The Money Mustache Community
General Discussion => Welcome and General Discussion => Topic started by: swampwiz on April 10, 2018, 12:44:29 PM
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What I mean here is that someone whose situation is that he can't possibly think about early retiring.
I'll start. I knew a guy (early 30's at the time) who had 4 young children at the time, all from a fairly high-maintenance wife (stay-at-home at the time), who had just rolled all his savings into his McMansion in California's Imperial Valley (I think it was Moreno Valley) in early 2007, and still with about $50K of student debt (instead of paying that down, he had built up his savings to buy a $550K home in what had been "the hottest real estate market around". He said that he absolutely could not lose his job (aerospace engineer), so he made sure to be the hardest working, boss-supplicating corporate peon at work - and totally miserable - so that he would be at the bottom of any layoff list. He said that he could see 20 years in the future as when he could start to "sock away retirement cash".
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This is going to be the most depressing thread ever. I don't know if I can think of a more depressing situation than a person who hates their job and has no way out. The Million Dollar Baby of threads ;(
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Not sure why the person in your example couldn't find a way to retire...if that was 2007, it's 10 years later so any updates? Did they change anything/start thinking about retirement?
Not sure if you want examples of people who claim they can't think of retiring early or people actually in situations where they cannot retire early (i.e., 68 years old with no savings, tons of debt, no pension, high recurring monthly bills, no job, no education and no spouse or family to help out would be the kind of situation that comes to mind).
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My neighbors. Very long story short, he's an alcoholic who could never hold down a job and she works in a grocery store (neither have any kind of education). He wrecked his car while drunk so he's on house arrest, she has to get rides to work because her car is broken and they don't have any savings. The only saving grace is they don't have a mortgage but they have no health nor home insurance and they have legal and medical bills (he's had two minor strokes). Neither of them are even 60 yet.
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I'll play: a lady who's marriage had been tumultuous and, at times, abusive for 40 years (they married as teenagers). She raised the kids/ran the house with no help from him while getting her first job AND multiple side-gigs, two degrees, and some tough certifications by the time she was 30. The eldest was ~12 when she started making good money, but husband was a spender, so they saved NOTHING. She wasn't too worried, though, because her father promised her a big inheritance (MILLIONS, he said). But, not a penny if she left her husband.
Each and every one of the kids were high-performers. They left for college, paying their own way. She and her husband were in their 40s, making the best money of their lives. She saved some and invested, but he developed some expensive tastes in liquor and cigars and a gambling habit. The inheritance arrived in their very late 40s, but it was NOT millions. By this point, the husband was accustomed to spending $5,000/mo just on the aforementioned recreation.
She's still working today, and still married, 10 years later, a grandmother, almost 60, no retirement in sight.
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Know a lady who is 73. She must work jobs like cleaning or receptionist to get by. Her son is helping her pay for her expenses. She gets minimal Social Security. No escape for her and she worries what happens if she can't work. One step away from homeless.
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I have a friend who is 80 and still working. Her husband is in his 90s and in very poor health so obviously no longer working. She seems to enjoy her job so it's not that sad but it's a worry what is going to happen if she can't work anymore. She rents her apartment and has other expenses.
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She wasn't too worried, though, because her father promised her a big inheritance (MILLIONS, he said). But, not a penny if she left her husband.
WTF? Where does an arrangement like that come from?
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I'll put forward my father-in-law as exhibit A. Good job for decades (Uni lecturer), but nothing to show for it - largely because of spending his time chasing a series of younger women. Drew out and blew all his superannuation in double quick time. Now mid 70's and trying to hide his Parkinson's disease so he can continue working as a cab driver on the 5am shift to make ends meet.
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She wasn't too worried, though, because her father promised her a big inheritance (MILLIONS, he said). But, not a penny if she left her husband.
WTF? Where does an arrangement like that come from?
Some religious family? I know my grandparents were against my mother's divorce (even knowing about my father much younger mistresses and illegitimate child) because Catholicism. Grandparents comforted my mom: "Worry not, soon he will be old and unattractive, so he won't be going around anymore"; Divorce happened anyway a few years later, but it was very hard for my mother not to have her parents support.
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I have a friend who is retired military (so almost-free healthcare for his whole family plus a good $20k after tax income before he shows up to work), who works a job making between $90-100k/year. His wife works part time min-wage jobs (when she can keep one) and they have one child in high school.
He has two major detriments to his financial situation however (and both revolve around his refusal to put what he knows is his best financial interests ahead of other factors):
1. His wife is not fully mentally capable, and has full ability to spend and spend and spend (I'm talking rent-a-center big screen TVs and furniture and appliances when they last moved for instance).
2. His wife's family mooches off of them.
Between their outflows for his wife's family and her spending, he literally had a vehicle repossessed recently (despite a low cost of living they have such as their housing costing them ~$35k for the trailer-home they got because they couldn't afford a regular mortgage payment for a modest house on his 6-figure income....). He's exceptionally intelligent, so he knows that it's a ridiculous situation they shouldn't be in, but he bows his head and accepts it and probably always will.
Everyone he works with is "responsibly" taking multiple vacations per year and living in McMansions with newer cars and he's left with nothing after his wife and her family eat through all his earnings (and then some sometimes).
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She wasn't too worried, though, because her father promised her a big inheritance (MILLIONS, he said). But, not a penny if she left her husband.
WTF? Where does an arrangement like that come from?
Epor nailed it. It comes from the 1970s, and the following circumstances: her father was a nationally acclaimed expert in a child-related field of study, prominently employed at a religious institution, so... lots of problems having either an unmarried, pregnant 17-yr-old daughter living with him, or, an unemployed, divorced daughter and her children living with him. Probably scandal, job loss, etc. Gotta get her married and KEEP her married. Using the stick won't work, because life with the husband is crap, so gotta use a carrot.
And, to be fair, her father probably thought it would be millions.
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During my first year teaching I worked with a first grade teacher that was 72 years old and so miserable and grumpy that she made everyone around her feel the same way. She had never stayed with one district long enough to build up a retirement and had to work. I decided that year that I would start saving and investing and now in just a few more years I'll leave teaching with a nice healthy pension and and several solid investment accounts.
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My father would qualify.
When I was growing up, he had his own business, and was very financially savvy. He taught me about investing, mutual funds, and retirement accounts when I was a teenager. He was maxing out his SEP-IRA every year. He built a custom house on an acreage mortgage free. He was on track to retire early.
And then the recession hit, and his business withered. And for whatever reason, he and my stepmom couldn't alter their lifestyle, even though relatively small changes would have been enough. He had paid for private college for the oldest stepchild when business was good. When the business starting failing, he couldn't cashflow the other kids, so mortgaged his house and took out parent plus loans in order to put the next 3 kids through private college, rather than apologize for the changed circumstances and make them take out their own loans, or change colleges.
Then the business ended completely. He had to sell his dream house to pay off the mortgage. He started living on his retirement accounts, paying fees in order to access them early. They moved across the country in order to help a family member in need, where they rented a large house for an ungodly monthly rent. (It had to be large enough for 6 kids, even though 5 were through college and out of the house, because of course they'll all come for Christmas and need their own room) Of course, neither could find jobs in the small town they moved to. So 2 years of no income, and large expenses, burned through a large portion of his retirement accounts.
They finally moved back to a large city, where they were both able to find intermittent work, that never paid enough. Of course, they still had to rent large houses in nice neighborhoods. They supplemented by raiding the retirement accounts.
Where are they now? All retirement funds are gone. He is 67 and still working, but starting to feel his age. They still have the parent-plus loans, with no hope of ever paying them off. Despite both working full-time jobs, they couldn't cover their expenses, and got behind on multiple bills (did I mention the large, lake-front house they rent?). He took social security in order to make ends meet. So when the day comes that he is physically no longer capable of working (and his job is a physical one), they will be well and truly screwed.
It's interesting because my mom is also in a bad place financially, has relied on family to support her for the last 5 years, and will need family (aka me) to support her for the rest of her life, and yet my father's situation seems so much worse to me. I think it's because my mom has always been bad with money, so I expected it. But my father was good with money, and still managed to screw everything up.
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I work in health care in a very lucrative specialty. Typically my partners and I gross 475k a year. Couple years were even higher. Despite that, I have a partner who got divorced (strike one) while still supporting two of his three kids, got remarried to one of the hospital secretaries (strike two), got screwed in his divorce because he was schtupping "strike two" while still married and got her pregenant (strike three), then had another kid (strike four) and has had to support his step kids who he tried to buy their affection or approval (strike five), then he has adopted three more kids (VERY KIND NICE AND CHARITABLE but...strike six, seven and eight), has purchase not one (strike nine) but TWO (strike 10) vacation homes. Oh yeah and he's in his sixties and can't afford life insurance.
Needless to say despite making a salary that makes him nearly a 1%er, he lives paycheck to paycheck.
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I don't know these people personally, but my god, out here in the small town where I work, the fast food joints are staffed largely by old people (60's) who look in terrible health. It's very obvious to me they are NOT working there by choice, and it's a near certainty they'll never retire, in the voluntary sense (it's likely they won't be able to work anymore and go on SS disability and Medicaid). I don't frequent these places (McDonald's, Wendy's), but man, when I do, I'm saddened at the sight of these people. I want to ask them how it came to this; I'm genuinely interested to know what choices or circumstances in life led them to this place.
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During my first year teaching I worked with a first grade teacher that was 72 years old and so miserable and grumpy that she made everyone around her feel the same way. She had never stayed with one district long enough to build up a retirement and had to work. I decided that year that I would start saving and investing and now in just a few more years I'll leave teaching with a nice healthy pension and and several solid investment accounts.
Seen this before and it’s just the worst. These people have such important jobs teaching our youth and when they’re burned out like this it’s not good. Another bad one is people in the healthcare field. My mom passed last summer and one of her nurses was a horrible bitter woman that clearly hated her job but probably couldn’t afford to leave. It’s fine when these people work at mcds, you half expect it but in jobs like these it just burns me. If I had money I’d hand them a glob of it and say GTFO!
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This is so bad but, my current boss. She is 69, turning 70 in August and can't retire because she's got three adult sons that she still financially takes care of, I mean housing, cars, even groceries and vacations. She's got a pension from IBM (34 years then retired) and make mid-six figure salary at current job. How they are the boys not embarrassed and ashamed to be taking such advantage of there mother, I'll never know. Her husband is in a VA nursing home. She's maintaining two houses, one that the boys live in and one where she lives, Still has car payments and this morning when I gave my official notice to FIRE in three months, she mentioned that shes looking for a new car since hers is starting to break down but is thinking of keeping it since its and SUV for winter driving !!! Some things/people just defy logic.
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I work in health care in a very lucrative specialty. Typically my partners and I gross 475k a year. Couple years were even higher. Despite that, I have a partner who got divorced (strike one) while still supporting two of his three kids, got remarried to one of the hospital secretaries (strike two), got screwed in his divorce because he was schtupping "strike two" while still married and got her pregenant (strike three), then had another kid (strike four) and has had to support his step kids who he tried to buy their affection or approval (strike five), then he has adopted three more kids (VERY KIND NICE AND CHARITABLE but...strike six, seven and eight), has purchase not one (strike nine) but TWO (strike 10) vacation homes. Oh yeah and he's in his sixties and can't afford life insurance.
Needless to say despite making a salary that makes him nearly a 1%er, he lives paycheck to paycheck.
F*ck! This is really a financial wreck but... is he happy? Seems like he longs for a big family/lots of people around, and if that was his goal, he surely made it.
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He's a great guy with a very big heart. That part I get. The beach house and the mountain house that he now can't sell, I don't get.
I'm really afraid one day I'm going to find him unconscious in our call room. This is NOT the kind of job for an older person, for an "indoor job" it is VERY stressful and physically demanding and this is coming from someone who used to work construction in South Georgia to put himself through school.
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I don't know these people personally, but my god, out here in the small town where I work, the fast food joints are staffed largely by old people (60's) who look in terrible health. It's very obvious to me they are NOT working there by choice, and it's a near certainty they'll never retire, in the voluntary sense (it's likely they won't be able to work anymore and go on SS disability and Medicaid). I don't frequent these places (McDonald's, Wendy's), but man, when I do, I'm saddened at the sight of these people. I want to ask them how it came to this; I'm genuinely interested to know what choices or circumstances in life led them to this place.
One of our local Walmart greeters makes me want to cry. She sits on her walker (at least it is the nice one with the flip down seat) as she greets people and checks receipts as people leave. I have seen her there in her full winter coat and gloves because of the draft from the large doors. Watching her walk to the back of the store to clock in just looks PAINFUL. I wouldn't mind working a job part-time when I am older as I would tend to otherwise be a hermit, but being FORCED to work crappy shifts at poor wages while in poor health would be terrible.
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I don't know these people personally, but my god, out here in the small town where I work, the fast food joints are staffed largely by old people (60's) who look in terrible health. It's very obvious to me they are NOT working there by choice, and it's a near certainty they'll never retire, in the voluntary sense (it's likely they won't be able to work anymore and go on SS disability and Medicaid). I don't frequent these places (McDonald's, Wendy's), but man, when I do, I'm saddened at the sight of these people. I want to ask them how it came to this; I'm genuinely interested to know what choices or circumstances in life led them to this place.
One of our local Walmart greeters makes me want to cry. She sits on her walker (at least it is the nice one with the flip down seat) as she greets people and checks receipts as people leave. I have seen her there in her full winter coat and gloves because of the draft from the large doors. Watching her walk to the back of the store to clock in just looks PAINFUL. I wouldn't mind working a job part-time when I am older as I would tend to otherwise be a hermit, but being FORCED to work crappy shifts at poor wages while in poor health would be terrible.
This shit terrifies me. I personally don’t know anyone in this situation but when I see it it upsets me.
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She wasn't too worried, though, because her father promised her a big inheritance (MILLIONS, he said). But, not a penny if she left her husband.
WTF? Where does an arrangement like that come from?
Don't marry for money - you can borrow it more cheaply
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I know a women, call her Sal, got married, graduated college, had 3 kids, then divorced after 12 to 14 years.
At some point she got a girlfriend, they lived in a van for 5 to 7 years, with the girlfriend making some money
in a technical business and Sal just helping out but never making any money.
The Sal inherited 1/2 of a house when a family member died, so the two have lived there with the girlfriend
going off on intermettent tech jobs. The girlfriend pays no rent.
Sal got a part time job when she was 56, worked about 4 years then moved to another job with more hours but not fulltime.
Now at 61 she works, the business is pushing more and more work on her but only gave her a very piddly raise. She can't quit has no savings and lives paycheck to paycheck.
The best part, because of her lack of work, she says she will only get about $550 month in SS.
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No I can't I just ca.. Well OK then.
A couple I know, the wife calls me and say's Hey EXFB, I heard you know a bit about money.. Umm yeah I do.. Need your help.. OK.
She gave me the story.. OMFG! Three teenage kids, almost 60 and the grand total they have save for retirement is a big fat NOTHING.
Live in a rented house, and are currently saving.. guess what?.. Nothing.. "We just can't afford it, life is so expensive!"
I'm having a giant WTF? moment at this point.. I asked her what she thought was going to happen.. like you are spending every last penny and then some to make it to rent day. Are you going to work forever? because SS ain't gonna cover more than about 1/3rd of your current lifestyle.
OK.. where can we save in your budget... "Well these kids are so expensive and my Daughter's clean food diet".. OK WTF is a CF diet and is it medically necessary?
No but she feels better.... I'm now pounding my head on my desk..
What are you spending on your cell phones?.. $400 a month!..... ARRRGH.
in 2 minutes I wiped $1300 out of the monthly budget.. But of course they have no intention of saving anything and they have not come back.
The end of the conversation she tells me the tale of how her Mother is 70 years old and works paycheck to paycheck on a min wage job she hates and doesn't think her health will allow her to do much longer... And then WE will have to help her......
Damn, wow and a few expletives!
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One of my best friends. 37, divorced 3 years ago, primary custody of a 12 year old. She's a licensed therapist and he works the network help desk at a university. While married their combined income couldn't have been more than $70k. Her share was around $20k. She stuck around the clinic where she intern'd working just above minimum wage part time so she's have more time at home with her kid. Not only didn't they save, but she has around $20k or so in student loans and he ran up credit card bills equal to their annual income. In the divorce she had to take half of it. Even knowing their marriage was doomed, she refused to increase her hours or find better work because she'd lose "mommy time." The clinic closed down her section and rather than accept job offers of close to $90k/year from other places, she took her patients with her and opened her own clinic. The catch is they're all the type who can't afford normal therapy rates so she runs it as a non-profit. It's noble and she's really good at it, but for working 60 hours a week she's making at most $30k/year. Her former supervisor is now her partner and they can barely tolerate each other. She continues to plow ahead hoping somehow the business becomes a little more self-sustaining (a few government contracts are helping) rather than look to her financial security by accepting any of the half a dozen job offers she gets each year to run somebody else's program for triple what she's making now. She finally opened an IRA last year (at EJ of all places), but only fills about half of it. Any time I mention her financial security she gets indignant and I won't hear from her for a few days.
I realize she's still young and not in the target demographic of this discussion, but in the long run unless she accepts the cold hard math she's going to be like her business partner working well into her 60s keeping it together.
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No I can't I just ca.. Well OK then.
A couple I know, the wife calls me and say's Hey EXFB, I heard you know a bit about money.. Umm yeah I do.. Need your help.. OK.
She gave me the story.. OMFG! Three teenage kids, almost 60 and the grand total they have save for retirement is a big fat NOTHING.
Live in a rented house, and are currently saving.. guess what?.. Nothing.. "We just can't afford it, life is so expensive!"
I'm having a giant WTF? moment at this point.. I asked her what she thought was going to happen.. like you are spending every last penny and then some to make it to rent day. Are you going to work forever? because SS ain't gonna cover more than about 1/3rd of your current lifestyle.
OK.. where can we save in your budget... "Well these kids are so expensive and my Daughter's clean food diet".. OK WTF is a CF diet and is it medically necessary?
No but she feels better.... I'm now pounding my head on my desk..
What are you spending on your cell phones?.. $400 a month!..... ARRRGH.
in 2 minutes I wiped $1300 out of the monthly budget.. But of course they have no intention of saving anything and they have not come back.
The end of the conversation she tells me the tale of how her Mother is 70 years old and works paycheck to paycheck on a min wage job she hates and doesn't think her health will allow her to do much longer... And then WE will have to help her......
Damn, wow and a few expletives!
Your friend's almost 60 and her mother is 70, I'm impressed!
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I have a friend who is a 55 year old woman. She makes around $130k, is married and has 3 adult children, 25, 28 and 30. 25 and 30 still live at home, with no intention of moving out. One has a low paying job and spends all his money on alcohol and travel with his buddies, the other just lies around the house all day. Hubby was a stay at home dad, so he has never worked since first child was born. They have a large home in a nice neighborhood that is literally crumbling around them from neglect (despite hubby's 100% free time for at least the past 10 years), yet they spend money lavishly on trips, restaurant meals, clothes, salon services, and enough groceries to feed five families. The house is jam-packed full of every kind of unnecessary stuff imaginable. Their kitchen has multiples of every gadget ever made. She is so very tired of working, but it's all on her and none of them seem to care that she'll be grinding it out until she is a very old woman. She seems to accept it, thinking there is no other way unless you strike it rich by inheritance or lottery win. I almost dread the day she finds out we we have quit our jobs and retired early. She doesn't know of our plans, as she works with my husband and we want to keep it quiet until he's ready to give his notice.
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No I can't I just ca.. Well OK then.
A couple I know, the wife calls me and say's Hey EXFB, I heard you know a bit about money.. Umm yeah I do.. Need your help.. OK.
She gave me the story.. OMFG! Three teenage kids, almost 60 and the grand total they have save for retirement is a big fat NOTHING.
Live in a rented house, and are currently saving.. guess what?.. Nothing.. "We just can't afford it, life is so expensive!"
I'm having a giant WTF? moment at this point.. I asked her what she thought was going to happen.. like you are spending every last penny and then some to make it to rent day. Are you going to work forever? because SS ain't gonna cover more than about 1/3rd of your current lifestyle.
OK.. where can we save in your budget... "Well these kids are so expensive and my Daughter's clean food diet".. OK WTF is a CF diet and is it medically necessary?
No but she feels better.... I'm now pounding my head on my desk..
What are you spending on your cell phones?.. $400 a month!..... ARRRGH.
in 2 minutes I wiped $1300 out of the monthly budget.. But of course they have no intention of saving anything and they have not come back.
The end of the conversation she tells me the tale of how her Mother is 70 years old and works paycheck to paycheck on a min wage job she hates and doesn't think her health will allow her to do much longer... And then WE will have to help her......
Damn, wow and a few expletives!
Your friend's almost 60 and her mother is 70, I'm impressed!
He Husband is is somewhat older than her... He's nearly 60.
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I know someone who drove her family into bankruptcy by financing her kids' college expenses on credit cards and keeping up with the Jones when her youngest attended a private high school.
Then along came addiction problems and compulsive gambling. She actually got onto permanent disability via an unverifiable back injury, but her loyal husband will never be able to retire from his physically demanding job until it becomes impossible to perform, I suppose.
She considers her disability check "her money" and I suspect contributes very little to household expenses. And somehow they still go out to eat ALL THE TIME and take at least one fairly nice vacation a year.
She is the type who has always needed to feel pampered, spoiled, and special.
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I don't feel sorry for spendypants people who can never retire because they live in huge houses and drive clown cars.
The sorriest situation I know is a lady who doesn't feel sorry for herself at all. She's almost 80. When she grew up, schools were not mixed and girls received little real education, just home economics, cooking and sewing. She had limited marketable skills and married young. She divorced her abuse husband at a time where divorce was still a big taboo and divorced women were awarded only little spousal and child support. She raised her children on her own with little support from her family, because they were ashamed she was divorced. She worked very hard and did all sorts of low paid jobs (cleaning, mending, factory work, taxi driving) . She didn't work fulltime for a very long time because she didn't have anyone to look after the children.
In those days, women earned far less than men and they only built up a very small pension through company pension schemes, so when she reached conventional retirement age she had no savings and only a very small company pension on top of her state pension. She worked until the age of 75 as a school bus driver for disabled kids and on Saturdays in a small shop. The shop went bankrupt and she was fired from her bus driver job because she was too frail to handle the kids in case of emergency. She hasn't been able to find a job since. That means she's had to cut back on her expenses to make ends meet. She's never had a life of luxury, but she's afraid she'll have to get rid of her car or move to a different neighbourhood where rents are a little bit lower. Those are great ways to save money when you're 30, but not when you're almost 80 and very much rooted in your community.
