live. I can still work some and I have a lot of skills in the IT industry but how long before I can't do that anymore? Some European countries are starting to shut the doors on anyone coming from the U.S. now. I expect this to get worse soon.
As a recent article from Jessica Wildfire suggested, do I stay or do I go? If I go now, I won't be able to return until long after Trump is gone, if I live that long. Then, where would I go? My wife has a cousin in Italy. I wonder. I'm too old to apply for one of their 1 Euro deals for a fixer upper out in the countryside. I'm open for suggestions.
If we were younger, one of those deals would be amazing. Because I'm married to a European, we could move (and may have to) but we don't want to be away from the kids and grandkids. It's really a tough situation.
Good article. I don't think I'll ever retire fully, but if I can get down to 20 hours or so a week doing something self-directed I think I can manage that.
I had a great, high-paying job with a good retirement account. Then I got sick. Now I have a retirement account that is not terribly great, and not much income. I'm in the middle of selling my house in an expensive area and buying a larger house that costs half as much. In the meantime, my old house is not ready to be sold for another three weeks, and while I expect people will want to buy it, I don't know if the economy will be destroyed before I can get the check. Not that I'm stressing.
Gen X-er here. I spent age 18-27 in higher education, as a student; little bit of earnings put into Social Security. Spent all of my 20s and half of my 30s in work that had no retirement funding, and was paid so little that I could not start my own retirement funding. I have no pension either. So I started 'retirement investment' late and haven't caught up. S.S. is a key part of my future plan therefore. I remember my grandpa retiring from the steel mill at age 65, as close as he could get, and being given a watch, a check, and a little party (Genny Cream Ale and pretzels). I'm crossing my fingers my industry and employment will persist so that I can try to retire in 8 years (aged 65), but who knows if I will be able to.
As part of the deal Reagan made in the 1980s, the retirement age has been rising from 65 to 67 ever since. If you were born after 1961, your retirement age is now 67.
You can retire earlier but you get a smaller benefit and you get extra taxes for working and taking social security. After you turn 67, you don't.
The real benefit of hitting 65 is Medicare. My Medicare bill for a quarter is less than my health insurance was for a month.
I used to tell people to go onto the Social Security website and look at the monthly amounts but I'm hearing you're now waiving privacy rights if you do that. See if you can find a good calculator and pop in different ages to see the difference.
Not a paid subscriber again? If Holland is anything like Denmark, if he is still a citizen (or maybe even a dual citizen) he might be entitled to the Dutch state pension system!
I hear you on travelling. My wife has friends in Tijuana that she wants to go visit. She only has a green card and she has been pulled aside several times in the past. It scares the crap out of me!
I’m a relatively new subscriber. Semi-retired SLP (I work one day a week). I could work 2 days, but I enjoy pottery. My partner has a side business where we sell pottery at a farmers market and a couple other venues. We have been doing ok, but the recent SS political climate makes me nervous. I was able to contribute some to my retirement account, but I had my two kids later in life. College expenses and helping them get started took a lot of my end of career income. Covid pandemic pretty much ended my planned gradual phase out of practicing. So, it’s been interesting. We don’t “live the high life,” but I think we’re in a little better shape than most of the retired people I know. Luckily, we live in a small progressive urban community and have a lot of support and a walkable neighborhood. Even then we’ve made the conscious effort to be very frugal about things. Thanks for your insightful writing!
I think about this A LOT these days, at 52. I had to spend every penny of savings I had on job loss, death expenses for my child, and then another job loss, all since the pandemic. At my age, it's friggin scary to exist without that cushion in the bank. Will I ever be able to build that back? Time will tell.
Although I'm doing just fine with my business now, I was pretty far in the hole and playing catch-up is not what I thought I'd be doing in my 50s.
Luckily in Canada, we still have free Healthcare and a good social structure but uts expenses AF to live here. Guess that's the price to pay for good quality of life.
I’m 65, spent seven years in the army and I’ve worked for the post office for 40 years.