She's not the type to complain, but it feels unfair to me that she's lead a life of hardship and poverty for no other reason than not wanting to stay in an abusive marriage. Meanwhile, her ex-husband quickly remarried, and did not suffer from any social stigma or financial problems.
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SIL and her DH are ones who are looking like they won't retire, they certainly won't retire in the manner they are accustomed. There's a couple of reasons why.
SIL is a spendthrift, loves shopping, bought a horse a few years ago, got a trailer for the horse, plus the big new Silverado to pull the trailer, of course there's stable and vet fees. She lives in a paid off house but several years ago got her parents to fork over money for a condo on a lake, then a couple of years after that, she acquired another condo on the same lake that her parents bought and decided to give it to her. So she and BIL have two condos for which they pay the associated taxes and fees. The condos largely sit empty but for the occasional weekends that they go boating. So they have a boat. And a jet ski. She works part time in her "fun" job which doesn't pay much. BIL is 68 and still working however he's had his bouts of unemployment over his career which has impacted his ability to save for retirement. Just before he got his last job, they had to pull from retirement to pay bills. There's no indicator of them cutting back.
I imagine when BIL has to stop working for whatever reason and at 68, that could be soon as he's not in the greatest health, it's going to be a shock. I think SIL is banking (no pun intended) on inheritance from her own parents however they are both still living and are running through their own money pretty quick as they are spendthrifts themselves (apple don't far fall). She doesn't make that much on her own salary and for the time she was on an ACA policy, the monthly premium took up her entire paycheck. BIL would be on Medicare when he leaves the workforce but she has a number of years (59) before she would be eligible for Medicare herself so it would be going back to the ACA policy. Or going without.
I suspect my niece and nephew are her retirement plan. I hope they are prepared.
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I don't feel sorry for this guy, and it's not the "have to work until I die" situation, but it's pretty "sorry" for where he could have/should have been.
Minimum retirement age is 57. He was 55. Job does a rare offer of "early outs", which our "department" is almost never allowed to participate in (because we aren't considered extraneous). But this year, they were going to let some of "us" do it. It even included a nice little cash bonus to accept the deal ($25k or $40k, can't remember). He couldn't do it, because he "couldn't afford" to. Too much debt, too many bad spending habits, too much spousal revenge (he and his wife had separated for two years, during which time they tried to inflict as much financial stress on each other as they could-- between lawyers, damaging each other's cars/motorcycles, etc, etc, but were then back together). He'd still be able to access his pension without fees, get full access to his TSP, carry the health insurance into retirement, etc. But, he had to work those two more years and couldn't take the early out.
That solidified my decision to do everything I can while I'm young to make sure I can take advantage of the early out if it ever comes around for us again (I'll be eligible when I'm 46, but it would still be very rare for it to be allowed for my crew).
I guess he retired at 57 (after a demotion because he got in trouble), and now works for a contractor. I just can't imagine not being able to retire two years early with the income we make and still getting full retirement benefits without penalties. Not with as many years as he had in the system.
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She lives in a paid off house but several years ago got her parents to fork over money for a condo on a lake, then a couple of years after that, she acquired another condo on the same lake that her parents bought and decided to give it to her. So she and BIL have two condos for which they pay the associated taxes and fees. The condos largely sit empty but for the occasional weekends that they go boating. So they have a boat. And a jet ski.
So do they alternate weeks in each condo? That's just weird!
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Don't marry for money - you can borrow it more cheaply
I've had divorced men tell me that there is something else in a marriage that can be sourced more cheaply too ...
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She lives in a paid off house but several years ago got her parents to fork over money for a condo on a lake, then a couple of years after that, she acquired another condo on the same lake that her parents bought and decided to give it to her. So she and BIL have two condos for which they pay the associated taxes and fees. The condos largely sit empty but for the occasional weekends that they go boating. So they have a boat. And a jet ski.
So do they alternate weeks in each condo? That's just weird!
They do not. They just stay in the one, the first one they bought. My nephew might stay in the other one maybe 2x year when he's up there for holidays. And they can go months without ever visiting either one. My niece lives nearby as she married someone from that area so I guess she goes over to check on things from time to time.
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Imma, the saddest part to me of that story is that her children aren’t pooling funds to support her now. She sure did a lot for them.
(Or maybe they keep offering and she keeps declining their offers. I've seen that!)
I don't know her children at all, so I have no idea. But she's a proud lady, I wouldn't be surprised if that is what's happening.
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Coworker: Single, age 60. Blue collar worker with decent salary. Has had more jobs than you have owned cars, so all retirement money was spent long ago during bouts of unemployment. Does not contribute to 401k. Lives hand-to-mouth, including figuring how to spend money before payday and hope checks cross in the mail. Inherited a modest house in questionable repair, so at least there is that. Owns a cabin cruiser, so must also own a large truck to haul it. Purchased new truck for 40k or so, 7 or 8 year loan. Parks it in driveway because garage is full of derelict cars, chachkies of misspent youth. Spends impulsively to feel good. Would greatly benefit from early retirement due to health issues.
Not teachable. I suggested getting a small used car and paying someone to haul the boat to the lake once in spring, then return to storage once in fall. No way. Must have 12 mpg truck year round to haul personally on same schedule. Refuses to seek counseling.
Coworker will need to work until the end, at least as a Walmart greeter.
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A lawyer in my building is a hell of a trial lawyer. Very aggressive and very talented but not in a high paying specialty. He and his wife always have to look the part. New identical BMWs every couple of years. Over decorated McMansion. Trips to Europe.
I'm talking to him the other day and he is bemoaning the fact that he pissed off an opposing party who filed a bar complaint. The bar is taking it very seriously and he is looking at a possible 1 or 2 year suspension. His comment to me "How can I pay my living expenses for 2 years if I'm suspended?"
The man is 72 years old and has practically nothing at all set aside for retirement. He needs to keep working but won't be allowed to do the one marketable thing he is good at. I'm in my 60s. If some licensing board told me I could not practice my profession for 2 years my thought would be "Well I wanted to retire on my own terms but I guess I'm all right with doing it a little bit earlier than I planned."
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I know quite a few folks close to my age(58) that I'm certain have little if any savings for retirement and have worked most of their lives doing things like construction and farming where they worked as a 1099 employee and never had any insurance or benefits of any type. A lot of their income was never seen by uncle Sam, so when they get to social security age they will only get the minimum. When their bodies give out and they can't work physical labor anymore they are destined for government subsidized housing and a pretty grim existence.
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The sorriest situation I know of is someone who is retired after a fashion, b/c he can't hold down a job, but he is essentially penniless. He lost his job 4.5 years ago and has been unable to hold down a job since then b/c he can't get through probationary periods. He is just no longer matched to what the job market wants (at least in his field). So I wouldn't say he is retired...he is more just scrambling to eke by, while drawing a meager SS benefit and living in a very HCOL area. Unfortunately, he is unwilling to make adjustments in his behavior, his job expectations, or his place of residence.
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One of my managers kept working because he divorced twice in the time I knew him (three times in his life total), and paid for his kids' college educations. He also bought a new house after the final divorce. He made a decent amount of money, but a lot of the money was spoken for. At age 70 he had heart bypass surgery, but came back to work. At age 73, he developed cancer, went on medical leave for months, but came back to work. At age 75, cancer returned. He left work intending to come back, but died two months later.
One of my current co-workers used to be full-time. She left to be a stay-at-home mom, but didn't downsize her lifestyle. Her husband was recently injured and can't work. Now she's returned part-time (no benefits). I think she's counting on a lot of inheritance to fund retirement.
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There was an unfortunate fellow in my office who was terrible at his job. He had a varied and inconsistent work history and had already filed bankruptcy once. He finally got fired at age 68 and had to look for a new gig. He had lied on his resume about his work experience and education already to get this position and will have to rely on doing that again to get another job.
While employed with us I know he spent every nickel. He impulsed a trip to Iceland for a short four day vacation alone (he can't stand his wife). That is a long trip for only 4 days and he seemed to only be doing it because another guy in the office had just planned a vacation trip there. He would head down to Costa Rica occasionally too, though that is cheaper.
He had serious PTSD from Vietnam. He has kids he never speaks to on the other side of the country from an earlier relationship.
Such a sad life. I am sure he will be working until he dies.
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Wow, some of these stories are beyond comprehension. I worry that my sister and BIL could end up with a similar fate (43 and 50 now); fairly high income, but high expenses, lots of debt and they save nothing. Even if they could sell their property and net a million or two after paying off everything, I don’t think they’d have the discipline to adjust their spending and make it last.
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I have a friend who is a 55 year old woman. She makes around $130k, is married and has 3 adult children, 25, 28 and 30. 25 and 30 still live at home, with no intention of moving out. One has a low paying job and spends all his money on alcohol and travel with his buddies, the other just lies around the house all day. Hubby was a stay at home dad, so he has never worked since first child was born. They have a large home in a nice neighborhood that is literally crumbling around them from neglect (despite hubby's 100% free time for at least the past 10 years), yet they spend money lavishly on trips, restaurant meals, clothes, salon services, and enough groceries to feed five families. The house is jam-packed full of every kind of unnecessary stuff imaginable. Their kitchen has multiples of every gadget ever made. She is so very tired of working, but it's all on her and none of them seem to care that she'll be grinding it out until she is a very old woman. She seems to accept it, thinking there is no other way unless you strike it rich by inheritance or lottery win. I almost dread the day she finds out we we have quit our jobs and retired early. She doesn't know of our plans, as she works with my husband and we want to keep it quiet until he's ready to give his notice.
I wonder what her reaction will be when she learns you FIREd. Disbelief, rationalization, blaming it on luck, etc. Anybody has stories about reactions of "consumer" co-workers to your early retirement?
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I work in health care in a very lucrative specialty. Typically my partners and I gross 475k a year. Couple years were even higher. Despite that, I have a partner who got divorced (strike one) while still supporting two of his three kids, got remarried to one of the hospital secretaries (strike two), got screwed in his divorce because he was schtupping "strike two" while still married and got her pregenant (strike three), then had another kid (strike four) and has had to support his step kids who he tried to buy their affection or approval (strike five), then he has adopted three more kids (VERY KIND NICE AND CHARITABLE but...strike six, seven and eight), has purchase not one (strike nine) but TWO (strike 10) vacation homes. Oh yeah and he's in his sixties and can't afford life insurance.
Needless to say despite making a salary that makes him nearly a 1%er, he lives paycheck to paycheck.
If this is in Georgia, I think you work with my dad :\ If he has a daughter in New York and a son in Alaska, it's definitely him. Crazy life choices for sure.
ETA: To be actually on topic in the thread - when I was in school and working retail, one of my coworkers was 80+. I wish it had been a "work part-time for fulfillment/social engagement" thing, but she was so miserable that I don't think she would have been there if she didn't have to. She was so tiny and frail she physically couldn't do most parts of the job, but was still there when I moved on. The store eventually closed and I've wondered a few times what happened to her - no matter how hard it must be to work a job you hate at that stage of life, having to job hunt again seems like it must be even worse.
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A lawyer in my building is a hell of a trial lawyer. Very aggressive and very talented but not in a high paying specialty. He and his wife always have to look the part. New identical BMWs every couple of years. Over decorated McMansion. Trips to Europe.
I'm talking to him the other day and he is bemoaning the fact that he pissed off an opposing party who filed a bar complaint. The bar is taking it very seriously and he is looking at a possible 1 or 2 year suspension. His comment to me "How can I pay my living expenses for 2 years if I'm suspended?"
The man is 72 years old and has practically nothing at all set aside for retirement. He needs to keep working but won't be allowed to do the one marketable thing he is good at. I'm in my 60s. If some licensing board told me I could not practice my profession for 2 years my thought would be "Well I wanted to retire on my own terms but I guess I'm all right with doing it a little bit earlier than I planned."
Reminds me of an AUSA I work with (I'm agency counsel) who, back when the GOP shut down the government during the Obama administration, was freaking out about how he was going to pay his mortgage! Not live for 1-2 years, but pay ONE mortgage payment! Guy drives a Lexus SUV, paid obscene amounts for his kid's sports travel team, makes around $175k/year and is in his mid-50's. I was floored. My guess is he doesn't have jack in his TSP (401k).
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The saddest situations I've seen are people who have children with serious and expensive long-term disabilities that have prohibited them from saving for retirement, despite being quite frugal.
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The saddest situations I've seen are people who have children with serious and expensive long-term disabilities that have prohibited them from saving for retirement, despite being quite frugal.
There are times that I think much of the medical knowledge, technology, medicines, etc that we have today are a bad thing. People who live every day in pain because we can keep them alive but not fix the problem.
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I work in health care in a very lucrative specialty. Typically my partners and I gross 475k a year. Couple years were even higher. Despite that, I have a partner who got divorced (strike one) while still supporting two of his three kids, got remarried to one of the hospital secretaries (strike two), got screwed in his divorce because he was schtupping "strike two" while still married and got her pregenant (strike three), then had another kid (strike four) and has had to support his step kids who he tried to buy their affection or approval (strike five), then he has adopted three more kids (VERY KIND NICE AND CHARITABLE but...strike six, seven and eight), has purchase not one (strike nine) but TWO (strike 10) vacation homes. Oh yeah and he's in his sixties and can't afford life insurance.
Needless to say despite making a salary that makes him nearly a 1%er, he lives paycheck to paycheck.
If this is in Georgia, I think you work with my dad :\ If he has a daughter in New York and a son in Alaska, it's definitely him. Crazy life choices for sure.
ETA: To be actually on topic in the thread - when I was in school and working retail, one of my coworkers was 80+. I wish it had been a "work part-time for fulfillment/social engagement" thing, but she was so miserable that I don't think she would have been there if she didn't have to. She was so tiny and frail she physically couldn't do most parts of the job, but was still there when I moved on. The store eventually closed and I've wondered a few times what happened to her - no matter how hard it must be to work a job you hate at that stage of life, having to job hunt again seems like it must be even worse.
Nope not him. I don't work in Georgia. I guess its an all-too-common story. Sorry if your dad is in a similar situation though. FWIW I've done a lot of stupid things in my own life too and I'm just now getting back on track so I guess I shouldn't be so holier-than-thou.
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She wasn't too worried, though, because her father promised her a big inheritance (MILLIONS, he said). But, not a penny if she left her husband.
WTF? Where does an arrangement like that come from?
From assholes.
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My FIL:
Married DHs mom, who had a wealthy family, worked as a lawyer, got a taste of the finer things in life, thought he was entitled to all of it, including entitled to his secretary. Got divorced, tried to go after the mothers family for "support" since they were paying moms salary during divorce. Stress of it all literally killed DHs mom. FIL gets engaged to the secretary, who turns out to be crazy pants, so he splits when he finds woman number 3 DHs step mom, who is 20 years younger.
Married 20 years, him making 300k plus most of the time. Lived in multi million dollar interest only mortgage homes in CA. Her two kids had to have the BEST of everything, private schools, cars, Ivy League colleges etc. She of course never worked. FIL looses his job in the recession, can't find another one because he's 1. Lazy and 2. retirement age. So they start raiding what little retirement accounts he had to hold onto the interest only mortgage house. Stepmom sees he can't afford her anymore, divorces him and takes half of the remaining assets.
FIL ends up in an extended stay hotel, racking up six figures in credit card debt, gets injured, and because he doesn't have a woman doing things for him for the first time in his life, is living in his own filth.
Cue in DHs shithole siblings telling DH he needs to "save his fathers life" and I now have a 71 year old man child living in the guest room. He does nothing all day, is racist and sexist, is fighting us tooth and nail on paying back his credit cards (I said bankrupt them and he won't) owes us 15k (which we won't see) and refuses to act like an adult so we've had to deal with things like hauling him to the ER because he dehydrated himself by drinking nothing but beer and eating salty junk food (I don't buy it, he mail orders it and is hiding it in the house). Oh, and yesterday he shit himself because he had gastric bypass, and ate a ton of fatty food, which he KNOWS upsets his stomach due to the fat malabsorption from the surgery. And no it wasn't a little "don't trust this fart" one, it was a throw out all your clothes in sealed bag outside one.
And yes, we've forced him to the doctor about this and they ran every test known to man on him, they said it's a result of the bypass and he just needs to stop eating shit food and drinking beer. And he won't.
We also found out this week that WE are his retirement plan, he wants to follow us around until the day he dies. We told him one year when he moved in. So there was a coming to jesus moment where DH laid down the law this weekend. I think it went in one ear and out the other.
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I have a friend who is a 55 year old woman. She makes around $130k, is married and has 3 adult children, 25, 28 and 30. 25 and 30 still live at home, with no intention of moving out. One has a low paying job and spends all his money on alcohol and travel with his buddies, the other just lies around the house all day. Hubby was a stay at home dad, so he has never worked since first child was born. They have a large home in a nice neighborhood that is literally crumbling around them from neglect (despite hubby's 100% free time for at least the past 10 years), yet they spend money lavishly on trips, restaurant meals, clothes, salon services, and enough groceries to feed five families. The house is jam-packed full of every kind of unnecessary stuff imaginable. Their kitchen has multiples of every gadget ever made. She is so very tired of working, but it's all on her and none of them seem to care that she'll be grinding it out until she is a very old woman. She seems to accept it, thinking there is no other way unless you strike it rich by inheritance or lottery win. I almost dread the day she finds out we we have quit our jobs and retired early. She doesn't know of our plans, as she works with my husband and we want to keep it quiet until he's ready to give his notice.
I wonder what her reaction will be when she learns you FIREd. Disbelief, rationalization, blaming it on luck, etc. Anybody has stories about reactions of "consumer" co-workers to your early retirement?
Or, perhaps it really doesn't mean a whole lot? I suspect that she's more focused on her own life than someone elses.
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My FIL:
Married DHs mom, who had a wealthy family, worked as a lawyer, got a taste of the finer things in life, thought he was entitled to all of it, including entitled to his secretary. Got divorced, tried to go after the mothers family for "support" since they were paying moms salary during divorce. Stress of it all literally killed DHs mom. FIL gets engaged to the secretary, who turns out to be crazy pants, so he splits when he finds woman number 3 DHs step mom, who is 20 years younger.
Married 20 years, him making 300k plus most of the time. Lived in multi million dollar interest only mortgage homes in CA. Her two kids had to have the BEST of everything, private schools, cars, Ivy League colleges etc. She of course never worked. FIL looses his job in the recession, can't find another one because he's 1. Lazy and 2. retirement age. So they start raiding what little retirement accounts he had to hold onto the interest only mortgage house. Stepmom sees he can't afford her anymore, divorces him and takes half of the remaining assets.
FIL ends up in an extended stay hotel, racking up six figures in credit card debt, gets injured, and because he doesn't have a woman doing things for him for the first time in his life, is living in his own filth.
Cue in DHs shithole siblings telling DH he needs to "save his fathers life" and I now have a 71 year old man child living in the guest room. He does nothing all day, is racist and sexist, is fighting us tooth and nail on paying back his credit cards (I said bankrupt them and he won't) owes us 15k (which we won't see) and refuses to act like an adult so we've had to deal with things like hauling him to the ER because he dehydrated himself by drinking nothing but beer and eating salty junk food (I don't buy it, he mail orders it and is hiding it in the house). Oh, and yesterday he shit himself because he had gastric bypass, and ate a ton of fatty food, which he KNOWS upsets his stomach due to the fat malabsorption from the surgery. And no it wasn't a little "don't trust this fart" one, it was a throw out all your clothes in sealed bag outside one.
And yes, we've forced him to the doctor about this and they ran every test known to man on him, they said it's a result of the bypass and he just needs to stop eating shit food and drinking beer. And he won't.
We also found out this week that WE are his retirement plan, he wants to follow us around until the day he dies. We told him one year when he moved in. So there was a coming to jesus moment where DH laid down the law this weekend. I think it went in one ear and out the other.
Oh dear. The only thing I can do is suggest you and @TheGrimSqueaker commiserate. Different situations, similar emotions. Plus TGS tends to have amazing insight and might actually have some useful suggestions.
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My FIL:
Married DHs mom, who had a wealthy family, worked as a lawyer, got a taste of the finer things in life, thought he was entitled to all of it, including entitled to his secretary. Got divorced, tried to go after the mothers family for "support" since they were paying moms salary during divorce. Stress of it all literally killed DHs mom. FIL gets engaged to the secretary, who turns out to be crazy pants, so he splits when he finds woman number 3 DHs step mom, who is 20 years younger.
Married 20 years, him making 300k plus most of the time. Lived in multi million dollar interest only mortgage homes in CA. Her two kids had to have the BEST of everything, private schools, cars, Ivy League colleges etc. She of course never worked. FIL looses his job in the recession, can't find another one because he's 1. Lazy and 2. retirement age. So they start raiding what little retirement accounts he had to hold onto the interest only mortgage house. Stepmom sees he can't afford her anymore, divorces him and takes half of the remaining assets.
FIL ends up in an extended stay hotel, racking up six figures in credit card debt, gets injured, and because he doesn't have a woman doing things for him for the first time in his life, is living in his own filth.
Cue in DHs shithole siblings telling DH he needs to "save his fathers life" and I now have a 71 year old man child living in the guest room. He does nothing all day, is racist and sexist, is fighting us tooth and nail on paying back his credit cards (I said bankrupt them and he won't) owes us 15k (which we won't see) and refuses to act like an adult so we've had to deal with things like hauling him to the ER because he dehydrated himself by drinking nothing but beer and eating salty junk food (I don't buy it, he mail orders it and is hiding it in the house). Oh, and yesterday he shit himself because he had gastric bypass, and ate a ton of fatty food, which he KNOWS upsets his stomach due to the fat malabsorption from the surgery. And no it wasn't a little "don't trust this fart" one, it was a throw out all your clothes in sealed bag outside one.
And yes, we've forced him to the doctor about this and they ran every test known to man on him, they said it's a result of the bypass and he just needs to stop eating shit food and drinking beer. And he won't.
We also found out this week that WE are his retirement plan, he wants to follow us around until the day he dies. We told him one year when he moved in. So there was a coming to jesus moment where DH laid down the law this weekend. I think it went in one ear and out the other.
Congratulations, I think you win the thread.
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Wow, these stories make my contribution look positively happy.
Coworker, 65. Married a woman 10+ years younger and kids are 16 and 18. Wife has always been a SAHM and has major medical issues. She can't move around their suburban McMansion by herself, can't drive even though they live in the exurbs. Kids have their hearts set on very expensive private colleges for dance and music, respectively. He's going to pay for all of that on his ~$100k salary,
He's been in his job forever, but hasn't bothered to learn anything in 15 years, and the job has evolved. He thinks of himself as a top performer (legend in his own mind), but he's barely meeting expectations and his lack of raises/bonuses is evidence of that. (He's vocal about that; his assumption is that if he's not getting raises or bonuses, then obviously the women in his office couldn't possibly be so he has no compunction about sharing.) He's lucky this is a solid, stable company that almost never fires anyone.