About the time I started at USPS they did away with civil service and transitioned (don’t freak out republiQans, it’s not that kind) to FERS (the Federal Employees Retirement System). It’ll be great they said. It’s like a three legged stool, they said. You’ll have a postal pension (annuity), Social Security, and the Federal Thrift Saving Plan (think 401k). So instead of retiring from civil service at a max of 80% of your salary, you’ll have this three legged stool, that you control, with a Thrift Savings Plan you can invest any way you want (which has, of course, taken a beating every time republiQans are in charge).
Now….they want to privatize the postal service where I will have an opportunity to work for the private company for half the pay (but without a pension and without a union of course) and while we’re at it let’s destroy Social Security and Medicare too.
Suddenly, that three legged stool is a lot less sturdy. That’s the thing about three legged stools. You kick one or two of the legs out from under it and the whole thing collapses and you’re flat on your ass.
I had planned to work another year or so until I can get my full SS but now I’m afraid I won’t have the retirement we had planned. Nothing extravagant. Just some time and maybe enough money coming in to make the many house repairs I’ve been trying to get to forever so my daughter’s inheritance will have some value and not be a money pit for her.
I’m afraid. Instead of planning for a few retirement years before I shuffle off this mortal coil, I’m staring at a hell of a lot of stress from being betrayed and abandoned by the government I’ve served for half a century. But at least I’ll have the comfort of knowing a bunch of billionaires got another tax cut. Fuck them all!
Oh, and just to weigh my options I decided to look into going ahead and retiring so maybe I could still get a pension if they don’t screw the retirees over as well. I went on the USPS HR web site, clicked on ‘e-retire’ and got a notice that the e-retire page is not available……..I tried to call HR and got a recording saying the wait time was over two hours…….
Fuck them all!
Oof. I saw the title and immediately thought “Ha! No.” I can literally not even imagine how that would happen. I have lots of debt and right now zero savings (I was fired from a low-paying but stable job last May, and have been living off of the meager savings I HAD accumulated plus my credit cards, which are all getting dangerously close to maxed out).
My skills (I mean everyone’s soon, but mine in particular now) as a translator are no longer needed thanks to AI, and even gig work has been so, so hard to find. Obviously too, it’s unstable. I have no idea how I’m going to pay taxes this year as I’ve needed literally every penny I’ve earned, and taxes (of course) are more expensive if you’re a gig worker since you “own your own business” 🙄 so pay the employer and employee portion. Living in Mexico — I’m a long-term immigrant here — is what’s helped me to get all my basic needs met and live pretty comfortably, but things are getting so much more pricey here too, now.
By the time I’m retirement age (I’m 43 now), I’m pretty sure most people’s jobs will have disappeared…it’s so hard to imagine what the world of work and economics might look like by then. But I often have the dark thought that suicide might really be the only “good” option for once I’m no longer able to work if there’s no way for me to get my basic needs met in terms of even housing and food, to say nothing of healthcare. That’s not depression taking, just realism. I guess we’ll see where we are when we get there. 🫠
Oh, no, I am so sorry to read this. What other job skills do you have? Could you teach English online? I've heard it's possible to make a reasonable income teaching over Zoom etc to Asian students. I hope you can find a new source of income soon.
I did that for quite a while, but then the Chinese government decided it wasn’t going to let foreign teachers teach there online, ha. There are online teaching gigs around, but they’re also just “gigs”…my specialty now is postproduction access, like making subtitles, dubbing scripts, audio description…right now I have a gig doing that and I love it, but again, the type of work I’m good at is never “stable job” work. Fingers crossed that I can keep doing what I’m doing for a while, and that these companies keep actually paying workers even though there’s not anyone left to enforce labor laws.
I did a little of that work at one point for a Fortune 500 company's TV commercials. It turned out to be good training for writing scripts. Have you given that a try? I really, really liked writing radio ads and video scripts. I wish I had a gig doing that. It was very fun and satisfying to write the script, choose the voice actors and music and background sound effects and then direct the whole thing. I miss that!
I am literally open to anything 😂 but I’ve discovered that actually GETTING those jobs is really, really hard.