Two years ago, because it was obvious that the stock market was on the verge of a crash, he took his $400,000 total retirement savings and put it into "cash". He's waiting for the inevitable crash to get back in. I'm hopeful that when he said "cash" he meant "the money market fund option" and not that he pulled it all out of our very generous 401k plan and is literally hiding it under a mattress.
Maybe I should send him to the "Top Is In" thread?
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Mishmash, put him on a waiting list for low income seniors housing. They take a third of his income for rent. Go to your local social services aging department and get him a social worker who will know what other things he will qualify for and assistance obtaining those. I was a social worker for awhile. Your aging department will either be run by the state or county. For your mental health you need him gone.
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I worked for a while at a factory.
Lots of refugees, lots of immigrants (to Canada). All hard working, honest people who believe in a good education, and in supporting family. Some of them are illiterate, some of them have university degrees from overseas that are worthless here. Many of them have family that were scattered to different parts of the world after a war back home.
They were so kind to me. Very supportive. When working a crappy min wage job, sometimes the older employees there don't like to hear about how your schooling is going because it makes them feel bitter that they didn't graduate. These people would ask me if I finished my homework before I started my shift, would ask me what I was learning in class, would help me practice my presentations on the shop floor before I went to class the next day.
A lot of them bought lottery tickets. What else do you do, when you're in your 50s and living below the poverty line? Most of them have no savings whatsoever. They all had kids when they were back home and living a middle-class or upper-class lifestyle, and they can't afford their kids now that they're in Canada. It makes me ashamed of my country and the way we treat poor people.
At least they have health care, I guess.
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Mishmash, put him on a waiting list for low income seniors housing. They take a third of his income for rent. Go to your local social services aging department and get him a social worker who will know what other things he will qualify for and assistance obtaining those. I was a social worker for awhile. Your aging department will either be run by the state or county. For your mental health you need him gone.
I did this, because he was such a high earner for so long, his social security is higher (2400) then the max end for subsidized housing and services in our county.
We got into it with DHs sister yesterday who had the audacity to say we were "being to harsh" on him and that 'he's fragile'. I told her she is more then welcome to take him if she thinks he's that fragile and doesn't like how we handle things. She about flipped her mind screaming that she can't take care of him because she has kids and he's not a good role model etc. And that she thinks it's medical and we need to take better care of him etc. PS already talked to about 6 doctors about that very subject, his meds are on point, he's just lazy.
Then we called ex stepmom to confirm that this was consistent behavior, and her response was Wait, you got him to ACTUALLY do something, that's like literally a miracle. Whenever I tried he'd just get up in my face and scream at me until I cried. I said, oh, he does that to me too, I laugh in his face though and then don't relent until he does the task at hand. It's literally a battle of wills all day, every day.
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Mishmash, put him on a waiting list for low income seniors housing. They take a third of his income for rent. Go to your local social services aging department and get him a social worker who will know what other things he will qualify for and assistance obtaining those. I was a social worker for awhile. Your aging department will either be run by the state or county. For your mental health you need him gone.
I did this, because he was such a high earner for so long, his social security is higher (2400) then the max end for subsidized housing and services in our county.
We got into it with DHs sister yesterday who had the audacity to say we were "being to harsh" on him and that 'he's fragile'. I told her she is more then welcome to take him if she thinks he's that fragile and doesn't like how we handle things. She about flipped her mind screaming that she can't take care of him because she has kids and he's not a good role model etc. And that she thinks it's medical and we need to take better care of him etc. PS already talked to about 6 doctors about that very subject, his meds are on point, he's just lazy.
Then we called ex stepmom to confirm that this was consistent behavior, and her response was Wait, you got him to ACTUALLY do something, that's like literally a miracle. Whenever I tried he'd just get up in my face and scream at me until I cried. I said, oh, he does that to me too, I laugh in his face though and then don't relent until he does the task at hand. It's literally a battle of wills all day, every day.
Wait, he has SS income? Make him sign over his check and give him a $100/week allowance or else throw his butt out
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Mishmash, put him on a waiting list for low income seniors housing. They take a third of his income for rent. Go to your local social services aging department and get him a social worker who will know what other things he will qualify for and assistance obtaining those. I was a social worker for awhile. Your aging department will either be run by the state or county. For your mental health you need him gone.
I did this, because he was such a high earner for so long, his social security is higher (2400) then the max end for subsidized housing and services in our county.
We got into it with DHs sister yesterday who had the audacity to say we were "being to harsh" on him and that 'he's fragile'. I told her she is more then welcome to take him if she thinks he's that fragile and doesn't like how we handle things. She about flipped her mind screaming that she can't take care of him because she has kids and he's not a good role model etc. And that she thinks it's medical and we need to take better care of him etc. PS already talked to about 6 doctors about that very subject, his meds are on point, he's just lazy.
Then we called ex stepmom to confirm that this was consistent behavior, and her response was Wait, you got him to ACTUALLY do something, that's like literally a miracle. Whenever I tried he'd just get up in my face and scream at me until I cried. I said, oh, he does that to me too, I laugh in his face though and then don't relent until he does the task at hand. It's literally a battle of wills all day, every day.
Wait, he has SS income? Make him sign over his check and give him a $100/week allowance or else throw his butt out
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Yes he does, and he's supposed to be using it to pay off his debt and pay us rent. Neither of which he actually does. And if he DOES pay us rent then we can't simply kick him out, he will be a tenant protected by those laws. So at this stage, where we ARE on the verge of kicking his ass to the curb and writing him off, I don't want him paying us so that we can skirt the tenant laws. He's a very litigious man.
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Mishmash, put him on a waiting list for low income seniors housing. They take a third of his income for rent. Go to your local social services aging department and get him a social worker who will know what other things he will qualify for and assistance obtaining those. I was a social worker for awhile. Your aging department will either be run by the state or county. For your mental health you need him gone.
I did this, because he was such a high earner for so long, his social security is higher (2400) then the max end for subsidized housing and services in our county.
We got into it with DHs sister yesterday who had the audacity to say we were "being to harsh" on him and that 'he's fragile'. I told her she is more then welcome to take him if she thinks he's that fragile and doesn't like how we handle things. She about flipped her mind screaming that she can't take care of him because she has kids and he's not a good role model etc. And that she thinks it's medical and we need to take better care of him etc. PS already talked to about 6 doctors about that very subject, his meds are on point, he's just lazy.
Then we called ex stepmom to confirm that this was consistent behavior, and her response was Wait, you got him to ACTUALLY do something, that's like literally a miracle. Whenever I tried he'd just get up in my face and scream at me until I cried. I said, oh, he does that to me too, I laugh in his face though and then don't relent until he does the task at hand. It's literally a battle of wills all day, every day.
Wait, he has SS income? Make him sign over his check and give him a $100/week allowance or else throw his butt out
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Yes he does, and he's supposed to be using it to pay off his debt and pay us rent. Neither of which he actually does. And if he DOES pay us rent then we can't simply kick him out, he will be a tenant protected by those laws. So at this stage, where we ARE on the verge of kicking his ass to the curb and writing him off, I don't want him paying us so that we can skirt the tenant laws. He's a very litigious man.
Everyone gets all bent out of shape when natural consequences kick in and it happens to be making someone unhappy. Kick him out with a clear conscience. He's got income, he won't starve. Maybe he'll learn to be a little more pleasant.
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He can retire just fine on $2400 SS. I know plenty of people who'd kill for that amount on a monthly basis - luxe living:)
That also means he has medicare - so he is in decent shape.
Difficult situation, but given the circumstances, I'd say it is time for him to leave.
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He can retire just fine on $2400 SS. I know plenty of people who'd kill for that amount on a monthly basis - luxe living:)
That also means he has medicare - so he is in decent shape.
Difficult situation, but given the circumstances, I'd say it is time for him to leave.
I agree he could retire on his own if it weren't for his damn shopping habits. He's a see something I want so I buy it kind of guy. And while it's gotten better since he moved in, it's still a whole level of bullshit.
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Know a lady who is 73. She must work jobs like cleaning or receptionist to get by. Her son is helping her pay for her expenses. She gets minimal Social Security. No escape for her and she worries what happens if she can't work. One step away from homeless.
Almost the same lady in my hood...74, Husband died of Cancer and they had no savings (medical bills, etc.). They bough their retirement home with a mortgage prior to his diagnosis in 2007. Market Crashed, he died, she lost the house, was homeless living in a tent. Now lives in a trailer park with a friend and has to work 6-7 days per week in a retail shop just to get by/cover he monthly prescriptions (Cholesterol, Blood Pressure, COPD). Hardly any help from her kids and neither kid is self sustaining enough to support the mother. Just tragic.
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MishMash,
He's gonna ruin your marriage.
Think aggressive brain tumor ...radical excision (him and all his apologists) or it kills you.
Move abroad if you have to. I mean it.
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MishMash,
He's gonna ruin your marriage.
Think aggressive brain tumor ...radical excision (him and all his apologists) or it kills you.
Move abroad if you have to. I mean it.
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My husband put in for a PCS move and we told him he has to be out by the time we move or be homeless. And abroad was his number 2 request on the list. I'd been saying for a while we wouldn't be able to get rid of him unless we moved and DH finally saw it. He's finally gotten to the point that I've seen for a while, his entire family is fucking parasitic and each member of it only gives a fuck about themselves. OCD and narcissism run DEEP in that family so he's ready to write them all off after this weekend.
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MishMash,
He's gonna ruin your marriage.
Think aggressive brain tumor ...radical excision (him and all his apologists) or it kills you.
Move abroad if you have to. I mean it.
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My husband put in for a PCS move and we told him he has to be out by the time we move or be homeless. And abroad was his number 2 request on the list. I'd been saying for a while we wouldn't be able to get rid of him unless we moved and DH finally saw it. He's finally gotten to the point that I've seen for a while, his entire family is fucking parasitic and each member of it only gives a fuck about themselves. OCD and narcissism run DEEP in that family so he's ready to write them all off after this weekend.
Oh, thank goodness. I’ve been feeling sick for you while reading these updates. Good riddance, parasite(s). The sooner the better.
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Yep, time for some scorched earth.
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MishMash,
He's gonna ruin your marriage.
Think aggressive brain tumor ...radical excision (him and all his apologists) or it kills you.
Move abroad if you have to. I mean it.
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My husband put in for a PCS move and we told him he has to be out by the time we move or be homeless. And abroad was his number 2 request on the list. I'd been saying for a while we wouldn't be able to get rid of him unless we moved and DH finally saw it. He's finally gotten to the point that I've seen for a while, his entire family is fucking parasitic and each member of it only gives a fuck about themselves. OCD and narcissism run DEEP in that family so he's ready to write them all off after this weekend.
Holy camoly, I hope you get the abroad PCS and get the fuck out.
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There is a man at my work, super nice guy, who was in his 50’s and set to retire early in a years time. His wife had a stroke, lost her job (about equal in pay to his) and he had to take a year off to help her rehab. She was never able to go back to work, so he has to work, probably until he is in his 70’s.
Sometimes, life is really shitty.
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My ex coworker /friend is 75. ... 6 years ago he lost employment after taking a 2 year mba to start afresh. Before that he had lost his business and $11- million in house& cash from divorce, IRS problem and embezzlement by his office manager.
So, he luckily got contract work for 2012-16 making >300k a yr. He has saved about 350 k in SEP-IRA.
But since last year can't work, he got into a battle with his boss, spent over 100k legal fees, used up all non-IRA savings, now he's totally broke, maxed out.
Only has the SEP-IRA - $50k of it is in marijuana stock which will make him millions soon.
Just revealed he's never filed or paid 2016 taxes. His townhome lien had just been released by IRS with a 5- yr probation aaargh.
He believes he'll start a new successful career, buy his dream house etc. He won't sell his 3 or 4 classic cars in a paid storage and his garage for >15 yrs coz he can't get anyone to pay the 100s of k they're worth.
He just can't live on his $3k/month SS, the idea is nuts. The term 'retirement' is like death, it causes a violent reaction of rage and fear. Luckily? no children.
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When my marriage broke up 21 years ago my best friend and I were in a similar financial position - i.e. poor. Both worked our way up and got good, well-paid jobs. I met OH, we knuckled own and saved and retired at 54 and 53. She consecutively met a couple of man childs (think - taking to their bed and not leaving for days until they got their own way, which usually meant another car loan). Married one of them. Moved to opposite ends of the country as they were jealous of her adult children. 10 years later she's till paying off one loan, no house and a car with 200,000 miles. Changed jobs so many times she lost her good positions and has no retirement savings except a max of around £15,000 which is in lots of small pots.
Over the years her health has deteriorated, not helped by an accident at work she wouldn't sue over. Doing a manual job which she isn't fit to do and can't/won't say no when they ask her to do extra hours at short notice. State retirement is at least 12 years away. Living with (at last) a lovely man but he too has very little pension to come and is also doing a manual job which is taking its toll. They are living in a very high COL but lucky to have rent controlled place - but likely to have to move in the next few years due to redevelopment.
And they spent their 20k+ savings on buying a caravan a few years ago so they could get away for breaks. Except their boss (same man) doesn't let them have two consecutive days off, and when they do get there they often get called back. The site fees are 4k+ a year. Don't want to sell as 'can't afford to lose money on it' but can't accept they are losing 4k a year already. Plus getting endless stress from wanting to get down there and not being able.
I find it endlessly frustrating but am powerless to help :(
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There's a woman at work who has to be in her upper 60's and I overheard her complaining to her boss how bad she needs a raise cause she can no longer afford the minimum payment(s) on multiple credit cards... Guess there was never a plan to ever payoff credit card debt?!
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What I mean here is that someone whose situation is that he can't possibly think about early retiring.
I'll start. I knew a guy (early 30's at the time) who had 4 young children at the time, all from a fairly high-maintenance wife (stay-at-home at the time), who had just rolled all his savings into his McMansion in California's Imperial Valley (I think it was Moreno Valley) in early 2007, and still with about $50K of student debt (instead of paying that down, he had built up his savings to buy a $550K home in what had been "the hottest real estate market around". He said that he absolutely could not lose his job (aerospace engineer), so he made sure to be the hardest working, boss-supplicating corporate peon at work - and totally miserable - so that he would be at the bottom of any layoff list. He said that he could see 20 years in the future as when he could start to "sock away retirement cash".
my mother in law. Her husband cheated on her, divorced her, and stuck her with a bunch of debt (so i am told) when she was a young mother of 2. she put herself through law school (more debt) to get a job working for local government offices (not a lot of $$) and put her kids in very expensive NY private schools ("only the best" syndrome) and helped pay for their $50K/year college tuition even though she was still saddled with debt.
she's in her low/mid 60s now and i don't think she'll retire anytime soon. so many unfortunate circumstances (some avoidable, some not).
i would argue that she failed to put her own oxygen mask on first (pay off her own debt) before spending on private schools but she's my MIL so mum's the word. unless it's on an anonymous interweb forum.
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Maybe the kids could pay her back what she spent on their college to help her out. You are right that she did make some bad choices in addition to bad luck.
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There's a woman at work who has to be in her upper 60's and I overheard her complaining to her boss how bad she needs a raise cause she can no longer afford the minimum payment(s) on multiple credit cards... Guess there was never a plan to ever payoff credit card debt?!
THAT ^^^ contribution wins the prize - for I know not what:)
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There's a woman at work who has to be in her upper 60's and I overheard her complaining to her boss how bad she needs a raise cause she can no longer afford the minimum payment(s) on multiple credit cards... Guess there was never a plan to ever payoff credit card debt?!
THAT ^^^ contribution wins the prize - for I know not what:)
After 40 working years you would think she understands how the labor market works....
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What I mean here is that someone whose situation is that he can't possibly think about early retiring.
I'll start. I knew a guy (early 30's at the time) who had 4 young children at the time, all from a fairly high-maintenance wife (stay-at-home at the time), who had just rolled all his savings into his McMansion in California's Imperial Valley (I think it was Moreno Valley) in early 2007, and still with about $50K of student debt (instead of paying that down, he had built up his savings to buy a $550K home in what had been "the hottest real estate market around". He said that he absolutely could not lose his job (aerospace engineer), so he made sure to be the hardest working, boss-supplicating corporate peon at work - and totally miserable - so that he would be at the bottom of any layoff list. He said that he could see 20 years in the future as when he could start to "sock away retirement cash".
my mother in law. Her husband cheated on her, divorced her, and stuck her with a bunch of debt (so i am told) when she was a young mother of 2. she put herself through law school (more debt) to get a job working for local government offices (not a lot of $$) and put her kids in very expensive NY private schools ("only the best" syndrome) and helped pay for their $50K/year college tuition even though she was still saddled with debt.
she's in her low/mid 60s now and i don't think she'll retire anytime soon. so many unfortunate circumstances (some avoidable, some not).
i would argue that she failed to put her own oxygen mask on first (pay off her own debt) before spending on private schools but she's my MIL so mum's the word. unless it's on an anonymous interweb forum.
I guess I'm just your typical Mustachian but as a product myself of NY public schools, I never got the attraction of sending your kids to crazy expensive private schools - unless you're incredibly wealthy I guess. I just don't get it.
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My ex coworker /friend is 75. ... 6 years ago he lost employment after taking a 2 year mba to start afresh.
What age was he when he finished his MBA? I ha been considering getting yet another master's, this time in business analytics / data science, but I wonder how marketable I would be after a 10+ year retirement and being eligible for AARP.
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What I mean here is that someone whose situation is that he can't possibly think about early retiring.
I'll start. I knew a guy (early 30's at the time) who had 4 young children at the time, all from a fairly high-maintenance wife (stay-at-home at the time), who had just rolled all his savings into his McMansion in California's Imperial Valley (I think it was Moreno Valley) in early 2007, and still with about $50K of student debt (instead of paying that down, he had built up his savings to buy a $550K home in what had been "the hottest real estate market around". He said that he absolutely could not lose his job (aerospace engineer), so he made sure to be the hardest working, boss-supplicating corporate peon at work - and totally miserable - so that he would be at the bottom of any layoff list. He said that he could see 20 years in the future as when he could start to "sock away retirement cash".
my mother in law. Her husband cheated on her, divorced her, and stuck her with a bunch of debt (so i am told) when she was a young mother of 2. she put herself through law school (more debt) to get a job working for local government offices (not a lot of $$) and put her kids in very expensive NY private schools ("only the best" syndrome) and helped pay for their $50K/year college tuition even though she was still saddled with debt.
she's in her low/mid 60s now and i don't think she'll retire anytime soon. so many unfortunate circumstances (some avoidable, some not).
i would argue that she failed to put her own oxygen mask on first (pay off her own debt) before spending on private schools but she's my MIL so mum's the word. unless it's on an anonymous interweb forum.
Friends in their 50s - borrowed out of their retirement savings in order to fund private school and expensive summer camps for their kids. As in private elementary school and "I don't know how we are going to pay for college. They might have to go *to a state university* (gasp!)." They aren't retirement age yet, but I foresee problems.
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Met an American down in South America. We hit it off during a tour group and started discussing retirement. I'm "pretired" I tell him as my wife still works blah, blah. Give him a non specific rundown of how we plan to fund retirement, I mention a smallish pension. He says "You a lucky. I was an international cargo pilot for most of my career, but I made a mistake by always working 1099 instead of for one of the big international shippers who offered a pension. I'm 72 and my money runs out by the time I hit 74". His "strike" count- First wife divorced him and took half. He ends up marrying a Filipeno gal, and earns his second strike when they divorce. (He said she had 4 sisters who all married Americans, and all got divorced! "I should have seen that coming!")
The day we met, he was driving down to Chile from Seattle where a former co worker said "If you can get here, you will have a job"... unfortunately, his odd model, 12 year old GM car lost its transmission in the mountains, stranding him at night on the side of a very dangerous mountain pass. He had been stranded close to a month in the SA country searching for a mechanic that could first find the parts, then repair his "odd" model car that was no longer in existence for close to a decade.
Bottom line- he had short and long term issues he was dealing with. Joining this tour group was his once a month splurge to keep his sanity. He was very smart, had amazing stories, spoke 6 languages, had piloted a specific large aircraft through almost every international airport in the world...and now he was stuck in SA waiting for his car to get repaired. He felt bad when I offered to pick up a $2 beer for him.
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Met an American down in South America. We hit it off during a tour group and started discussing retirement. I'm "pretired" I tell him as my wife still works blah, blah. Give him a non specific rundown of how we plan to fund retirement, I mention a smallish pension. He says "You a lucky. I was an international cargo pilot for most of my career, but I made a mistake by always working 1099 instead of for one of the big international shippers who offered a pension. I'm 72 and my money runs out by the time I hit 74". His "strike" count- First wife divorced him and took half. He ends up marrying a Filipeno gal, and earns his second strike when they divorce. (He said she had 4 sisters who all married Americans, and all got divorced! "I should have seen that coming!")
The day we met, he was driving down to Chile from Seattle where a former co worker said "If you can get here, you will have a job"... unfortunately, his odd model, 12 year old GM car lost its transmission in the mountains, stranding him at night on the side of a very dangerous mountain pass. He had been stranded close to a month in the SA country searching for a mechanic that could first find the parts, then repair his "odd" model car that was no longer in existence for close to a decade.
Bottom line- he had short and long term issues he was dealing with. Joining this tour group was his once a month splurge to keep his sanity. He was very smart, had amazing stories, spoke 6 languages, had piloted a specific large aircraft through almost every international airport in the world...and now he was stuck in SA waiting for his car to get repaired. He felt bad when I offered to pick up a $2 beer for him.
What possible salvage value could his car have? Seems like it would have made more sense to scrape his money together just to get to Chile, if he could indeed work there.
A lot of stories about people in dire straits in their senior years seem to involve people who have difficulty rationally (and dispassionately) evaluating situations.
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Met an American down in South America. We hit it off during a tour group and started discussing retirement. I'm "pretired" I tell him as my wife still works blah, blah. Give him a non specific rundown of how we plan to fund retirement, I mention a smallish pension. He says "You a lucky. I was an international cargo pilot for most of my career, but I made a mistake by always working 1099 instead of for one of the big international shippers who offered a pension. I'm 72 and my money runs out by the time I hit 74". His "strike" count- First wife divorced him and took half. He ends up marrying a Filipeno gal, and earns his second strike when they divorce. (He said she had 4 sisters who all married Americans, and all got divorced! "I should have seen that coming!")