I completely agree. I hope somebody is reading this right now and thinking, "Hey, I should reach out to Sarah DeVries about doing some work for me!"
We are both concerned about sickness in later years. We keep saying "Switzerland" as if we really could or would do it. Both of my parents and both of his suffered/are suffering way too much in their later years. I will not go through that.
I have a similar idea in mind if things get to a certain point.
You’re definitely not the only one wishing they could afford “Switzerland”….. I have a backup plan, just in case, because I’ve always been a bit morbid like that. It’s somewhat alarming to be finding out, recently, that friends have begun thinking along the same lines….
Single Boomer here, still working full time at age 71. No end in sight. But it’s okay. I consider working a small price to pay for avoiding poverty. Can’t depend on the ol’ Social Security anymore. 🤷🏽♀️
I hope you can drop to part-time (or better yet, retire) someday. But I am glad you're doing OK.
I'm a boomer, maybe check the casual ageism? I lost my decent job at 62 because the parent company (a major media company) shut us down in the pandemic. I had planned to work to at least 70. I cannot get hired. My barely-enough freelance work fell off a cliff in the last two years. I am low-key terrified that I will end up like the man you helped (thank you for doing that). THere is no fun retirement for me though everyone assumes I'm "retired." I'm not. I'm looking for work. Still writing cover letters at 67. Going through months of interviews then not getting hired after the in-person interview finally happens. Trying for low-wage jobs at bookstores and in retail and not getting those either.
I don't own a home; I'm single without kids and you know how hard it is to live on a single salary in writing and editing. I admit I made some poor choices I'd do differently if I could. But I'm also smart, healthy, computer-competent, and able to work, and it ain't happening. Now social security and medicare are very much at risk. I'm in the boat you think is reserved for younger people and that only fosters hate and resentment and scorn for people like me, though I get that it's an easy and cheap shot to take. It still hurts when the smart and interesting people do it and then encourage others to pile on, which I've seen again and again with people I really respected.
Just adding that the boomer comments didn't add anything to the essay. It's powerful and well crafted without them. Totally unnecessary, but hurtful and simply not true for many of us.
It wasn’t meant to be a dig at people in your age group at all and your position is all too familiar to me. However, Boomers as a whole are a generation that largely did benefit from things like pensions and from good investment opportunities coinciding with when that generation was able to invest. For writers, of course, there’s never been a good time.
I am learning other skills because AI is making writing for money harder and harder. It’s crazy being in my late 50s and trying to figure out what the world will pay me for.
I meet up with my sister once a month. She was born in 1961, 7 years before me. She is doing well, living off the generous pension from her old workplace. Soon, she qualifies for the UK state pension — so no money worries. I'm glad for her, but things are very different for me. I'll have a much lower retirement income because I quit work to care for my terminally ill wife, and then I took time out to bring up my children after she died. Now, I'm nearly 57 and not exactly being head-hunted... Oh, and I missed out on the gold-plated workplace pension schemes.
We punish people severely for care work, even though we don't provide any options. This is so unfair.
Stability is becoming a worrisome thing these days. I am retired, and living on government pensions. If DOGE takes them from me, I'm screwed. I have a little savings that would last a couple of months before I would have to sell or abandon my house. So, I am making preparations, just in case. The hardest part is trying to figure out where I could go in the world and live. I can still work some and I have a lot of skills in the IT industry but how long before I can't do that anymore? Some European countries are starting to shut the doors on anyone coming from the U.S. now. I expect this to get worse soon.
As a recent article from Jessica Wildfire suggested, do I stay or do I go? If I go now, I won't be able to return until long after Trump is gone, if I live that long. Then, where would I go? My wife has a cousin in Italy. I wonder. I'm too old to apply for one of their 1 Euro deals for a fixer upper out in the countryside. I'm open for suggestions.
If we were younger, one of those deals would be amazing. Because I'm married to a European, we could move (and may have to) but we don't want to be away from the kids and grandkids. It's really a tough situation.
Good article. I don't think I'll ever retire fully, but if I can get down to 20 hours or so a week doing something self-directed I think I can manage that.
Same.
I had a great, high-paying job with a good retirement account. Then I got sick. Now I have a retirement account that is not terribly great, and not much income. I'm in the middle of selling my house in an expensive area and buying a larger house that costs half as much. In the meantime, my old house is not ready to be sold for another three weeks, and while I expect people will want to buy it, I don't know if the economy will be destroyed before I can get the check. Not that I'm stressing.
Gen X-er here. I spent age 18-27 in higher education, as a student; little bit of earnings put into Social Security. Spent all of my 20s and half of my 30s in work that had no retirement funding, and was paid so little that I could not start my own retirement funding. I have no pension either. So I started 'retirement investment' late and haven't caught up. S.S. is a key part of my future plan therefore. I remember my grandpa retiring from the steel mill at age 65, as close as he could get, and being given a watch, a check, and a little party (Genny Cream Ale and pretzels). I'm crossing my fingers my industry and employment will persist so that I can try to retire in 8 years (aged 65), but who knows if I will be able to.
Plan for 67.
As part of the deal Reagan made in the 1980s, the retirement age has been rising from 65 to 67 ever since. If you were born after 1961, your retirement age is now 67.
You can retire earlier but you get a smaller benefit and you get extra taxes for working and taking social security. After you turn 67, you don't.
The real benefit of hitting 65 is Medicare. My Medicare bill for a quarter is less than my health insurance was for a month.
I used to tell people to go onto the Social Security website and look at the monthly amounts but I'm hearing you're now waiving privacy rights if you do that. See if you can find a good calculator and pop in different ages to see the difference.
Not a paid subscriber again? If Holland is anything like Denmark, if he is still a citizen (or maybe even a dual citizen) he might be entitled to the Dutch state pension system!
We are trying to figure that out.
My brother figured t out for me. If your husband has family members not afraid of tackling bureaucracy, let them have at it!
His sister is working on it from that side. At some point we hope to go there and settle things but not while the thug is in office.
I hear you on travelling. My wife has friends in Tijuana that she wants to go visit. She only has a green card and she has been pulled aside several times in the past. It scares the crap out of me!
Remember...
"May you live in interesting times"
...was an ancient Chinese curse.
Yes. I should never have irritated the owner of that one Chinese restaurant that one time.
That would do it every time. LOLOL
(Why won't this thread allow me to add a funny meme?)
I’m a relatively new subscriber. Semi-retired SLP (I work one day a week). I could work 2 days, but I enjoy pottery. My partner has a side business where we sell pottery at a farmers market and a couple other venues. We have been doing ok, but the recent SS political climate makes me nervous. I was able to contribute some to my retirement account, but I had my two kids later in life. College expenses and helping them get started took a lot of my end of career income. Covid pandemic pretty much ended my planned gradual phase out of practicing. So, it’s been interesting. We don’t “live the high life,” but I think we’re in a little better shape than most of the retired people I know. Luckily, we live in a small progressive urban community and have a lot of support and a walkable neighborhood. Even then we’ve made the conscious effort to be very frugal about things. Thanks for your insightful writing!
Good read. Shared on my Facebook page.
Thank you :)
Figure I’ll end up like my grandfather, buck naked, coked to the eyeballs driving a motorcycle into a ravine convinced I can jump it.
OK, now you have to tell us more about your grandfather.
Was your gramps Evel Kneivel?
Just a man with a dream and so, so much cocaine
I think about this A LOT these days, at 52. I had to spend every penny of savings I had on job loss, death expenses for my child, and then another job loss, all since the pandemic. At my age, it's friggin scary to exist without that cushion in the bank. Will I ever be able to build that back? Time will tell.
Although I'm doing just fine with my business now, I was pretty far in the hole and playing catch-up is not what I thought I'd be doing in my 50s.
Luckily in Canada, we still have free Healthcare and a good social structure but uts expenses AF to live here. Guess that's the price to pay for good quality of life.
It's heartbreaking to hear everything you've had to endure in such a short period of time. Hugs.