The day we met, he was driving down to Chile from Seattle where a former co worker said "If you can get here, you will have a job"... unfortunately, his odd model, 12 year old GM car lost its transmission in the mountains, stranding him at night on the side of a very dangerous mountain pass. He had been stranded close to a month in the SA country searching for a mechanic that could first find the parts, then repair his "odd" model car that was no longer in existence for close to a decade.
Bottom line- he had short and long term issues he was dealing with. Joining this tour group was his once a month splurge to keep his sanity. He was very smart, had amazing stories, spoke 6 languages, had piloted a specific large aircraft through almost every international airport in the world...and now he was stuck in SA waiting for his car to get repaired. He felt bad when I offered to pick up a $2 beer for him.
What possible salvage value could his car have? Seems like it would have made more sense to scrape his money together just to get to Chile, if he could indeed work there.
A lot of stories about people in dire straits in their senior years seem to involve people who have difficulty rationally (and dispassionately) evaluating situations.
Wouldn't it make more sense just to scrap the car and fly (or take the bus) to Chile? I travelled in SA about 15 years ago but I remember air fares being cheap and bus fares even cheaper.
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I didn't do a deep dive on his thought process, as we were really just a couple of strangers chatting, but I think his issue was the vehicle had all of his "stuff" in it, plus he still needed a vehicle when he arrived. As I mentioned, the guy was very sharp and well aged... I had no idea he was that old until he told me.
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Just had the most frustrating conversation with a friend of mine, B.
B works a crappy job for a stable, but crappy, employer. He makes a bit above min wage, has absolutely no prospects going forward, no hope of a promotion or salary raise, even if he leaves the company to do the same job elsewhere.
He almost didn't get his high school, and refuses to go back to school. I think he just plain hates working with authority figures, and a major reason his current job sits well with him is that he's very isolated from his co-workers/bosses. He gets his work done, nothing blows up, everyone's happy.
His sister has managed to get herself fired from every position she's ever worked, and blames the employers/the economy for the fact that she's out of work.
His mother is also chronically unemployed. She's a much nicer, less confrontational person than the sister, so I'm not sure what the issue is there, but she left on bad terms with all her employers and has been out of work for years.
B moved into his current townhouse with his sister and a roommate. Roommate moved out. Sister never paid her share of the rent, sponged off some friends for a bit, and is currently living with the grandparents. B's mother moved into the townhouse. B is now paying for a townhouse on his own - I'm pretty sure the monthly rent is ~$100 cheaper than his monthly take-home. He managed to convince the landlord to lower rent prices for a year while he searched for a new roommate. Min wage in my town went up and he made a little more money. That year of grace period is probably over by now.
I gather that the mother was on social assistance for a bit, that assistance has since been revoked. I'm not well-read on what the rules are for social assistance in my town, I gather that there's not enough money, and unless there's a child involved, cheques will stop coming after a month or two. To get more cheques, you have to pay back the first few. It works more as an interest-free-loan-of-indeterminate-amount and less as a supplement to income/rent.
B and his mother both have a plethora of "allergies" and other health issues which means no one will ever live with them. Min wage raise is going to be repealed since the right-wing politician won the election. B applied to live in a 2bdrm apartment near work, but he doesn't have cash on hand for first + last and probably went to the landlord with a sob story about how he's so poor. The landlord leased the apartment to someone else.
B is now talking about how he "didn't get the apartment, so won't be moving for a while" which he's happy about, because he doesn't actually want to move. I really don't like his attitude. There are other 2 bdrm apartments in the area, even 1 bdrm apartments. If you can't afford to support your mother, you can't afford to support your mother. Heck, when I was making his money, I was living in an illegal room in someone's basement. B is also one of those people who will complain and moan about any overtime that comes his way. He's living below the poverty line, he can't afford to say no to OT right now.
His main plan for the future seems to be to work forever at this crappy job and moan forever about how he can't afford anything. He doesn't adapt well to change, and isn't initiating any changes of his own. I really don't understand, and have no idea how to help him. I suspect anything I say to nudge him in the right direction would just be countermanded by his mother, who lives with him and whom he respects and thinks well of.
I think I'm going to phase out of this guy's life. It's sad, but I don't know what else to do.
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@kelvin, it sounds like the mother was on a type of municipal assistance if that's the way it worked. We used to have this sort of thing here and it was just meant as a stop-gap measure until one could apply for provincial assistance. So you could suggest to your friend that she do that. If she's been out of work for years, what has she been living on? Her son? You could hand him some job listings for things that he might qualify for, but like they say, you can lead a horse to water, but you you can't make it drink.
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I knew a man who had no education beyond high school.
He worked at different blue-collar jobs until he was about 40 at which time his mother died.
When her estate was settled he inherited her home in California's Silicon Valley.
He sold the home for $1.4 million.
Within ~ 2 years of the sale he spent all of the $1.4 million.
He cannot retire because has no $ saved and his only source of retirement $ will be Social Security retirement benefits.
The last I heard of him he was working at a trash recycling facility sorting incoming trash on a conveyor belt.
I cannot think of sorrier tale of a wasted, once-in-a-lifetime opportunity to FIRE.
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@SunnyDays They won't discuss the details about what happened last time she was on municipal/provincial assistance. I know she's been living off her family for years, and refuses to apply for assistance again because she knows she'll be rejected. I suspect she owes the city money at least.
I've been thinking about offering them tips on "How to appear middle-class" or something. I found when I was broke + hungry I had to appear happy + well fed when asking for jobs, applying to live somewhere, getting registered in my school courses, etc. I suspect they're letting things slip in these conversations that highlight how desperate they are at times when they need a potential employer/landlord to trust them. I'm a firm believer in "don't offer help where it's not wanted" so I'm not sure how to bring this up in casual conversation as a "take it or leave it" type thing.
(My parents offered me all kinds of "advice" that was worse than useless, was actively harmful to my struggle to get out of poverty.)
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The people I'm sorry for don't deserve their bad luck. This is the story of a woman I knew.
When I was younger, I knew a young woman whose mother was diagnosed with MS while my friend was at university. The mother went downhill rapidly, and became wheelchair bound by the time my friend was 25. Needless to say, my friend did most of the care for her mother, and so had limited opportunity to have a job - let alone a career. So she became a "temp" and worked at all sorts of places except on the days she had to do things for her mother. Her care stopped the mother from needing to be admitted to a nursing home, but the mother needed to be strapped into the wheelchair, and wheeled everywhere (she couldn't move it herself).
When she was 35, she started to have problems with the feelings in her limbs. She was diagnosed, and had MS herself. She could no longer look after her mother, who went into a nursing home, and died shortly afterward. She, herself, was soon only able to walk with calipers. She still worked, when she could. It took a further 10 years for her to be wheelchair bound. She's now dead, but she could never retire. She never had any opportunity to earn much.
Just before she was diagnosed, she met a guy, and they fell in love, but his two children completely rejected her, so they reluctantly parted. It was the only time she ever had a boyfriend. She never had much of a job, so she always lived hand to mouth. She never had anyone to look after her, the way she had looked after her mother.
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I knew a man who had no education beyond high school.
He worked at different blue-collar jobs until he was about 40 at which time his mother died.
When her estate was settled he inherited her home in California's Silicon Valley.
He sold the home for $1.4 million.
Within ~ 2 years of the sale he spent all of the $1.4 million.
He cannot retire because has no $ saved and his only source of retirement $ will be Social Security retirement benefits.
The last I heard of him he was working at a trash recycling facility sorting incoming trash on a conveyor belt.
I cannot think of sorrier tale of a wasted, once-in-a-lifetime opportunity to FIRE.
DING, DING! WE HAVE A WINNER!
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I just finished reading Nomadland: Surviving America in the 21st Century
Lot of sad stories in there of 60, 70, 80 year olds working manual labor to survive.
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Wow, some real humdingers in here. I suppose mine isn't so great in comparison, but here it is anyway:
Coworker with 25 years on the job. Was stupid with a lot of women who saw he had a public service job, with public service healthcare and benefits. Birth control clearly wasn't used, or wasn't a priority.
Has 6 different kids with 5 different women. Guy works 6 days a week, 12-14 hour days voluntarily (he'd work seven if he was allowed to), and barely takes home $400 biweekly because he was always an overtime guy, and the judgment for child support considered that. He is quite literally a slave, since failure to pay child support can lead to his arrest, possibly even due to no fault of his own if the overtime disappears. He has gotten very close on multiple occasions, but there always seemed to be just enough OT, or just enough cash in the paycheck to paycheck checking account to cover the payments, and it hasn't had to come to that.
Anyway, the oldest, about 4 years ago, was going about 6 months away from no longer being eligible for child support payments. Guy was finally gonna get a break, and be able to start saving for his retirement since while his pension amount will be nice due to all the overtime, he's still got 5 kids with 4 different women on child support and that's going to destroy that pension in a hurry. He is in his mid 50s and still has to have roommates because of this situation, and lives in an absolute dump of a neighborhood that isn't safe. This is while pulling in 6 figures, just about every year. Meanwhile, the women were clearly living large on the dole as the child support was not being spent on the kids (a nominal amount was, but that's it), so paternal financial responsibility aside, he's working too much to be a good dad for visitation purposes, and he's not even *really* supporting his kids, only his baby mommas.
So, anyway, what does he do with the end of his self inflicted sentence finally coming up, with kids dropping off child support one at a time every few years, with 25 years on the job at age 53?
Naturally, he has a 7th kid with a 6th woman. And yet again, no, they're not married.
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Naturally, he has a 7th kid with a 6th woman. And yet again, no, they're not married.
Nooooooooooooooo!!!!!
I mean, kid 1, okay...mistake made. Kid 2, well, another lesson learned. Kid 3...TIME FOR A VASECTOMY!!!!!!!!!!!!
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Naturally, he has a 7th kid with a 6th woman. And yet again, no, they're not married.
Nooooooooooooooo!!!!!
I mean, kid 1, okay...mistake made. Kid 2, well, another lesson learned. Kid 3...TIME FOR A VASECTOMY!!!!!!!!!!!!
oh geez
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Naturally, he has a 7th kid with a 6th woman. And yet again, no, they're not married.
Nooooooooooooooo!!!!!
I mean, kid 1, okay...mistake made. Kid 2, well, another lesson learned. Kid 3...TIME FOR A VASECTOMY!!!!!!!!!!!!
Yup. Fool me once, shame on you. Fool me twice, shame on me. Fool me 6-7 times? Well that's just the stubornness of a moron who thinks he's Superman (or Kool Aid Man) running into a wall over and over.
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Coworker with 25 years on the job. Was stupid with a lot of women who saw he had a public service job, with public service healthcare and benefits. Birth control clearly wasn't used, or wasn't a priority.
This is what gets me. If the guy was a ferrari driving investment banker I'd kind of get it but a public service shift worker with a relatively low wage? How do these women benefit from it? I guess his kids get the really good public service health care? But if they're not married to him then they get nothing. Being the child of a single mother myself, I don't believe that they use the child support money on themselves. That sounds like his bitching.
Also I can't imagine meeting a guy with 6 kids with 5 women and thinking "this guy is obviously a real catch."
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Coworker with 25 years on the job. Was stupid with a lot of women who saw he had a public service job, with public service healthcare and benefits. Birth control clearly wasn't used, or wasn't a priority.
This is what gets me. If the guy was a ferrari driving investment banker I'd kind of get it but a public service shift worker with a relatively low wage? How do these women benefit from it? I guess his kids get the really good public service health care? But if they're not married to him then they get nothing. Being the child of a single mother myself, I don't believe that they use the child support money on themselves. That sounds like his bitching.
Also I can't imagine meeting a guy with 6 kids with 5 women and thinking "this guy is obviously a real catch."
He didn't have 25 years on the job with the first 5 women. And who said the job was low paying? Remember, I said he was over 6 figures annually (granted, not a lot in NYC, but nothing to sneeze at) when all was said and done and yet his YEARLY take home was probably around 5K (he showed me one pay stub). Re: benefits, he married two of the first five women. There are women out there like that. It's a small minority of the population, for sure, but there are some that just want to have children at all costs and don't care if the man sticks around, and just intend to get as much of a free ride out of it as they can. You find them all the time over here in NYC. They are the ones demanding a free ride on public transit from everyone that has just walked out, playing the poverty sob story (and teaching their kids to beg in this manner, which is even more inexcusable) for free necessities when they have new sneakers, new phones, and expensive toys. Needless to say, this is a small segment of the population, but these toxic people do exist, and they will literally never end up in a good financial place once the gravy train runs out since they have no marketable skills, minimal social security, major gaps in employment history, and oftentimes bad attitudes that potential employers see through almost immediately. But they're real, and they're terrifying. They're the horror stories people rail against when decrying the existence of support programs like welfare that are designed to help honest, hardworking people get back up on their feet. They pretty much ruin anything they touch. And this guy had the lack of foresight to end up with several of them (1-2 of the women were just young and immature at the time as he obviously was, and figured it out, he once admitted, but the rest? Merciless and out for themselves. I have no idea about the last one because I didn't talk to him anymore at that point, just could not handle the dumb.)
Remember, relative value is subjective. To women who grow up in the projects and drop out of high school with no real aspirations or career prospects, a guy with a government job who can pay child support IS a cash cow. It's the equivalent of buying a share of ConEd stock cuz you can't afford Amazon - there may not be much upside, but you know what you're going to get, and you know his employment will always be in demand, and thus your "dividends" will continue.
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I knew a man who had no education beyond high school.
He worked at different blue-collar jobs until he was about 40 at which time his mother died.
When her estate was settled he inherited her home in California's Silicon Valley.
He sold the home for $1.4 million.
Within ~ 2 years of the sale he spent all of the $1.4 million.
He cannot retire because has no $ saved and his only source of retirement $ will be Social Security retirement benefits.
The last I heard of him he was working at a trash recycling facility sorting incoming trash on a conveyor belt.
I cannot think of sorrier tale of a wasted, once-in-a-lifetime opportunity to FIRE.
DING, DING! WE HAVE A WINNER!
I agree...just WOW!
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Coworker with 25 years on the job. Was stupid with a lot of women who saw he had a public service job, with public service healthcare and benefits. Birth control clearly wasn't used, or wasn't a priority.
This is what gets me. If the guy was a ferrari driving investment banker I'd kind of get it but a public service shift worker with a relatively low wage? How do these women benefit from it? I guess his kids get the really good public service health care? But if they're not married to him then they get nothing. Being the child of a single mother myself, I don't believe that they use the child support money on themselves. That sounds like his bitching.
Also I can't imagine meeting a guy with 6 kids with 5 women and thinking "this guy is obviously a real catch."
Obviously, these women must have determined that he is good genetic material, and that is worth more than what a less-genetically fit man who could devote much more financial & emotional resources. Of course to a lot of men, Yours Truly included, a single mommy is considered toxic, at least for non-casual purposes.
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Naturally, he has a 7th kid with a 6th woman. And yet again, no, they're not married.
Nooooooooooooooo!!!!!
I mean, kid 1, okay...mistake made. Kid 2, well, another lesson learned. Kid 3...TIME FOR A VASECTOMY!!!!!!!!!!!!
Yup. Fool me once, shame on you. Fool me twice, shame on me. Fool me 6-7 times? Well that's just the stubornness of a moron who thinks he's Superman (or Kool Aid Man) running into a wall over and over.
Biological urge to breed is far too strong in some people... they need to be saved from themselves.
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I recently heard about a US Marshal that had worked for the government for 28 years and never contributed to his TSP/401k. Apparently he only had about $40,000 in the account from the mandatory 1% the government puts in.
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Biological urge to breed is far too strong in some people... they need to be saved from themselves.
No. Down that path lies madness.
He's already paying for his mistakes, all is as it should be.
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She wasn't too worried, though, because her father promised her a big inheritance (MILLIONS, he said). But, not a penny if she left her husband.
WTF? Where does an arrangement like that come from?
I could totally see my parents doing something like this. They love my wife. If anything ever happened to our marriage, they would take her side.
My parents may not leave me $millions anyway, hopefully they'll enjoy their money.
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I recently heard about a US Marshal that had worked for the government for 28 years and never contributed to his TSP/401k. Apparently he only had about $40,000 in the account from the mandatory 1% the government puts in.
If he's a US Marshall for 28 years he has a federal pension which is likely pretty high along with low cost retiree medical. He will be totally fine.
Not necessarily. He would be totally fine if he followed MMM, retired with no debt, and lived in a LCOL area. He will be screwed if he is mandatory retirement age, was living paycheck to paycheck, and has any type of debt. I wouldn't want to be him in either scenario because once he dies, the pension goes away leaving his family with nothing.
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I recently heard about a US Marshal that had worked for the government for 28 years and never contributed to his TSP/401k. Apparently he only had about $40,000 in the account from the mandatory 1% the government puts in.
If he's a US Marshall for 28 years he has a federal pension which is likely pretty high along with low cost retiree medical. He will be totally fine.
Not necessarily. He would be totally fine if he followed MMM, retired with no debt, and lived in a LCOL area. He will be screwed if he is mandatory retirement age, was living paycheck to paycheck, and has any type of debt. I wouldn't want to be him in either scenario because once he dies, the pension goes away leaving his family with nothing.
If it's a federal pension, he can always opt for the version with the survivor benefit.
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The people I'm sorry for don't deserve their bad luck. This is the story of a woman I knew.
When I was younger, I knew a young woman whose mother was diagnosed with MS while my friend was at university. The mother went downhill rapidly, and became wheelchair bound by the time my friend was 25. Needless to say, my friend did most of the care for her mother, and so had limited opportunity to have a job - let alone a career. So she became a "temp" and worked at all sorts of places except on the days she had to do things for her mother. Her care stopped the mother from needing to be admitted to a nursing home, but the mother needed to be strapped into the wheelchair, and wheeled everywhere (she couldn't move it herself).
When she was 35, she started to have problems with the feelings in her limbs. She was diagnosed, and had MS herself. She could no longer look after her mother, who went into a nursing home, and died shortly afterward. She, herself, was soon only able to walk with calipers. She still worked, when she could. It took a further 10 years for her to be wheelchair bound. She's now dead, but she could never retire. She never had any opportunity to earn much.
Just before she was diagnosed, she met a guy, and they fell in love, but his two children completely rejected her, so they reluctantly parted. It was the only time she ever had a boyfriend. She never had much of a job, so she always lived hand to mouth. She never had anyone to look after her, the way she had looked after her mother.
This one was too much [tear in my eye]
JGS
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I recently heard about a US Marshal that had worked for the government for 28 years and never contributed to his TSP/401k. Apparently he only had about $40,000 in the account from the mandatory 1% the government puts in.
If he's a US Marshall for 28 years he has a federal pension which is likely pretty high along with low cost retiree medical. He will be totally fine.
Not necessarily. He would be totally fine if he followed MMM, retired with no debt, and lived in a LCOL area. He will be screwed if he is mandatory retirement age, was living paycheck to paycheck, and has any type of debt. I wouldn't want to be him in either scenario because once he dies, the pension goes away leaving his family with nothing.
If it's a federal pension, he can always opt for the version with the survivor benefit.
And, in fact, if he wants to not have a survivor benefit his spouse will have to agree/sign away her rights. With CSRS pension (old Federal pension system) the max survivor benefit is 55%. Not sure if FERS has the same survivor %.
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My FIL:
Married DHs mom, who had a wealthy family, worked as a lawyer, got a taste of the finer things in life, thought he was entitled to all of it, including entitled to his secretary. Got divorced, tried to go after the mothers family for "support" since they were paying moms salary during divorce. Stress of it all literally killed DHs mom. FIL gets engaged to the secretary, who turns out to be crazy pants, so he splits when he finds woman number 3 DHs step mom, who is 20 years younger.
Married 20 years, him making 300k plus most of the time. Lived in multi million dollar interest only mortgage homes in CA. Her two kids had to have the BEST of everything, private schools, cars, Ivy League colleges etc. She of course never worked. FIL looses his job in the recession, can't find another one because he's 1. Lazy and 2. retirement age. So they start raiding what little retirement accounts he had to hold onto the interest only mortgage house. Stepmom sees he can't afford her anymore, divorces him and takes half of the remaining assets.
FIL ends up in an extended stay hotel, racking up six figures in credit card debt, gets injured, and because he doesn't have a woman doing things for him for the first time in his life, is living in his own filth.
Cue in DHs shithole siblings telling DH he needs to "save his fathers life" and I now have a 71 year old man child living in the guest room. He does nothing all day, is racist and sexist, is fighting us tooth and nail on paying back his credit cards (I said bankrupt them and he won't) owes us 15k (which we won't see) and refuses to act like an adult so we've had to deal with things like hauling him to the ER because he dehydrated himself by drinking nothing but beer and eating salty junk food (I don't buy it, he mail orders it and is hiding it in the house). Oh, and yesterday he shit himself because he had gastric bypass, and ate a ton of fatty food, which he KNOWS upsets his stomach due to the fat malabsorption from the surgery. And no it wasn't a little "don't trust this fart" one, it was a throw out all your clothes in sealed bag outside one.
And yes, we've forced him to the doctor about this and they ran every test known to man on him, they said it's a result of the bypass and he just needs to stop eating shit food and drinking beer. And he won't.
We also found out this week that WE are his retirement plan, he wants to follow us around until the day he dies. We told him one year when he moved in. So there was a coming to jesus moment where DH laid down the law this weekend. I think it went in one ear and out the other.
We kicked him out officially. Overheard him saying all sorts of nasty shit about us like how dare we make him do a budget, he just floats on the wind, and that we have "abused the privilege of having him in our household" and that my husband is weak for not standing up to me so on and so forth. DH walked in and said "well, I just heard everything" and his dad was like how dare you invade my privacy. I said it's not invading your privacy when we can hear you through a closed door and across the hallway in our bedroom. He told me to shut the fuck up and that I didn't have a right to say anything to him, it wasn't my "place" I lost my ever loving shit on him and DH told him to get the fuck out within 48 hours. Got him a one way plane ticket to CA the next day and he is now living in an apartment that costs his entire social security check. So, yea, he's going to be homeless in a couple years once the cards are all maxed out again.
DH told his sister she could have been more helpful, and stepped in earlier. To which she responded how dare he, doesn't he know she has children. It's been three weeks and we haven't heard anything from a single member of his family. We are the demon spawn to them all apparently. Even though not one of them lifted a single finger to help him when he needed it. He pretty much told her to lose his number.
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Mishmash - good for you for standing up to him. And very sorry that he and your SIL said all those mean things about you. You definitely don't deserve it.
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MishMash, big hugs from this online stranger. I hope you can now decompress and start to feel like you're not under siege in your own home. Good on DH for doing the right thing, even though I'm sure it was tough and he'll feel guilty in spite of not having a better option.
Whew. What a story. I wish you some peace and recovery time.
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What a horror show, MishMash. You ABSOLUTELY did the right thing. Please try to find some peace now...some people can't be helped.
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Sounds like a celebration for MishMash. Just excised a boatload of cancer from your life! I suspect you'll be deliriously happy quite soon, if not already.
I had to laugh at the absurdity of the 'abused the privilege' line. Folks can be quite creative in their delusions.
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Awesome.. Wish I could have been a fly on the wall for that conversation..:)
Not to make light of the issue as I'm sure this whole nightmare has been brutally hard.
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I, for one, would like an expansion on the "lost my ever-loving shit on him" gloss-over.
Nice job!
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What's the sorriest situation you've known of someone who couldn't retire?
This may not be the sorriest, but it's true. It's also a variation from many of these.
I'm quite cheap, not frugal, cheap. I worked with this fellow, F I told him, "I'll bet I'm cheaper than you." F proved me wrong.
F worked and his wife worked at a school cafeteria. Their food was the leftovers from the cafeteria. I once asked our supervisor where F was. I was told that this was the time he went to the bathroom every day. He had calculated the savings on paper and water and so used the facilities at work. This was typical of F.
F got to be about 67. I am certain he and his wife had a stash in the millions. There was a change in retirement benefits. I am not sure how it worked out, but F said he would actually make more money if he didn't work. So he retired.
About a year after he retired, he developed brain cancer and died. Some may not get the sadness of this, but that money made him a slave.
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My FIL:
Married DHs mom, who had a wealthy family, worked as a lawyer, got a taste of the finer things in life, thought he was entitled to all of it, including entitled to his secretary. Got divorced, tried to go after the mothers family for "support" since they were paying moms salary during divorce. Stress of it all literally killed DHs mom. FIL gets engaged to the secretary, who turns out to be crazy pants, so he splits when he finds woman number 3 DHs step mom, who is 20 years younger.
Married 20 years, him making 300k plus most of the time. Lived in multi million dollar interest only mortgage homes in CA. Her two kids had to have the BEST of everything, private schools, cars, Ivy League colleges etc. She of course never worked. FIL looses his job in the recession, can't find another one because he's 1. Lazy and 2. retirement age. So they start raiding what little retirement accounts he had to hold onto the interest only mortgage house. Stepmom sees he can't afford her anymore, divorces him and takes half of the remaining assets.
FIL ends up in an extended stay hotel, racking up six figures in credit card debt, gets injured, and because he doesn't have a woman doing things for him for the first time in his life, is living in his own filth.
Cue in DHs shithole siblings telling DH he needs to "save his fathers life" and I now have a 71 year old man child living in the guest room. He does nothing all day, is racist and sexist, is fighting us tooth and nail on paying back his credit cards (I said bankrupt them and he won't) owes us 15k (which we won't see) and refuses to act like an adult so we've had to deal with things like hauling him to the ER because he dehydrated himself by drinking nothing but beer and eating salty junk food (I don't buy it, he mail orders it and is hiding it in the house). Oh, and yesterday he shit himself because he had gastric bypass, and ate a ton of fatty food, which he KNOWS upsets his stomach due to the fat malabsorption from the surgery. And no it wasn't a little "don't trust this fart" one, it was a throw out all your clothes in sealed bag outside one.
And yes, we've forced him to the doctor about this and they ran every test known to man on him, they said it's a result of the bypass and he just needs to stop eating shit food and drinking beer. And he won't.
We also found out this week that WE are his retirement plan, he wants to follow us around until the day he dies. We told him one year when he moved in. So there was a coming to jesus moment where DH laid down the law this weekend. I think it went in one ear and out the other.
We kicked him out officially. Overheard him saying all sorts of nasty shit about us like how dare we make him do a budget, he just floats on the wind, and that we have "abused the privilege of having him in our household" and that my husband is weak for not standing up to me so on and so forth. DH walked in and said "well, I just heard everything" and his dad was like how dare you invade my privacy. I said it's not invading your privacy when we can hear you through a closed door and across the hallway in our bedroom. He told me to shut the fuck up and that I didn't have a right to say anything to him, it wasn't my "place" I lost my ever loving shit on him and DH told him to get the fuck out within 48 hours. Got him a one way plane ticket to CA the next day and he is now living in an apartment that costs his entire social security check. So, yea, he's going to be homeless in a couple years once the cards are all maxed out again.
DH told his sister she could have been more helpful, and stepped in earlier. To which she responded how dare he, doesn't he know she has children. It's been three weeks and we haven't heard anything from a single member of his family. We are the demon spawn to them all apparently. Even though not one of them lifted a single finger to help him when he needed it. He pretty much told her to lose his number.
Karma works in wonderful ways. You tried to help a relative (the right thing to do), now you've tossed them out of their home (OMG so very much the right thing to do) and your karmic reward is you don't have to put up with the rest of DH's worthless relatives.
Yeah you and yeah karma!
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Talked to a guy at work today.
He was 68. Wife was 65. Both Medicare eligible. Worked the past 45 years for a good company. Said he's got a nice stash of money more than 2 million.
Due to wife's medical and RX costs--and covered meds under Medicare he's trying to work 2 more years.
Sad part--looking at her meds and the costs its the smart move.
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I, for one, would like an expansion on the "lost my ever-loving shit on him" gloss-over.
Nice job!
I screamed at him that it's MY house, not his, so anything that goes on under MY roof is "my place" and how dare he insult us in our own home after we have footed 15k in debt repayment for him PLUS every. single. one. of his living expenses for the past year without so much as a thank you. Pointed out that when he was literally living in his own feces and his dogs, not one of the siblings stepped up to do anything because none of them want anything to do with him that they "love him" because he's their dad but they don't like him as a person. DH was the only one that stepped up and that was out of a sense of obligation not love (DH literally said if he would trade his dad to have mine back any day of the week) and that I told DH before he moved in that this was a bad idea.
He goes but I'm always in your corner DH. To which I screamed "where the fuck have you been the past 11 years then, how many care packages have you mailed your son when deployed, how many times did you pick up the phone when he called, how many times have I had to call YOU and say, you need to call your son, he's been back from deployment for a week and has called you a dozen times, you need to pick up"
Then I called him the laziest most selfish person I have ever known and rounded it out with, you know those "filthy liberals" and 'snowflakes' you bemoan? Guess what, you are the biggest 'snowflake' I've ever met. You're a Republican, aren't you supposed to be all about personal responsibility? Instead you are what you love to hate. Lazy. Selfish. Narcissistic. Sexist. and up to your eyeballs in debt.
DH had to go on anti depressants this year, in large part because his fathers inability to do ANYTHING, even make phone calls, really started to get to him. I've noticed a marked uptick in his mental health since the sloth moved out.
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I am so glad you got this dealt with MishMash..
Personally there is NFW I would allow any of my in laws to live in my house but then I understand that sometimes you have to try these things in order to satisfy the spouse that you have at least made an effort.
The problem of course is that your house is more than just a box that you live in.. Its your sanctuary, its where you unwind, relax and shut out the cares of the world. Inviting somebody to stay inside the walls of your refuge is stressful even when they are normal well adjusted people. When they are self entitled scum its 100 times worse!
Why did you guys let this go on for so long? This idiot should have been moved out after a couple of warnings, which sounds like should have come within the first week or so.
Bottom line though, I'm glad he's gone, now you can recover from this stressful ordeal.
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The people I'm sorry for don't deserve their bad luck. This is the story of a woman I knew.
When I was younger, I knew a young woman whose mother was diagnosed with MS while my friend was at university. The mother went downhill rapidly, and became wheelchair bound by the time my friend was 25. Needless to say, my friend did most of the care for her mother, and so had limited opportunity to have a job - let alone a career. So she became a "temp" and worked at all sorts of places except on the days she had to do things for her mother. Her care stopped the mother from needing to be admitted to a nursing home, but the mother needed to be strapped into the wheelchair, and wheeled everywhere (she couldn't move it herself).
When she was 35, she started to have problems with the feelings in her limbs. She was diagnosed, and had MS herself. She could no longer look after her mother, who went into a nursing home, and died shortly afterward. She, herself, was soon only able to walk with calipers. She still worked, when she could. It took a further 10 years for her to be wheelchair bound. She's now dead, but she could never retire. She never had any opportunity to earn much.
Just before she was diagnosed, she met a guy, and they fell in love, but his two children completely rejected her, so they reluctantly parted. It was the only time she ever had a boyfriend. She never had much of a job, so she always lived hand to mouth. She never had anyone to look after her, the way she had looked after her mother.
Talked to a guy at work today.
He was 68. Wife was 65. Both Medicare eligible. Worked the past 45 years for a good company. Said he's got a nice stash of money more than 2 million.
Due to wife's medical and RX costs--and covered meds under Medicare he's trying to work 2 more years.
Sad part--looking at her meds and the costs its the smart move.
I have no desire to "win" this thread but these 2 combined could potentially mean that I don't retire (or retire early), even though I am a semi-MMMer.
I have been putting money into a 401k since I was 21 (although not very much back then) and have always budgeted (although not on a true MMM level), but we also really enjoyed our 20s. However, my otherwise healthy DH was diagnosed with MS one month after turning 30. We will have an extremely healthy stash (market willing) by the time the kids are done with high school (my desired retirement age), if DH remains healthy enough to keep working/not need extensive medical assistance, but I still might not be able to retire due to RX and other medical cost. The current meds that he is on, claim that without insurance and other assistance programs would cost north of $8k/month. I make just shy of a 6 figure salary (very new salary) and he is still working but combined we barely take home more than that. If my projections are correct I will have a $3M stash by the time the kids graduate high school. I guess we could absorb that monthly RX cost but that would not leave us enough to also cover health insurance, other living expenses, and taxes. Since we would need to generate enough "income" to cover those cost that we would not get subsided ACA (if it still exist) and have a decent tax bill (although I plan to utilize ROTH and after tax accounts too). Depending on what happens with health care/RX cost I might have to give up my dream of retiring early (before DH is eligible for Medicare) or my dream of extensive traveling while in retirement.
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Mishmash, just read about your adventures with FIL and WOW, just WOW! Don't know how you did a year with this creature! I give you credit for trying! I could never have lived with my in-laws. I am an only child and the Hub and I never had children so our home is a quiet sanctuary. I like my solitude with my Hub and dogs. I do not want anyone living with me. Just don't like sharing my space. I am so glad your creature moved out. What a ungrateful cling on. You are now free and think long and hard ever allowing anyone to live in your home again!
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A lot of stories about people in dire straits in their senior years seem to involve people who have difficulty rationally (and dispassionately) evaluating situations.
YESS!! This is so true.
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I have no desire to "win" this thread but these 2 combined could potentially mean that I don't retire (or retire early), even though I am a semi-MMMer.
I have been putting money into a 401k since I was 21 (although not very much back then) and have always budgeted (although not on a true MMM level), but we also really enjoyed our 20s. However, my otherwise healthy DH was diagnosed with MS one month after turning 30. We will have an extremely healthy stash (market willing) by the time the kids are done with high school (my desired retirement age), if DH remains healthy enough to keep working/not need extensive medical assistance, but I still might not be able to retire due to RX and other medical cost. The current meds that he is on, claim that without insurance and other assistance programs would cost north of $8k/month. I make just shy of a 6 figure salary (very new salary) and he is still working but combined we barely take home more than that. If my projections are correct I will have a $3M stash by the time the kids graduate high school. I guess we could absorb that monthly RX cost but that would not leave us enough to also cover health insurance, other living expenses, and taxes. Since we would need to generate enough "income" to cover those cost that we would not get subsided ACA (if it still exist) and have a decent tax bill (although I plan to utilize ROTH and after tax accounts too). Depending on what happens with health care/RX cost I might have to give up my dream of retiring early (before DH is eligible for Medicare) or my dream of extensive traveling while in retirement.
@MishMash , start researching government programs. I doubt it's as dire as you seem to be saying. For example, if you're on SSDI, I believe that makes you eligible for Medicare automatically. I also have heard that states have programs for disabled, so it's possible he could end up eligible for both Medicare and Medicaid due to disability. You're going to want to find a professional who specializes in disability (lawyer probably) to help navigate what he might be eligible for and how to set up your finances.
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I have no desire to "win" this thread but these 2 combined could potentially mean that I don't retire (or retire early), even though I am a semi-MMMer.
I have been putting money into a 401k since I was 21 (although not very much back then) and have always budgeted (although not on a true MMM level), but we also really enjoyed our 20s. However, my otherwise healthy DH was diagnosed with MS one month after turning 30. We will have an extremely healthy stash (market willing) by the time the kids are done with high school (my desired retirement age), if DH remains healthy enough to keep working/not need extensive medical assistance, but I still might not be able to retire due to RX and other medical cost. The current meds that he is on, claim that without insurance and other assistance programs would cost north of $8k/month. I make just shy of a 6 figure salary (very new salary) and he is still working but combined we barely take home more than that. If my projections are correct I will have a $3M stash by the time the kids graduate high school. I guess we could absorb that monthly RX cost but that would not leave us enough to also cover health insurance, other living expenses, and taxes. Since we would need to generate enough "income" to cover those cost that we would not get subsided ACA (if it still exist) and have a decent tax bill (although I plan to utilize ROTH and after tax accounts too). Depending on what happens with health care/RX cost I might have to give up my dream of retiring early (before DH is eligible for Medicare) or my dream of extensive traveling while in retirement.
@MishMash , start researching government programs. I doubt it's as dire as you seem to be saying. For example, if you're on SSDI, I believe that makes you eligible for Medicare automatically. I also have heard that states have programs for disabled, so it's possible he could end up eligible for both Medicare and Medicaid due to disability. You're going to want to find a professional who specializes in disability (lawyer probably) to help navigate what he might be eligible for and how to set up your finances.
I think you are talking to me.
You are correct, if he is no longer able to keep working there are a lot of programs to take advantage. The "hope for the best" part of me hopes that when we hit the point that I am ready to retire he is still healthy enough to not be considered disabled. Since the meds are specifically designed to delay the decline of a patient's health and he is responding well to them, it is possible that he will not be disabled (not really any programs then) by the time I am ready to FIRE but still require the RX and all the monitoring. Almost all the drug companies currently offer assistance programs so if things stay the way they are it really isn't as dire but what are the chances of the healthcare industry staying the way they are until he qualifies for medicare (30 years from now)?
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I have no desire to "win" this thread but these 2 combined could potentially mean that I don't retire (or retire early), even though I am a semi-MMMer.
I have been putting money into a 401k since I was 21 (although not very much back then) and have always budgeted (although not on a true MMM level), but we also really enjoyed our 20s. However, my otherwise healthy DH was diagnosed with MS one month after turning 30. We will have an extremely healthy stash (market willing) by the time the kids are done with high school (my desired retirement age), if DH remains healthy enough to keep working/not need extensive medical assistance, but I still might not be able to retire due to RX and other medical cost. The current meds that he is on, claim that without insurance and other assistance programs would cost north of $8k/month. I make just shy of a 6 figure salary (very new salary) and he is still working but combined we barely take home more than that. If my projections are correct I will have a $3M stash by the time the kids graduate high school. I guess we could absorb that monthly RX cost but that would not leave us enough to also cover health insurance, other living expenses, and taxes. Since we would need to generate enough "income" to cover those cost that we would not get subsided ACA (if it still exist) and have a decent tax bill (although I plan to utilize ROTH and after tax accounts too). Depending on what happens with health care/RX cost I might have to give up my dream of retiring early (before DH is eligible for Medicare) or my dream of extensive traveling while in retirement.
@MishMash , start researching government programs. I doubt it's as dire as you seem to be saying. For example, if you're on SSDI, I believe that makes you eligible for Medicare automatically. I also have heard that states have programs for disabled, so it's possible he could end up eligible for both Medicare and Medicaid due to disability. You're going to want to find a professional who specializes in disability (lawyer probably) to help navigate what he might be eligible for and how to set up your finances.
I think you are talking to me.
You are correct, if he is no longer able to keep working there are a lot of programs to take advantage. The "hope for the best" part of me hopes that when we hit the point that I am ready to retire he is still healthy enough to not be considered disabled. Since the meds are specifically designed to delay the decline of a patient's health and he is responding well to them, it is possible that he will not be disabled (not really any programs then) by the time I am ready to FIRE but still require the RX and all the monitoring. Almost all the drug companies currently offer assistance programs so if things stay the way they are it really isn't as dire but what are the chances of the healthcare industry staying the way they are until he qualifies for medicare (30 years from now)?
You are right, I mixed up people. Brain in too many places.
Hope for the best - plan for the worst. Make sure you're planning in case the meds aren't enough and he declines. You don't want to find out last minute that the way you structured things is causing problems.
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This is not a sorry situation, just that maybe I dodged one.
I'm the white boy that married into an Asian family.
We had saved well and bought our first home. About a year in,
my wifes older sister (14 years older) ask if her son and new wife could move in with us.
I looked at is as a way to cut costs, and started calculating some rent,
the cost of food, additional gas and electricity. I came up with $400 as
a reasonable amount for them to pay per month.
They never mover in, I guess they thought it should cost me
for them to live with me and not cost them.
Also over the years, I have convinced my wife, life is so much easier
when they are mad at us, than for us to be mad at them.
When they are mad at us, they don't ask for things, and don't cost us any time.
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... You don't want to find out last minute that the way you structured things is causing problems.
Great point! I keep telling myself that we don't need to talk to a disability lawyer until his health starts to decline, this is a great reason to talk to one sooner. Thank you.
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This is not a sorry situation, just that maybe I dodged one.
I'm the white boy that married into an Asian family.
We had saved well and bought our first home. About a year in,
my wifes older sister (14 years older) ask if her son and new wife could move in with us.
I looked at is as a way to cut costs, and started calculating some rent,
the cost of food, additional gas and electricity. I came up with $400 as
a reasonable amount for them to pay per month.
They never mover in, I guess they thought it should cost me
for them to live with me and not cost them.
Also over the years, I have convinced my wife, life is so much easier
when they are mad at us, than for us to be mad at them.
When they are mad at us, they don't ask for things, and don't cost us any time.
This sounds like one of those cultural situations that come up all the time when you marry into family with a different background. I--personally--would be horrified to realize that my presence in someone's home was costing them $5,000 a year, and they had no way to be made whole from that.
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This is not a sorry situation, just that maybe I dodged one.
I'm the white boy that married into an Asian family.
We had saved well and bought our first home. About a year in,
my wifes older sister (14 years older) ask if her son and new wife could move in with us.
I looked at is as a way to cut costs, and started calculating some rent,
the cost of food, additional gas and electricity. I came up with $400 as
a reasonable amount for them to pay per month.
They never mover in, I guess they thought it should cost me
for them to live with me and not cost them.
Also over the years, I have convinced my wife, life is so much easier
when they are mad at us, than for us to be mad at them.
When they are mad at us, they don't ask for things, and don't cost us any time.
$400 a month! I would have jumped on that and never would leave!
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... You don't want to find out last minute that the way you structured things is causing problems.
Great point! I keep telling myself that we don't need to talk to a disability lawyer until his health starts to decline, this is a great reason to talk to one sooner. Thank you.
Also, find out what municipal and state agencies deal with disabilities in your area and meet with them. A support group would also have many ordinary people who have navigated what you will need to navigate. The more information the better! Best wishes.
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This is not a sorry situation, just that maybe I dodged one.
I'm the white boy that married into an Asian family.
We had saved well and bought our first home. About a year in,
my wifes older sister (14 years older) ask if her son and new wife could move in with us.
I looked at is as a way to cut costs, and started calculating some rent,
the cost of food, additional gas and electricity. I came up with $400 as
a reasonable amount for them to pay per month.
They never mover in, I guess they thought it should cost me
for them to live with me and not cost them.
Also over the years, I have convinced my wife, life is so much easier
when they are mad at us, than for us to be mad at them.
When they are mad at us, they don't ask for things, and don't cost us any time.
$400 a month! I would have jumped on that and never would leave!
It does sound like a good deal. But if they are the sort of couple that can't afford $5000 a year for rent then you may have avoided bigger problems.
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My dad was still working full time at 73, house not paid off, no savings. Only stopped working due to serious illness.
It really makes me question whether it's all really worth it. Maybe instead of working everyday for the next 30 years, I should try to work as little as possible and try to enjoy life while I am still healthy.
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My dad was still working full time at 73, house not paid off, no savings. Only stopped working due to serious illness.
It really makes me question whether it's all really worth it. Maybe instead of working everyday for the next 30 years, I should try to work as little as possible and try to enjoy life while I am still healthy.
Welcome to MMM! I would say this is THE central issue Mustachianism is concerned with.
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I knew a man who had no education beyond high school.
He worked at different blue-collar jobs until he was about 40 at which time his mother died.
When her estate was settled he inherited her home in California's Silicon Valley.
He sold the home for $1.4 million.
Within ~ 2 years of the sale he spent all of the $1.4 million.
He cannot retire because has no $ saved and his only source of retirement $ will be Social Security retirement benefits.
The last I heard of him he was working at a trash recycling facility sorting incoming trash on a conveyor belt.
I cannot think of sorrier tale of a wasted, once-in-a-lifetime opportunity to FIRE.
DING, DING! WE HAVE A WINNER!
I agree...just WOW!
This is like the classic lottery winner story. I've always been curious how exactly you blow over a million dollar in a couple years. I don't think I could spend that much money if I tried.
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Investing it into the small business ideas of predatory friends?
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Investing it into the small business ideas of predatory friends?
And they don't even have to be truly predatory, just enthusiastic and inexperienced.
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This is not a sorry situation, just that maybe I dodged one.
I'm the white boy that married into an Asian family.
We had saved well and bought our first home. About a year in,
my wifes older sister (14 years older) ask if her son and new wife could move in with us.
I looked at is as a way to cut costs, and started calculating some rent,
the cost of food, additional gas and electricity. I came up with $400 as
a reasonable amount for them to pay per month.
They never moved in, I guess they thought it should cost me
for them to live with me and not cost them.
Also over the years, I have convinced my wife, life is so much easier
when they are mad at us, than for us to be mad at them.
When they are mad at us, they don't ask for things, and don't cost us any time.
$400 a month! I would have jumped on that and never would leave!
It was many, many years ago.
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Investing it into the small business ideas of predatory friends?
And they don't even have to be truly predatory, just enthusiastic and inexperienced.
Pro athletes go broke all the time after retirement. NFL athletes seem to get the worst of it and this is a big reason for it. Interesting read.
https://www.si.com/vault/2009/03/23/105789480/how-and-why-athletes-go-broke
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I knew a man who had no education beyond high school.
He worked at different blue-collar jobs until he was about 40 at which time his mother died.
When her estate was settled he inherited her home in California's Silicon Valley.
He sold the home for $1.4 million.
Within ~ 2 years of the sale he spent all of the $1.4 million.
He cannot retire because has no $ saved and his only source of retirement $ will be Social Security retirement benefits.
The last I heard of him he was working at a trash recycling facility sorting incoming trash on a conveyor belt.
I cannot think of sorrier tale of a wasted, once-in-a-lifetime opportunity to FIRE.
DING, DING! WE HAVE A WINNER!
I agree...just WOW!
This is like the classic lottery winner story. I've always been curious how exactly you blow over a million dollar in a couple years. I don't think I could spend that much money if I tried.
A really nice couple who lived across the road from my parents won $10,000,000 in a casino on a slot machine. I had met these folks a few times before this happened. They would have been in their 40s.
They owned a small septic tank business that had been struggling a bit. They paid off all the debts. Then they gave their son and daughter a sizeable chunk of cash and gave the son their business. Their son already had a paid off house he had largely built himself.
They retired.
The son hired his buddies at inflated wages, didn't pay attention to the business, raided the till for cash (because he was spending it so fast). He went broke. Lost everything, including his previously paid for house.
The mom got all hoighty-toighty now that she was hob-nobbing with "high society". (Such as it was.) She divorced her husband. Blew thru her money in a few years buying expensive stuff on credit, an expensive house on credit, and making bad business investments. Lost everything. Daughter bought her a modest home to live in but kept the title in daughter's name because mom still wasn't over being stupid.
The dad was heartbroken at what his wife did and started drinking. Went out one winter night, came home drunk, passed out in the driveway, and died from exposure.
The sister is the only one of the four who kept her head.
As Jim Rohn said, "If you have a million dollars, you better learn how to be a millionaire or you won't have it long."
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I guess this one wouldn't be someone who couldn't retire, but it does fit the mold.
When I was in my 20s I worked with a guy in his late 20s. Solid, white collar worker, not great with money, but not incredibly stupid. Anyway, he had a friend that liked to gamble. The guy ends up on television (BTW, working a late night in the office, we are watching this guy on TV) in a poker tournament. $1000 buy in, no limit Texas Hold'Em, with something like 10,000 entrants. One of those tournaments that basically requires you to play in twelve hour shifts over more than 3 days, sleep optional.
The final day was televised.
My coworker's friend makes it to the final table, despite being pretty drunk. My coworker gets the OK to leave work early and race down to Atlantic City to catch the rest of the action. I give him my personal cabbie hookup, who is very fast and safe. He's in AC from Connecticut in 2 hours to watch his friend.
At work, the interest in it continues. I have the feed up in the background while I'm working, and I'm listening to the audio.
-At one point my coworker's friend is chip leader.
-Slowly, the other players go bust and collect their final table prize money. The amounts keep going up. Top prize is close to a million dollars.
-It's down to 3 players left.
-It's down to 2. He is still chip leader. As the favorite in the hand, he puts the other guy all in and gets sucked out hard. The other guy lives to fight another day.
-Slowly, my coworker's friend starts going on tilt, chasing the scenario of putting the other guy all in again, making several bad bets in the process. He gives up his chip lead and becomes the underdog. His stack slowly whittles down until he is put all in as the underdog, and he finishes 2nd.
-He wins about $600,000.
After withholding, he winds up with under $400,000.
The next day, my coworker tells me:
-His friend owed various people $200,000 in gambling debts.
-He spent about $175,000 that night partying. Apparently, he bought everyone who was around and watching the poker tournament expensive mixed drinks, bought a very expensive bottle, and paid to do VIP something at some club down there. And of course he upgraded his hotel accommodations and extended his stay for one more night, which makes perfect sense, because who could sleep in a regular hotel after winning that much money?
So, basically, the guy won over a half million dollars, and literally the next morning walked away with less than $25,000.
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I knew a man who had no education beyond high school.
He worked at different blue-collar jobs until he was about 40 at which time his mother died.
When her estate was settled he inherited her home in California's Silicon Valley.
He sold the home for $1.4 million.
Within ~ 2 years of the sale he spent all of the $1.4 million.
He cannot retire because has no $ saved and his only source of retirement $ will be Social Security retirement benefits.
The last I heard of him he was working at a trash recycling facility sorting incoming trash on a conveyor belt.
I cannot think of sorrier tale of a wasted, once-in-a-lifetime opportunity to FIRE.
DING, DING! WE HAVE A WINNER!
I agree...just WOW!
This is like the classic lottery winner story. I've always been curious how exactly you blow over a million dollar in a couple years. I don't think I could spend that much money if I tried.
A really nice couple who lived across the road from my parents won $10,000,000 in a casino on a slot machine. I had met these folks a few times before this happened. They would have been in their 40s.
They owned a small septic tank business that had been struggling a bit. They paid off all the debts. Then they gave their son and daughter a sizeable chunk of cash and gave the son their business. Their son already had a paid off house he had largely built himself.
They retired.
The son hired his buddies at inflated wages, didn't pay attention to the business, raided the till for cash (because he was spending it so fast). He went broke. Lost everything, including his previously paid for house.
The mom got all hoighty-toighty now that she was hob-nobbing with "high society". (Such as it was.) She divorced her husband. Blew thru her money in a few years buying expensive stuff on credit, an expensive house on credit, and making bad business investments. Lost everything. Daughter bought her a modest home to live in but kept the title in daughter's name because mom still wasn't over being stupid.
The dad was heartbroken at what his wife did and started drinking. Went out one winter night, came home drunk, passed out in the driveway, and died from exposure.
The sister is the only one of the four who kept her head.
As Jim Rohn said, "If you have a million dollars, you better learn how to be a millionaire or you won't have it long."
Wow, that is just.... I don't even have the words. Wow.
That is beyond sad.
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My girlfriend is 73, divorced and comfortable. I'm not sure how old her boyfriend is- maybe 75? He has almost no savings, gets Social Security and is trying to scrounge up work. He got a job shuttling cars at an airport parking place, but it is proving too much for him. He is living with my friend who is in a constant battle to keep his clutter out of her place. I hope she wins. Where was he living before? Well has a ramshackle house full of his stuff, his parents stuff and his deceased sister's stuff. But he can't afford to maintain it- so he is deliberately deferring maintenance and has disconnected the furnace so that he can have it declared uninhabitable and then get a refund on his property taxes and fix it up then and then try to sell it.
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It seems typical to me that many people spend the entirety of their retirement going from one doctor to another.
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I do not understand how people can blow thru tons of money that is so hard to come by. My inlaws were stupid with money and had these expensive hobbies but could not pay the electric bill or oil to heat the house. How stupid! When you inherit or win money or get a job in sports that pays mega bucks, what is so hard to figure out that a giant chunk of that money has to be put away in a safe place and not touched. That a portion of the money is set aside to spend on a home, not a mansion and not a zillion expensive cars and jewelry and lions, tigers and bears!
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At 64 I can say not one generation in my family spent their retirement going to the doctor. We have some friends 10 years older that upgraded to 3000sqft when they inherited money. Their other house was nice but smaller. They have no kids and don’t entertain and have to keep working. Just stupid.
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Why don't people get the theory of 'pay yourself first'? Put money away for a rainy day.
My Father screwed up big time. He had a fantastic federal job but after 9 years he threw in the towel. Parents and me as a baby lived in Manhattan. He decided to get another job in CT where we moved but it was short lived. Then he dabbled in real estate. Seems every time he got in, the market tanked. My poor Mom worked in a factory and she was basically the breadwinner which is STUPID considering he made mega money in the federal government. He flopped around in other stupid jobs till he finally got his act together and got a State job and finished out his working career there. He and my Mom were finally able to save money for retirement. It was so totally ridiculous him being an educated man, working for the federal government at a fantastic job that paid big bucks to sink so low. He just didn't want to work for 'the man' anymore. Well, that didn't work out. It still makes me mad what he put my Mom thru when he could have gotten a real job making real money.
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I do not understand how people can blow thru tons of money that is so hard to come by. My inlaws were stupid with money and had these expensive hobbies but could not pay the electric bill or oil to heat the house. How stupid! When you inherit or win money or get a job in sports that pays mega bucks, what is so hard to figure out that a giant chunk of that money has to be put away in a safe place and not touched. That a portion of the money is set aside to spend on a home, not a mansion and not a zillion expensive cars and jewelry and lions, tigers and bears!
Could it have to do with one's sense of time? My father was not good with money and yet he enjoyed life. I picked up my money values from my mother. My mother took care of the money and was a worrier. If my father had money, he had no compunction about spending it. It was a bit like Yin and Yang. My mom thought about the future and the past. My dad would never want to look at family pictures and reminisce. My dad would say the future would take care of itself. My dad lived in the present.
People who live in the now do not concern themselves with the future "if." My dad enjoyed himself better than my worrying mother. He never had much and it never bothered him. He just made do with what he had and was satisfied. He did not regret his mistakes. He just moved on. I feel a sense of jealousy for such people. They are the ones who can take a windfall and buy a nice truck with no worries about fuel mileage, etc. They just go. People like these people who are free.
These people are not stupid, but see life in a different way.
I work with some guys who have nice vehicles, homes, etc. Times are good and they are making good money,......right now. They are enjoying themselves right now. They are happy right now. One told me when he wants something he'll get it. He doesn't care what it costs.
I have been saving and living somewhat frugally for many years to buy myself a perceived freedom. However, freedom exists in the mind. Folks like my dad are already free and I suspect they are happier now than I will be when I reach my goal.
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I do not understand how people can blow thru tons of money that is so hard to come by. My inlaws were stupid with money and had these expensive hobbies but could not pay the electric bill or oil to heat the house. How stupid! When you inherit or win money or get a job in sports that pays mega bucks, what is so hard to figure out that a giant chunk of that money has to be put away in a safe place and not touched. That a portion of the money is set aside to spend on a home, not a mansion and not a zillion expensive cars and jewelry and lions, tigers and bears!
Could it have to do with one's sense of time? My father was not good with money and yet he enjoyed life. I picked up my money values from my mother. My mother took care of the money and was a worrier. If my father had money, he had no compunction about spending it. It was a bit like Yin and Yang. My mom thought about the future and the past. My dad would never want to look at family pictures and reminisce. My dad would say the future would take care of itself. My dad lived in the present.
People who live in the now do not concern themselves with the future "if." My dad enjoyed himself better than my worrying mother. He never had much and it never bothered him. He just made do with what he had and was satisfied. He did not regret his mistakes. He just moved on. I feel a sense of jealousy for such people. They are the ones who can take a windfall and buy a nice truck with no worries about fuel mileage, etc. They just go. People like these people who are free.
These people are not stupid, but see life in a different way.
I work with some guys who have nice vehicles, homes, etc. Times are good and they are making good money,......right now. They are enjoying themselves right now. They are happy right now. One told me when he wants something he'll get it. He doesn't care what it costs.
I have been saving and living somewhat frugally for many years to buy myself a perceived freedom. However, freedom exists in the mind. Folks like my dad are already free and I suspect they are happier now than I will be when I reach my goal.
Don't agree with all you have to say but it is your opinion to have. It is stupid to not have a happy medium. Like paying your bills so you have heat and electricity. Buying a modest home you can afford. Buying modest cars. I also don't want to live in a tent or shower with cold water to save money or dig my food out of a dumpster either. I want the best of both worlds. Have money in the bank and be able to buy some nice things that are in my price range. I will use my head and buy something like a Toyota car and not a Lamborghini, I will buy a home that I can afford, not a million dollar mansion. I can sleep at night because I have a paid for life and money in the bank. Not going thru bankruptcies and cars getting repossessed. Also, such a reckless pattern of spending filters down to the children who see this behavior as normal and then the cycle of foolish spending begins again for the next generation.
A company in my town manufactures a variety of popular products. This place operates 24 hours a day. For years it has been the best paying place to work if you don't have more than a HS education. Some people working lots of OT in production were making $100,000 a year in this one particular department. Some were married and the spouse made the same or maybe a little less. These people had everything under the sun. Giant speed boats, Giant SUV's and pick up trucks. They owned million dollar homes with pools, vacation homes. Went on lots of vacations. Houses filled with every gadget known to man. Well, one day after the midnight shift was done they shuffled those people and the first shift people into conference rooms and told them their jobs were done. They were moving production to another state. They all lost their jobs without any warning at all. It was shell shock and there are no jobs in this area that pay production people that kind of money. So, if they had lived a more sensible, modest life, they would have had tons of money in the bank, paid off modest cars and maybe a paid off modest home too.
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I do not understand how people can blow thru tons of money that is so hard to come by.
With lottery winners and pro athletes part of it is thinking it's so much money it could never all be spent. 'Set for life', not knowing you have to set yourself up for life, because no one told them.
The other piece, and I forget which book I read this in, I think Debt is Slavery, talks about the difference between income-producing assets and income-consuming assets. Lottery winners tend to buy a lot of income-consuming assets (more fun) and not enough income-producing (boring), until the productive assets can no longer keep up with the assets that are consuming all the income. Again, because no one told them, or they tried to tell them but, 'so much money I couldn't possibly spend it all, stop worrying'.
The concept of income producing vs consuming assets changed the way I looked at what I do with my money. I'd never heard it before, at least not laid out so plainly, and I wasn't a newb to personal finance when I came across it. What hope to people with zero experience and education with money have?
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I do not understand how people can blow thru tons of money that is so hard to come by.
With lottery winners and pro athletes part of it is thinking it's so much money it could never all be spent. 'Set for life', not knowing you have to set yourself up for life, because no one told them.
The other piece, and I forget which book I read this in, I think Debt is Slavery, talks about the difference between income-producing assets and income-consuming assets. Lottery winners tend to buy a lot of income-consuming assets (more fun) and not enough income-producing (boring), until the productive assets can no longer keep up with the assets that are consuming all the income. Again, because no one told them, or they tried to tell them but, 'so much money I couldn't possibly spend it all, stop worrying'.
The concept of income producing vs consuming assets changed the way I looked at what I do with my money. I'd never heard it before, at least not laid out so plainly, and I wasn't a newb to personal finance when I came across it. What hope to people with zero experience and education with money have?
I recall that concept from Rich Dad, Poor Dad. In fact, it was one of the only pieces of info I really retained from the book. He talks about only buying assets that make you money. One of the stories was that his wife wanted a new car. Instead, he bought an asset (probably a mutual fund) and when that asset paid enough dividends to cover the car payment, he bought the car.
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I do not understand how people can blow thru tons of money that is so hard to come by. My inlaws were stupid with money and had these expensive hobbies but could not pay the electric bill or oil to heat the house. How stupid! When you inherit or win money or get a job in sports that pays mega bucks, what is so hard to figure out that a giant chunk of that money has to be put away in a safe place and not touched. That a portion of the money is set aside to spend on a home, not a mansion and not a zillion expensive cars and jewelry and lions, tigers and bears!
[/quote
Could it have to do with one's sense of time? My father was not good with money and yet he enjoyed life. I picked up my money values from my mother. My mother took care of the money and was a worrier. If my father had money, he had no compunction about spending it. It was a bit like Yin and Yang. My mom thought about the future and the past. My dad would never want to look at family pictures and reminisce. My dad would say the future would take care of itself. My dad lived in the present.
People who live in the now do not concern themselves with the future "if." My dad enjoyed himself better than my worrying mother. He never had much and it never bothered him. He just made do with what he had and was satisfied. He did not regret his mistakes. He just moved on. I feel a sense of jealousy for such people. They are the ones who can take a windfall and buy a nice truck with no worries about fuel mileage, etc. They just go. People like these people who are free.
These people are not stupid, but see life in a different way.
I work with some guys who have nice vehicles, homes, etc. Times are good and they are making good money,......right now. They are enjoying themselves right now. They are happy right now. One told me when he wants something he'll get it. He doesn't care what it costs.
I have been saving and living somewhat frugally for many years to buy myself a perceived freedom. However, freedom exists in the mind. Folks like my dad are already free and I suspect they are happier now than I will be when I reach my goal.
I think I agree with you here. My BIL is like that. Has a $50k truck and a bunch of toys, and is always talking about buying more. But he seems happy enough. I guess now while times are good anyway. Who knows what will happen if he or his wife loses their job.
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That very same thing happened in my hometown when the auto plant closed. People lost everything because they were living beyond their means once the high paying jobs left.
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Yup life is a balance.. I am a huge worrier. This year our spending jumped (means DW's spending doubled and mine stayed the same).
DW has no clue about where it went but doesn't worry about it either. I have had to insist she does an analysis to figure this out which she has agreed to do in the New Year.
For me this is an unbelievable approach to money.. "Your spending doubles and you're not worried about it?". If that was me I would know with intimate detail where my money was going within hours!
But then.. Which of us has the most appropriate response in our situation?
It turns out that if I take just the dividends from our investments plus rental income it exceeds even this massively spendypants year
I have even ignored future pensions
Yet I am wasting my life being the worrier. DH really does have the most appropriate outlook in our situation.
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Yup life is a balance.. I am a huge worrier. This year our spending jumped (means DW's spending doubled and mine stayed the same).
DW has no clue about where it went but doesn't worry about it either. I have had to insist she does an analysis to figure this out which she has agreed to do in the New Year.
For me this is an unbelievable approach to money.. "Your spending doubles and you're not worried about it?". If that was me I would know with intimate detail where my money was going within hours!
But then.. Which of us has the most appropriate response in our situation?
It turns out that if I take just the dividends from our investments plus rental income it exceeds even this massively spendypants year
I have even ignored future pensions
Yet I am wasting my life being the worrier. DH really does have the most appropriate outlook in our situation.
Sometimes life throws you lemons. This year was a rotten lemon year for us. We have two dogs and no children. Our younger dog developed a lump and it turned out to be an anal tumor. Yep, he had surgery to remove it and it was cancerous. It is an aggressive cancer. We took him to an animal hospital that specializes in cancer and they did a bunch of tests and determined it had moved to his lymph glands. They recommended surgery BEFORE chemo. So they removed his lymph glands which was major surgery. He pulled thru both surgeries very well. They had him heal for about a month before chemo started. He had six rounds of chemo 3 weeks apart. Now is in remission and is being cared for by our local vet. The other place was over an hour away. All of this was sudden, unexpected and extremely costly. Some people might say "it is just a dog, let it die and get a new one". Nope, he is a good little boy and yes we spent a fortune but if we had a kid, we'd do the same. So this year we spent a lot of money that we did not budget for. No one plans for this stuff. Good news is that we took him to the vet today for an exam and he is doing great! The vet was in total shock that his health is doing so well! I hope it continues for a long, long time!
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RR, my kids are grown and my dogs are my babies. We have spent a lot of money on them also.
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Did you hear they invented a translator for dogs?
But, they had to destroy it, all the dogs did was argue
about who was such a good boy.
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I have a friend who will never retire unless he does a “Miraculous Mustachian 180.” Definitely the sorriest situation I am personally aware of. 47 years old . . . Two adult kids with ex-wife 1, a teenager with ex-wife 2, (thankfully) no kids with estranged wife. Debt of 85k, no assets aside from truck (which is upside down), claimed bankruptcy after ex-wife 2 (and clearly learned nothing), expenses exceed income every.single.month, even though he lives for free (not even a utility bill) in an old house on his family’s rural property. Clown truck 50km (one way!) commute to a low-paying job, plus constant driving of teenager (who lives in yet another town 35 km from his work and 30 from his home) to various hockey practices and games (elite level, so in itself very expensive). A trifecta of Income Problem, Debt Problem and Spending Problem coupled with the most unoptimized life I’ve seen. Absolutely nothing he does makes any sense to me; my mind is boggled and I’m sad that a life that once held so much potential has been reduced to this.
I’m trying to help with advice and positive encouragement. I’ve sent a few key MMM articles to hopefully trigger a change in mindset. I’ve looked up credit counselling services and offered to go with to support. I feel like his situation could be turned around IF he really decided to do it. But, my god. There are SO MANY things that need to change: the job, the vehicle (I don’t think relocating is feasible yet given “free” accommodation, but fuel costs could be cut in half if the truck could be unloaded and an older, reliable fuel-efficient car purchased), the unnecessary driving, the MINDSET. I know he just wants to die or run away rather than face this.
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My deceased inlaws were the worst ever savers. My FIL had a union truck driving job and made good money. Mostly he worked 40 hours a week. My MIL had 4 kids and worked a little but not even enough to collect her own Social Security. She also had health problems. I find it a miracle they ever bought and didn't have their house in foreclosure. They would run out of oil to heat the house. The electric would get turned off. But as soon as my FIL got paid they'd run to the stores and blow the money. My FIL had too many expensive hobbies that he thought nothing of spending money on. My MIL would then revenge spend and order collectible things. They both smoked like chimneys so I can imagine the collectibles were ruined with nicotine. This went on for years and years and they never had two cent days after payday. My MIL would cash those checks that come with an introductory rate and they could never pay off that debt when the bills came in. Their only salvation was the fact that FIL had Social Security and a union pension. My MIL didn't qualify for SS on her work record but eventually, she got some from FIL's work record. My SIL helped them out by arranging a home equity loan to consolidate their debt. Not sure if they ever turned the corner on debt. My MIL died and a year or two later the FIL moved in with one of his daughters. They sold the house and probably paid off the debt at that point. FIL didn't live that long after moving into his daughters house. They lived a whole lifetime of buying stupid things and juggling the bills. If it wasn't for the forced savings for SS and the pension money, I cannot imagine what would have happened to them. One thing they did not do was buy expensive vehicles. They had cars a long time when they bought them. If they had bought expensive vehicles, I am sure they would have been repoed!
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I`ve known multitudes of people who make a high income but were always in debt. In fact, most of the people I know are like that. A buddy of mine got promoted recently. He took a big pay increase(salary) and high stress job and instantly went out and bought a brand new car. I tried warning him, but he is still young.
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I`ve known multitudes of people who make a high income but were always in debt. In fact, most of the people I know are like that. A buddy of mine got promoted recently. He took a big pay increase(salary) and high stress job and instantly went out and bought a brand new car. I tried warning him, but he is still young.
I really wish they would have a course in high school (mandatory) that would teach kids real life situations on paying bills, being able to afford housing that might not be a mansion but affordable, learning that buying new cars might not be the right thing to do. I guess you would call the course Life Management. Even as far as deciding to have children now or waiting. Kids have been taken care of by the parents for their whole lifetime and have no experience in making the right decisions once they have to do it all. Unfortunately, we all seem to go to the school of hard knocks and it sure would be nice if we learned Life Management skills earlier in life to guide us better. I think this course could really teach kids how to shop for food bargains, learning to budget for 'fun' things like vacations. Learning to stretch a buck.
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I`ve known multitudes of people who make a high income but were always in debt. In fact, most of the people I know are like that. A buddy of mine got promoted recently. He took a big pay increase(salary) and high stress job and instantly went out and bought a brand new car. I tried warning him, but he is still young.
I really wish they would have a course in high school (mandatory) that would teach kids real life situations on paying bills, being able to afford housing that might not be a mansion but affordable, learning that buying new cars might not be the right thing to do. I guess you would call the course Life Management. Even as far as deciding to have children now or waiting. Kids have been taken care of by the parents for their whole lifetime and have no experience in making the right decisions once they have to do it all. Unfortunately, we all seem to go to the school of hard knocks and it sure would be nice if we learned Life Management skills earlier in life to guide us better. I think this course could really teach kids how to shop for food bargains, learning to budget for 'fun' things like vacations. Learning to stretch a buck.
Home Economics already exists. You're describing the economics portion of the class.
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When I was young home economics consists of cooking and sewing. No budgeting, etc.
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I`ve known multitudes of people who make a high income but were always in debt. In fact, most of the people I know are like that. A buddy of mine got promoted recently. He took a big pay increase(salary) and high stress job and instantly went out and bought a brand new car. I tried warning him, but he is still young.
I really wish they would have a course in high school (mandatory) that would teach kids real life situations on paying bills, being able to afford housing that might not be a mansion but affordable, learning that buying new cars might not be the right thing to do. I guess you would call the course Life Management. Even as far as deciding to have children now or waiting. Kids have been taken care of by the parents for their whole lifetime and have no experience in making the right decisions once they have to do it all. Unfortunately, we all seem to go to the school of hard knocks and it sure would be nice if we learned Life Management skills earlier in life to guide us better. I think this course could really teach kids how to shop for food bargains, learning to budget for 'fun' things like vacations. Learning to stretch a buck.
Home Economics already exists. You're describing the economics portion of the class.
This must be a new thing. I was in high school in a very well regarded school during the late 80s, and the ONLY personal finance -related thing we learned (in economics class, not home ec) was how to write a check and balance a checkbook (and calculate interest, though that wasn't particularly tied into personal finance).
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How about sympathy and help for all the abused, poor, hungry kids that already exist?
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How about sympathy and help for all the abused, poor, hungry kids that already exist?
Not too many of us could reach FIRE if we had to pay everyone else's way. I grew up hungry and I learned to be frugal and hunt. I even tried to help my Mom leave my abusive Dad, she kept running back. Look at LA, people defecating and sleeping in the streets. The world problems are too big for me. I have a 5 and 6 year old. Once a month we go around the neighborhood and pick up litter. On a global scale, no difference but it teaches good manners. I do what I can, I sleep well at the end of the day. There are enough threads here for worldly problems but staying on topic, my only sympathy if for those that never stood a chance.
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This thread is too depressing to add.
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I've mentioned my sister and BIL who have filed bankruptcy but finally seem to be learning. His parents had no money management skills- they kept taking out home equity loans so they were underwater on their house. My sister got them into subsidized housing but her MIL would not go because there was not a window over the sink. FIL dies and MIL keeps falling but refuses to move. Finally my sister gets her in a very good nursing home on Medicaid- house had to be listed for sale because she had to spend down her assets- MIL dies while in the nursing home house is still on the market.
Here's where it (to me ) gets crazy. Her children just let the house sit there and go into foreclosure.Totally unable to cope with settling the estate. Electricity gets cut off, pipes burst, no one retrieves any thing from the house- maybe a year and a half later my sister goes into to a least try and get some family photos and everything is covered with mold.
One of the adult children has no savings - lost his house to foreclosure and could have used a little money- he is 70 and on Social security only renting an apartment and trying to make ends meet by doing Grub Hub. He is having seizures but still driving because he needs to keep doing deliveries.
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Maybe there was no equity left in the house.
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My deceased inlaws were the worst ever savers. My FIL had a union truck driving job and made good money. Mostly he worked 40 hours a week. My MIL had 4 kids and worked a little but not even enough to collect her own Social Security. She also had health problems. I find it a miracle they ever bought and didn't have their house in foreclosure. They would run out of oil to heat the house. The electric would get turned off. But as soon as my FIL got paid they'd run to the stores and blow the money. My FIL had too many expensive hobbies that he thought nothing of spending money on. My MIL would then revenge spend and order collectible things. They both smoked like chimneys so I can imagine the collectibles were ruined with nicotine. This went on for years and years and they never had two cent days after payday. My MIL would cash those checks that come with an introductory rate and they could never pay off that debt when the bills came in. Their only salvation was the fact that FIL had Social Security and a union pension. My MIL didn't qualify for SS on her work record but eventually, she got some from FIL's work record. My SIL helped them out by arranging a home equity loan to consolidate their debt. Not sure if they ever turned the corner on debt. My MIL died and a year or two later the FIL moved in with one of his daughters. They sold the house and probably paid off the debt at that point. FIL didn't live that long after moving into his daughters house. They lived a whole lifetime of buying stupid things and juggling the bills. If it wasn't for the forced savings for SS and the pension money, I cannot imagine what would have happened to them. One thing they did not do was buy expensive vehicles. They had cars a long time when they bought them. If they had bought expensive vehicles, I am sure they would have been repoed!
It sounds like these people won the game. Instant gratification and deferring consequences until the very end of life. Not the plan I would take, but unless you’re leaving out deathbed regrets that more saving would have solved then it’s hard to say they did the wrong thing.
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"It sounds like these people won the game. Instant gratification and deferring consequences until the very end of life. Not the plan I would take, but unless you’re leaving out deathbed regrets that more saving would have solved then it’s hard to say they did the wrong thing."
No, these people did not win the game. Bill collectors were calling constantly. The children had no decent clothes to go to school in. FIL hobbies were more important. The children learned no values in life from these losers. Very sick if you ask me. There is much more but when kids are in constant fear of bill collector calling, no electricity, no heat, raggedy clothes, no real direction it is amazing that they didn't turn out to be criminals.
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Maybe there was no equity left in the house.
Possibly- but family photos, Christmas ornaments? It was just odd to me.
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I've mentioned my sister and BIL who have filed bankruptcy but finally seem to be learning. His parents had no money management skills- they kept taking out home equity loans so they were underwater on their house. My sister got them into subsidized housing but her MIL would not go because there was not a window over the sink. FIL dies and MIL keeps falling but refuses to move. Finally my sister gets her in a very good nursing home on Medicaid- house had to be listed for sale because she had to spend down her assets- MIL dies while in the nursing home house is still on the market.
Here's where it (to me ) gets crazy. Her children just let the house sit there and go into foreclosure.Totally unable to cope with settling the estate. Electricity gets cut off, pipes burst, no one retrieves any thing from the house- maybe a year and a half later my sister goes into to a least try and get some family photos and everything is covered with mold.
One of the adult children has no savings - lost his house to foreclosure and could have used a little money- he is 70 and on Social security only renting an apartment and trying to make ends meet by doing Grub Hub. He is having seizures but still driving because he needs to keep doing deliveries.
This happened to my husband's family. Grandma had three sons, S1 and S2 with her first husband and S3 with her second (hereafter Grandpa). Grandma passes unexpectedly. It becomes clear very quickly that Grandpa was not able to take care of himself, and he eventually gets diagnosed with paranoia and dementia and moved to a home. (County social services had to step in as he was deemed a danger to himself.) S1 and S2 had checked out; they bore the brunt of the work around Grandma's short illness and death, and Grandpa blamed them for her death (due to the dementia and paranoia). They also figured that since Grandpa is S3's dad, he should take more responsibility.
Well, S3 didn't, so the adult grandchildren got together to get valuables and mementos out of the house. (S1 and S2's kids; S3's kid is 9.) S3 shows up to berate us for trespassing. I handed him a box of information I found on his parents' financial accounts (which he had insisted didn't exist) without so much as a thank you.
And now a lot of the boxes are taking up space in my basement because the brothers won't do anything about it until after Grandpa dies, and he's physically pretty healthy.
No good deed goes unpunished.
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When I was young home economics consists of cooking and sewing. No budgeting, etc.
Same here. I'm 36 now and it was nothing more than cooking and sewing for me as recently as 1994-1999. I have no idea what it would be these days. People don't seem to cook because you can order lots of terrible food using a variety of popular apps and have it delivered to your front door.
There was never any thought of finances in home economics when I was at school. That was dealt with by the math teachers. They made us add, subtract, multiple and divide monetary amounts because sticking a £ sign or $ sign in front of numbers apparently changes everything.
Seriously though, think about the reality of teaching children about finances in school. The likelihood is, given the way the world is, that the person teaching the class would be up to their eyeballs in debt, living paycheck to paycheck, spending everything they earn and more, and the majority of the children listening to them would have parents who were in exactly the same boat. It simply wouldn't work. Children get taught one thing at through classes, but then at home they are completely immersed in an environment where although there is no formal, structured teaching, everything is screaming at them "SPEND! SPEND! SPEND!" They will learn far more from the actions of their parents than they ever will from a teacher in a boring class about to be boring and save money like a boring person.
You'd need a genuinely Mustachian teacher giving the lessons, but that's never going to get approval from a school principal who is probably buried by debt. You also move into the same realm as you would do if you tried to push a certain religion HARD on every kid, or tried to change the sexuality of every kid, or the political persuasion of every kid.
It's a nice idea but I think the responsibility will always fall to the parents, which if you're Mustachian, is no problem at all. If you're not, then you're screwed.
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Back when I was in 8th grade our social studies teacher did a lesson on budgeting and real life. He “gave” us a high school diploma and we would find a job in the want ads and he would decide if we got it or not. Then we had to account for lodging, food, transportation. Health care wasn’t a concern in the ‘70s. Very enlightening for most of us.
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Back when I was in 8th grade our social studies teacher did a lesson on budgeting and real life. He “gave” us a high school diploma and we would find a job in the want ads and he would decide if we got it or not. Then we had to account for lodging, food, transportation. Health care wasn’t a concern in the ‘70s. Very enlightening for most of us.
Exactly what I am talking about. This class would be very involved just like life. From getting a job, finding a place to live that costs money, using the paycheck to pay bills. Temptations of credit cards, buying new or used furniture, buying a used or new car. Shopping for food bargains by using weekly grocery store sales flyers. Temptations of being invited out for drinks after work and spending money, eating out or making food at home. Buying second hand things or new. Budgeting for vacations, car repairs, gifts, eating out, movies. I could see this course being one full school year or even two. Should be taught at the sophomore and junior years at school when money starts to be an interest to kids. Every week the class would include a new assignment the student would have to decide what they would do and how they would handle being responsible.
Our society does promote spend, spend, spend and everyone thinks they deserve anything they want. The reality is that we can't unless we have an endless source of income. That is how so many people get into credit card debt. A kid out of high school maybe making $12 an hour $480 before taxes is not going to be able to buy a $35,000 car and afford car payments on top of rent, food, utilities.
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Back when I was in 8th grade our social studies teacher did a lesson on budgeting and real life. He “gave” us a high school diploma and we would find a job in the want ads and he would decide if we got it or not. Then we had to account for lodging, food, transportation. Health care wasn’t a concern in the ‘70s. Very enlightening for most of us.
I think they did something like this recently in my 7th grader's class. Or, they had a career day and incorporated some of that.
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In the UK Money Saving Expert Martin Lewis has funded a financial textbook for English 15-16 year olds. Good stuff in it and it's downloadable if anyone wants a look:
https://www.moneysavingexpert.com/news/2018/11/financial-education-textbooks-funded-by-martin-land-in-english-s/
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I work for a large public utility.
three years ago, the utility made buy-out offers to a number of longer-serving employees. Many colleagues of mine in their 50's took the offer and "retired". One of them just sent an e-mail to the rest of us in our group letting us know that he was now doing a new job search, and asking for letters of recommendation. He's already applied within the company, but the available jobs are poor matches for his skills. Which are three years out of date.
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I've worked for utilities. I think they like to hire out of school. They set students up as interns and develop their own people. I doubt whether your friend has an icecube's chance in hell of getting back in. He could, however, possibly work for one of the utilitie's contractors. It may even pay better.
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Back when I was in 8th grade our social studies teacher did a lesson on budgeting and real life. He “gave” us a high school diploma and we would find a job in the want ads and he would decide if we got it or not. Then we had to account for lodging, food, transportation. Health care wasn’t a concern in the ‘70s. Very enlightening for most of us.
What a great teacher!
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Last year when my daughter was in 4th grade, they learned economics and budgeting in a fun way. At the beginning of the year, they had to create a resume and apply for a job in the classroom that earned them a salary (They even printed money with the one of the teacher's face on it). They had to budget their earnings and pay for things throughout the year. For example, if they lost a pencil, they had to buy another one with their salary. They also had business days four times a year where they created, marketed, and sold a product. My daughter's first items didn't sell well so she tried a different product the next business day.
The whole 4th grade participated, and it was fantastic way to learn. She became a little cheapskate!
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I have a friend that has been retired from a good union job with pension for 10+ years, he's about 63 so is getting social security too, and the pension included health insurance coverage for him up till medicare age. All sounds pretty good with pension and SS coming in, but his wife still has to work full time for insurance and additional income and he works some cash jobs as well. They've lived in same home for 35+ years and still owe a big chunk on it due to several silly refinancing deals and trade vehicles every couple years and always have them on 4-5 year loans. Doesn't sound like they have much savings at all, don't think they ever thought about it or tried to save much.
While certainly not as bad as some of the scenarios above, I can't fathom still making house ad car payments in my 70's and being totally reliant on SS and a pension for everything.
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Unfortunately i just know so many people that don't even think about retirement because its all about fun now till there in there late forties, early fifties and there just never going to have shit for retirement. Just way to many people that literally live as the saying goes as if its your last and have no worry of debt or tomorrow. Then something major happens and reality hits.
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Last year when my daughter was in 4th grade, they learned economics and budgeting in a fun way. At the beginning of the year, they had to create a resume and apply for a job in the classroom that earned them a salary (They even printed money with the one of the teacher's face on it). They had to budget their earnings and pay for things throughout the year. For example, if they lost a pencil, they had to buy another one with their salary. They also had business days four times a year where they created, marketed, and sold a product. My daughter's first items didn't sell well so she tried a different product the next business day.
The whole 4th grade participated, and it was fantastic way to learn. She became a little cheapskate!
That was a great learning opportunity and this is what kids need through out their school years. When the kid loses a pencil and mommy buys a new one there is no education there. When the kid loses the pencil and has to pay for a new one out of his/her pocket, that hits home. Especially when the kid might have been saving for a 'fun' thing and this dumb pencil took money from that purchase. Might be two learning scenario's. 1. keep a better eye on your pencil and don't lose it (responsibility) and 2. learning that things cost money and not all purchases bring joy but nevertheless are necessary.
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When I was young home economics consists of cooking and sewing. No budgeting, etc.
Same here. I'm 36 now and it was nothing more than cooking and sewing for me as recently as 1994-1999. I have no idea what it would be these days. People don't seem to cook because you can order lots of terrible food using a variety of popular apps and have it delivered to your front door.
There was never any thought of finances in home economics when I was at school.
The grasshopper says to the master “I didn’t learn anything.”
Cooking and sewing are two of the simplest ways to be frugal and save money. Home economics isn’t just balancing a budget, it’s practical skills to keep your money. There’s no point to budgeting if you spend all your money on take away. A good home ec class also teaches grocery shopping for the food you cook; it’s the concept of getting value for your grocery money. In the modern world, you’re right that it’s easy to order food in; aren’t cooking skills even more valuable if you want to save money?
Home economics is the economics of running a household, which includes cooking meals, groceries, laundry and laundry repairs. If you don’t know the basics, there’s no point in learning the rest.
How many things from school do you use weekly? I do far more cooking than biology or calculus (I used calculus up to the end of university, while eating lots of pasta...). Try to see home ec for what it is, a class for basic frugal living.
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I had Home Economics in high school and had it for at least two years if not more. There was never a class on budgeting, shopping, saving money. We sewed mostly and I don't even remember cooking anything. I graduated HS in 1971 (I know 100 years ago) and I do remember this person came and demo'd a microwave oven. Nobody had them in those days! LOL! The thing was as big as a tv and it was thousands of dollars. The demo person said everyone would have a microwave in the future. Of course, it seemed like science fiction and eventually that did happen. Everyone has a microwave! We got our first one in maybe 1978-80 and it was a Amana Radar Range! It cost $525 and we got a $50 rebate. Funny how I can remember that! So, home economics back in the day was a joke! I think sewing isn't a bad thing to know and today they could teach sewing but maybe sewing that could be to make crafts to make money! Like stuff you might find on etsy.
If people had skills to create things and be able to sell them, that would be another way to make money to retire.
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RR, I am your age and had it in junior high. We did stupid things like draw the inside of cupboards and draw where the dishes go. We cooked one or 2 things all year.
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Home economics wasn't offered at all in my Catholic K-8 school, and only as a 1-semester elective at my high school (mid-1990s). One friend took it and learned how to bake. I had been baking with my mom since I was a toddler and on my own since late elementary school, so I figured I'd use my elective hours on vocal ensemble, pre-calc, Spanish, physics, and AP Chemistry. Twenty-odd years later, I have two STEM degrees and work in a related field, still sing in audition-only choirs, and can speak/understand basic conversational Spanish. I think I chose the right electives.
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When I was young home economics consists of cooking and sewing. No budgeting, etc.
Same here. I'm 36 now and it was nothing more than cooking and sewing for me as recently as 1994-1999. I have no idea what it would be these days. People don't seem to cook because you can order lots of terrible food using a variety of popular apps and have it delivered to your front door.
There was never any thought of finances in home economics when I was at school.
The grasshopper says to the master “I didn’t learn anything.”
Cooking and sewing are two of the simplest ways to be frugal and save money. Home economics isn’t just balancing a budget, it’s practical skills to keep your money. There’s no point to budgeting if you spend all your money on take away. A good home ec class also teaches grocery shopping for the food you cook; it’s the concept of getting value for your grocery money. In the modern world, you’re right that it’s easy to order food in; aren’t cooking skills even more valuable if you want to save money?
Home economics is the economics of running a household, which includes cooking meals, groceries, laundry and laundry repairs. If you don’t know the basics, there’s no point in learning the rest.
How many things from school do you use weekly? I do far more cooking than biology or calculus (I used calculus up to the end of university, while eating lots of pasta...). Try to see home ec for what it is, a class for basic frugal living.
Cooking and sewing are valuable skills - that will serve you well for the rest of your life and continue to save you money your entire life.
Of course, it all depends on what you actually took away from class and how good and helpful the class really was for future life skills.
I got lucky - the sewing class was good enough so that I could actually sew a new upholstery cover for our first sofa, make curtains and sew a couple of simple outfits for myself.
The cooking class required us to purchase the ingredients each week and we were graded on how our purchases compared - who got the best deal? We also had to stay within the given budget for the week.
We learned to make our own baby food, cook for the elderly and the convalescent and even a special diet for people with heart problems. The dinners we prepared each week were mostly basic everyday dishes for a family of four and included salad, a three-part main dish, and dessert.
We had other classes like knitting and crocheting which I hated because of the teacher, I barely passed them. My mother refused to let me cook anything at home, but she took advantage of my newly acquired food budget shopping skills.
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Cooking and sewing are valuable skills - that will serve you well for the rest of your life and continue to save you money your entire life.
Of course, it all depends on what you actually took away from class and how good and helpful the class really was for future life skills.
I got lucky - the sewing class was good enough so that I could actually sew a new upholstery cover for our first sofa, make curtains and sew a couple of simple outfits for myself.
The cooking class required us to purchase the ingredients each week and we were graded on how our purchases compared - who got the best deal? We also had to stay within the given budget for the week.
We learned to make our own baby food, cook for the elderly and the convalescent and even a special diet for people with heart problems. The dinners we prepared each week were mostly basic everyday dishes for a family of four and included salad, a three-part main dish, and dessert.
We had other classes like knitting and crocheting which I hated because of the teacher, I barely passed them. My mother refused to let me cook anything at home, but she took advantage of my newly acquired food budget shopping skills.
You sound like someone who got the most out of Home Ec.! You far exceed myself.
I liken this debate about home economics to the debate about the utility of Art, Music or Phys Ed. in the school system. You get a bunch of people thinking its useless and slashing the budgets in lieu of more Math or English but there are students who can use those skills to make the world a better place. In Home economics the results are generally limited to the personal level; except for the people who go on to further the research.
In other words, I encourage people to learn what real Home Economics classes can be; not just what they are at your personal level. People with excellent home skills for the last 100 years generally have more disposable income; its still true today. The old axiom of "teach a man to fish" still applies; until you learn the basics of frugality the vast majority of the population will have less disposable income.
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Someone I used to work with (female), with a bachelor's degree and in management did not know how to sew on a button. That made my jaw drop.
My Home Ec in the 70's consisted of both sewing and cooking, but nothing else. I now own a sewing machine and do hemming, patching and have made curtains. I mostly cook at home, but frankly, credit my mother and not classes for this skill. I currently have a roommate whose definition of cooking is throwing frozen packaged food into a pan and heating it up. For every meal, except for breakfast, which is eggs and toast.
And speaking of roommate, back to the "can never retire" topic. Mid 50's female who has worked hard all her life in various jobs and a side-business that was heavily dependent on physical health and fitness. Twice divorced and raised 2 kids partly on her own. Reports that she made no less than $100,000 a year for the last 15 years. Owned a cheapie house for a few years, but had to sell when she got very ill and had to move in with a relative. That wasn't working out, so she moved to another town to be nearer other family and is renting a room from me. So now she is recovered enough to work part time, but has NO savings and her only assets are a 12 years old car and some furniture in storage. Struggling to live on about $1600.00 a month before taxes. I've never asked about pensions, but I doubt she has much or any as she did lots of different jobs over the years, so will probably have to rely on CPP (maximum of $900.00 a month at 65, but most people never reach that amount, so $500 -700 is more likely) and OAS (about $600.00 a month with possible bump up to $1200.00 if that's all you have). Not likely to get any significant inheritance either. So she will likely have to work until she can't and will have little even at that point, because of her wastefulness. It's no wonder she has next to nothing now, because it all goes out as fast as it comes in. She has to pay her rent in 2 installments when she gets paid, receives packages from Amazon about once a week, buys her dog pricey treats and expensive kibble, eats all organic, drives to a town 20 minutes away for meat, eats fast food at least twice a week at $12.00 each time, has 2 baths a day with a tub full of water, uses at least half a sink's worth of running water to wash one plate, leaves her lights on all the time, and MUST have the temperature at 22 degrees all year round or can't possibly survive (I live in Canada, where it's - 30 C in winter and + 30 C in summer). I have to pay all utilities now, but if that's how she's lived all her life, she's lost a lot of money and will continue to do so in future. She doesn't seem to make any connections between her habits and her lack of assets, either, because she will fret about her lack of money but then leave kibble in the dog food bag she throws out, not eat the crusts on the $8.00 (!) a loaf bread she buys, throw out the toothpaste with a few more days worth left in it, etc, etc. It amazes me how she can be so oblivious. But her dream is to have a large country property and lots of dogs. Yeah, that'll never happen. We're talking about a woman who had to get an advance on her first paycheck because she didn't have any suitable work clothes. Yikes. Sad, frustrating for me to watch, and downright unnecessary. So glad that's not my life!
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Someone I used to work with (female), with a bachelor's degree and in management did not know how to sew on a button. That made my jaw drop.
My Home Ec in the 70's consisted of both sewing and cooking, but nothing else. I now own a sewing machine and do hemming, patching and have made curtains. I mostly cook at home, but frankly, credit my mother and not classes for this skill. I currently have a roommate whose definition of cooking is throwing frozen packaged food into a pan and heating it up. For every meal, except for breakfast, which is eggs and toast.
And speaking of roommate, back to the "can never retire" topic. Mid 50's female who has worked hard all her life in various jobs and a side-business that was heavily dependent on physical health and fitness. Twice divorced and raised 2 kids partly on her own. Reports that she made no less than $100,000 a year for the last 15 years. Owned a cheapie house for a few years, but had to sell when she got very ill and had to move in with a relative. That wasn't working out, so she moved to another town to be nearer other family and is renting a room from me. So now she is recovered enough to work part time, but has NO savings and her only assets are a 12 years old car and some furniture in storage. Struggling to live on about $1600.00 a month before taxes. I've never asked about pensions, but I doubt she has much or any as she did lots of different jobs over the years, so will probably have to rely on CPP (maximum of $900.00 a month at 65, but most people never reach that amount, so $500 -700 is more likely) and OAS (about $600.00 a month with possible bump up to $1200.00 if that's all you have). Not likely to get any significant inheritance either. So she will likely have to work until she can't and will have little even at that point, because of her wastefulness. It's no wonder she has next to nothing now, because it all goes out as fast as it comes in. She has to pay her rent in 2 installments when she gets paid, receives packages from Amazon about once a week, buys her dog pricey treats and expensive kibble, eats all organic, drives to a town 20 minutes away for meat, eats fast food at least twice a week at $12.00 each time, has 2 baths a day with a tub full of water, uses at least half a sink's worth of running water to wash one plate, leaves her lights on all the time, and MUST have the temperature at 22 degrees all year round or can't possibly survive (I live in Canada, where it's - 30 C in winter and + 30 C in summer). I have to pay all utilities now, but if that's how she's lived all her life, she's lost a lot of money and will continue to do so in future. She doesn't seem to make any connections between her habits and her lack of assets, either, because she will fret about her lack of money but then leave kibble in the dog food bag she throws out, not eat the crusts on the $8.00 (!) a loaf bread she buys, throw out the toothpaste with a few more days worth left in it, etc, etc. It amazes me how she can be so oblivious. But her dream is to have a large country property and lots of dogs. Yeah, that'll never happen. We're talking about a woman who had to get an advance on her first paycheck because she didn't have any suitable work clothes. Yikes. Sad, frustrating for me to watch, and downright unnecessary. So glad that's not my life!
How does someone who made $100,000 for 15 years blow thru it all? Yes, I know it is easy to blow money but what on earth did she spend it all on? If she is that dumb, she deserves to live like a hobo. Why do you have her as a roommate and have to pay all utilities?
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Someone I used to work with (female), with a bachelor's degree and in management did not know how to sew on a button. That made my jaw drop.
My Home Ec in the 70's consisted of both sewing and cooking, but nothing else. I now own a sewing machine and do hemming, patching and have made curtains. I mostly cook at home, but frankly, credit my mother and not classes for this skill. I currently have a roommate whose definition of cooking is throwing frozen packaged food into a pan and heating it up. For every meal, except for breakfast, which is eggs and toast.
And speaking of roommate, back to the "can never retire" topic. Mid 50's female who has worked hard all her life in various jobs and a side-business that was heavily dependent on physical health and fitness. Twice divorced and raised 2 kids partly on her own. Reports that she made no less than $100,000 a year for the last 15 years. Owned a cheapie house for a few years, but had to sell when she got very ill and had to move in with a relative. That wasn't working out, so she moved to another town to be nearer other family and is renting a room from me. So now she is recovered enough to work part time, but has NO savings and her only assets are a 12 years old car and some furniture in storage. Struggling to live on about $1600.00 a month before taxes. I've never asked about pensions, but I doubt she has much or any as she did lots of different jobs over the years, so will probably have to rely on CPP (maximum of $900.00 a month at 65, but most people never reach that amount, so $500 -700 is more likely) and OAS (about $600.00 a month with possible bump up to $1200.00 if that's all you have). Not likely to get any significant inheritance either. So she will likely have to work until she can't and will have little even at that point, because of her wastefulness. It's no wonder she has next to nothing now, because it all goes out as fast as it comes in. She has to pay her rent in 2 installments when she gets paid, receives packages from Amazon about once a week, buys her dog pricey treats and expensive kibble, eats all organic, drives to a town 20 minutes away for meat, eats fast food at least twice a week at $12.00 each time, has 2 baths a day with a tub full of water, uses at least half a sink's worth of running water to wash one plate, leaves her lights on all the time, and MUST have the temperature at 22 degrees all year round or can't possibly survive (I live in Canada, where it's - 30 C in winter and + 30 C in summer). I have to pay all utilities now, but if that's how she's lived all her life, she's lost a lot of money and will continue to do so in future. She doesn't seem to make any connections between her habits and her lack of assets, either, because she will fret about her lack of money but then leave kibble in the dog food bag she throws out, not eat the crusts on the $8.00 (!) a loaf bread she buys, throw out the toothpaste with a few more days worth left in it, etc, etc. It amazes me how she can be so oblivious. But her dream is to have a large country property and lots of dogs. Yeah, that'll never happen. We're talking about a woman who had to get an advance on her first paycheck because she didn't have any suitable work clothes. Yikes. Sad, frustrating for me to watch, and downright unnecessary. So glad that's not my life!
Oh gosh, those personal habits are a sick morph of my mother and sister. Mother is dirt poor, sister is working but unable to save.
I hope your room rent is enough that you don't come out behind after paying her utility cost.
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RoadRunner15 and Fuzzy math - I have no idea how she blew through it all, but I guess if she can waste money when she has next to none, then she could have wasted a lot more when she was rolling in it. I'm curious too, but don't want to ask, because I don't know if my heart could take it!
I'm paying utilities because that is generally the standard procedure where I live, but if I'd known how wasteful she is, I would have made different arrangements. I won't lose money on her, but certainly won't make a lot either. Thankfully, she's leaving in September, so this winter, there will be no heat in the house to make up for it, haha. Needless to say, she will be my last roommate. Just not worth it.
(I privately refer to her as "dimbulb" too, but she's actually NOT dumb, just apparently has no common sense at all.)
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@SunnyDays Just watching her drain a sink full of MY expensive hot water would give me the hebe geebies!
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RoadRunner15 and Fuzzy math - I have no idea how she blew through it all, but I guess if she can waste money when she has next to none, then she could have wasted a lot more when she was rolling in it. I'm curious too, but don't want to ask, because I don't know if my heart could take it!
I'm paying utilities because that is generally the standard procedure where I live, but if I'd known how wasteful she is, I would have made different arrangements. I won't lose money on her, but certainly won't make a lot either. Thankfully, she's leaving in September, so this winter, there will be no heat in the house to make up for it, haha. Needless to say, she will be my last roommate. Just not worth it.
(I privately refer to her as "dimbulb" too, but she's actually NOT dumb, just apparently has no common sense at all.)
I hope nothing changes and she leaves in September or SOONER! OMG! I have never had a desire to have a roommate and hearing your story I never will! I will live in a tiny place to be by myself if need be some day but no roommate!
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I feel like these habits are very important to establish as a child. Then they become ingrained and pretty difficult to change.
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When you inherit or win money or get a job in sports that pays mega bucks, what is so hard to figure out that a giant chunk of that money has to be put away in a safe place and not touched.
Some individuals differentiate the value of money based upon its source, a behavior known as mental accounting. Influenced by mental accounting, they don't treat money as fungible. Their tendency is to value earned money more than windfalls such as an inheritance or lottery winnings. I suppose they regard windfalls as "easy come, easy go."
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Now I feel a bit better about yelling at my kids for leaving lights on or having really long showers.
I can't imagine leaving toothpaste in the tube, running the hot water and air conditioning could account for all of her lack of savings though. She must have wasted money in larger ways to blow through that much.
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Now I feel a bit better about yelling at my kids for leaving lights on or having really long showers.
I can't imagine leaving toothpaste in the tube, running the hot water and air conditioning could account for all of her lack of savings though. She must have wasted money in larger ways to blow through that much.
If that kind of thoughtlessness permeates a person's every single action, it can happen easily. My mom runs through a roll of paper towels daily. Thinks nothing of a $5 coffee. Nails are only $25. "Can't ever find anything on the clearance rack" so doesn't try. Doesn't combine trips out, and wastes gas. trades a car every 2 years, "the payment is only $20 higher a month, I can afford it" (even though she's now on an 8 yr loan).
If you go look at the really memorable case studies here, the people aren't blowing thousands on hookers and cocaine. It's $600 a month gas, it's too expensive car loans. It's the rent that's $100 a month higher than the other place, but oh you have to pay for the covered parking spot too. It's $150 too much a month on food, or $200 too much a month at a restaurant. It's the culmination of all of these little unaware choices that occur 40 times a day, the single one individually that won't harm you, but the sum of them are drowning you. The only difference is the people who come to get help on this forum actually look through their spending. The people like the roommate have literally never added up their spending. I know because it's my mom. She earned $100k a year for 15 years, and has nothing to show for it.
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Wow. $100,000 a year for 15 years and nothing to show for it. Sorry to hear it Fuzzy Math.
Being on this website makes us outliers. I get that. But I'd be sad for someone who made $50,000 a year and had nothing to show for it.
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It's probably true. My parents both grew up poor (dad on a farm in the middle of nowhere and mom in a big city) so it's second nature for me not to waste money on things or go into debt. I still find it surprising when people buy brand new things that they could easily get second hand - like baby equipment or kids' bikes. I guess they just grew up differently from me.
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Wow. $100,000 a year for 15 years and nothing to show for it. Sorry to hear it Fuzzy Math.
Being on this website makes us outliers. I get that. But I'd be sad for someone who made $50,000 a year and had nothing to show for it.
I look at this like "she earned $1.5 million over the decade and has nothing to show for it".
If I project out how much I will earn over the next decade, I'm fairly certain my net worth will grow by at least that amount...
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If that kind of thoughtlessness permeates a person's every single action, it can happen easily. My mom runs through a roll of paper towels daily. Thinks nothing of a $5 coffee. Nails are only $25. "Can't ever find anything on the clearance rack" so doesn't try. Doesn't combine trips out, and wastes gas. trades a car every 2 years, "the payment is only $20 higher a month, I can afford it" (even though she's now on an 8 yr loan).
If you go look at the really memorable case studies here, the people aren't blowing thousands on hookers and cocaine. It's $600 a month gas, it's too expensive car loans. It's the rent that's $100 a month higher than the other place, but oh you have to pay for the covered parking spot too. It's $150 too much a month on food, or $200 too much a month at a restaurant. It's the culmination of all of these little unaware choices that occur 40 times a day, the single one individually that won't harm you, but the sum of them are drowning you. The only difference is the people who come to get help on this forum actually look through their spending. The people like the roommate have literally never added up their spending. I know because it's my mom. She earned $100k a year for 15 years, and has nothing to show for it.
Very insightful post. Mindless spending and justification of increased spending are definitely the two actions that bury most people.
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Wow. $100,000 a year for 15 years and nothing to show for it. Sorry to hear it Fuzzy Math.
Being on this website makes us outliers. I get that. But I'd be sad for someone who made $50,000 a year and had nothing to show for it.
I look at this like "she earned $1.5 million over the decade and has nothing to show for it".
If I project out how much I will earn over the next decade, I'm fairly certain my net worth will grow by at least that amount...
There was also a $250k cash out of a 401k from a divorce settlement that did not get rolled over (penalized and spent), and I think that the height of everything she ended up with $60k in her 401k. I'm guessing it's at about $20k now.
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Wow. $100,000 a year for 15 years and nothing to show for it. Sorry to hear it Fuzzy Math.
Being on this website makes us outliers. I get that. But I'd be sad for someone who made $50,000 a year and had nothing to show for it.
I look at this like "she earned $1.5 million over the decade and has nothing to show for it".
If I project out how much I will earn over the next decade, I'm fairly certain my net worth will grow by at least that amount...
There was also a $250k cash out of a 401k from a divorce settlement that did not get rolled over (penalized and spent), and I think that the height of everything she ended up with $60k in her 401k. I'm guessing it's at about $20k now.
OMG, this makes me nauseous!
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Should you feel sorry for people who just blow their money?
These are not stupid people. It's a different set of values. Do you live in the present or the future? If you are living now and letting the future take care of itself, you spend the money. A lot of people spend too much time worrying, myself included. Worry is usually a concern for the future. If you can eliminate that worry with an attitude change, you may be happier.
For a lot of people who blow their cash when the future comes, they just accept it. It's just the way it is. It's like a lot of people who smoke. "When your time comes, it comes. Nothing you can do about it." In some ways its a very relaxed way of accepting the here and now. It becomes very easy to just hang out. It's probably easier to laugh with such people and be offered a brief interlude of relaxation. Let's face it nervous worriers bring on nervous worry. They've got stuff on their minds and do not wish to deviate from their thinking path to take the time to joke and smile.
Eat, drink and be merry for tomorrow for tomorrow we die - Phrase paraphrased from biblical verses.
They do what they do and it's their choice.
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I don't think it's true that they don't worry though. I've never known anyone with financial woes who didn't worry, and it often caused marital strife for couples. It's more like they spend a day being carefree when they spend the money, then the next 29 days worried about their finances.
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No, I absolutely would not feel sorry for people who blow money on stupid stuff. I do feel sorry for people who get in debt due to medical expenses.
I know this woman who is a hoarder. She constantly buys stupid stuff on QVC. Years ago I heard there was no room in her apartment and there are little paths from one room to the other. Her credit card was maxed out years ago and she could barely make the minimum payment. I have no idea what she does now. At that point when her card was maxed out she and her live in boyfriend went to Las Vegas! Are these people NUTS? She and the BF retired from a local factory and they may have a decent pension and she was eligible for SS at the time. He was too young then. What makes people buy stupid stuff, pile it up and never use it and can't afford it. UGH!
When the day comes and this woman gets sick or dies, all that junk will end up in the garbage or donated. Nobody will want any of it. Nobody has room for it. She doesn't have children and neither does he.
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Hoarding is a mental illness.
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Hoarding is a mental illness.
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Yeah, it was really bizarre to see medical being excused, but then being confounded by a medical reason for senior poverty.
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I have known hoarders that didn’t spend all their money also. Just never threw anything away.
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Hoarding is a mental illness.
I understand that hoarders hoard because it gives them a sense of control.
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I've got a story that I've thought of posting since this thread first started; it's downright depressing and I'll share it below.
One of my parents has been an over spender and person who lives the "grand" life since they first became an adult. They have forever chased the "next big windfall" and, surprisingly, they have always magically found one. My other parent has stories of this going back to my childhood - we're talking leaving the responsible parent with me for the weekend with no money, no transportation and barely any food while the over spending parent took off for some adventure that required lots of money. Needless to say, this marriage ended when I was young and I grew up with the responsible parent. The other parent moved cross-country multiple times and could never be depended upon to pay for child support ("because it was helping the responsible parent.")
Fast forward to late 1990s when larger than life parent met another wonderful, responsible person and they fell in love, got married. That new responsible person had a paid for home, investments, healthy retirement accounts and a great career. Very quickly my irresponsible parent convinced their new spouse to sell their previously owned home and they blew through the proceeds to professionally decorate the home they were living in together. Then new spouse's only living parent died and my stepparent inherited not insignificant but not huge amounts (200-300K.) Within five years they'd spent the inheritance, all the investments and all retirement accounts that were non-401K. Stepparent then changed jobs and (of course!) my fuckhead of an irresponsible parent convinced them to take out and spend the 401K from the former job. Along the way, they repeatedly did cash out refinances on their home in a VHCOL area and bam 2008 hit. Somehow they were able to keep said house but were always robbing Peter to pay Paul and keep up with the payments. My parent stopped working somewhere in those years and it left the stepparent to earn money to keep up with their financial obligations while my parent "managed the money."
Eventually stepparent got laid off and that's where it went even further downhill. Fortunately, they were able to short sell the house as they truly had no other money in the world to keep up with the payments. In a matter of months they blew through a mid five figure severance package and then unemployment ran out. They moved to a VLCOL place where another family member offered a lifetime lease on a lakefront property (with two houses), in exchange for payment of the property taxes after the first three years. Six years in I find out that they've never paid the property taxes over the three years in which they were responsible for them, so I offered to pay them to ensure they didn't lose this lifetime lease and get kicked to the curb.
Over the years my worthless parent has continued to spend every penny they have, plus run up all sorts of debt that they never even make a payment on. They repeatedly overdraw their account at the bank to the tune of $1,000 per month and when SS hits the account, they immediately skim the top $1,000 off the deposit just to bring their account back into the positive. On the day SS posts, my parent spends all day shopping on Amazon to find things they can buy and very quickly the cycle repeats itself all over again.
My stepparent is a wonderful person but for whatever reason is desperately afraid to confront my bully of a parent. In the meantime, they go to a job everyday (at nearly 70 years old) just to help with finances. It's such a sucky situation and I have no idea why they have stayed in the marriage for as long as they have.
My parent has asked repeatedly to borrow money over the years to cover overdrafts, pay for prescriptions, get the water bill current so they don't have the water turned off, blah blah blah. Between their two SS checks and my stepparent's paycheck, they are living on more money than my SO and I do on a monthly basis. Mind you, we make a hell of a lot more but in typical MMM fashion we LWBOM and save way more than we spend.
It's a miserable situation and it is devastating that my stepparent has allowed my parent to do this to them. I'll never understand how they could let it get to this point. I try to stay out of it and not let it be my concern but it's very hard when you see this kind of thing happen to people you love, at their own hand. We stopped helping financially long ago because we refuse to be the next victims of my parent's out of control spending, and we also know that it doesn't really help them at all; it just allows the situation to continue.
Once this parent is gone, we certainly plan to make sure the stepparent is well taken care of as they have no children or other family of their own to lean on. In the meantime, my stepparent continues to work and tells my parent that they will not be able to work forever but it seems to fall on deaf ears and the spending continues. This is by far the sorriest situation I've known of causing someone not to be able to retire.
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iluvzbeach, OMG, that is a horror story!
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Well, “the roommate” has said something to the effect that she can’t think about how little she has because it’s too upsetting. So she obviously didn’t think about her money when she had lots of income and doesn’t think about it now either. When does she intend to think about it? Never, I guess. Sometimes I just have to bite my tongue really hard. Unfortunately, another of her traits is “know it all” and it’s a bit of a showdown every time I challenge her on something, so now I just don’t bother. None of it is my problem as long as she pays her rent. And she does have a place lined up for September. Luckily I was not asked for a reference because it would not have been an honest one!
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That’s a horrible story and I am shocked that the marriage survived.
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Now here's a question for you folks.
The people whom I know that spend money that way always act like there is no problem when asked about it. Aren't they happy just not thinking about it? When they move to these LCOL (Low Cost of Living) quarters don't they just shrug their shoulders and just say little more than, "Oh well."? Others chip in and support them. When that support does not come in, isn't the same reaction given and they just move on until they work it out? To these folks does it represent a real problem or do they see you as the problem to them for asking about it?
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Now here's a question for you folks.
The people whom I know that spend money that way always act like there is no problem when asked about it. Aren't they happy just not thinking about it? When they move to these LCOL (Low Cost of Living) quarters don't they just shrug their shoulders and just say little more than, "Oh well."? Others chip in and support them. When that support does not come in, isn't the same reaction given and they just move on until they work it out? To these folks does it represent a real problem or do they see you as the problem to them for asking about it?
My mother does not like having it brought up and refuses to accept reality. She knows there's a problem, but I'm to blame for "throwing it in her face". I believe that may be a direct quote from a few years back.
I would say there is significant worry on her part. She doesn't just accept the future, other than to say that when she's old and poor I should let medicaid pay for her nursing home so I don't go broke too. She grew up very poor and always felt like a piece of trash (has mentioned feeling that way and others judging her). I think the spending is compulsive, to prove she has what she couldn't have when she was young or to try to fill some deep personal void.
An in law of mine (hoarder, neglectful parent) had some traumatic abandonment issues as a child after finding out her adoption story. She has never gotten over it either. I would argue that there are mindless spenders, but for many / most there's something much deeper going on.
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For a lot of people who blow their cash when the future comes, they just accept it. It's just the way it is.
I don't have a problem with that, IF that's what these people accept and do. However, many of these people blow their cash, then expect someone else to bail them out. THAT I have problem with.
And don't get me started on businesses that attempt to capitalize on this. Like these "debt relief" companies who claim that "you don't have to pay all of your debt". Yeah, sure, someone else will cover it for you. Creditors are just evil for expecting you to pay your debts.
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I don’t know if this is the SORRIEST situation, but it’s not good. My younger sister is very bright and intelligent, fun personality so has made friends easily most of her life. But she cannot seem to manage practical and financial business with common sense. And she is a CPA! She’s had many good jobs over the years but quit most of them in some sort of funk or was fired because of her erratic behavior. Owned a nice little condo for a while but moved to another city and rented it out, had a bad tenant, stopped paying the mortgage and eventually sold it at a loss. Spent every penny over the years with basically nothing to show for it now. Had one emotional breakdown after another, culminating in a suicide attempt about eight years ago while she was living at the other end of the country in a situation that went wrong totally predictably.
She’s now almost 60, and the only thing keeping her afloat is that another sister has helped her out very generously, including housing, feeding, and clothing her as well as much other help ever since the suicide episode. Her emotional state is definitely much improved (after essentially being forced to take care of basic health things like sleeping and eating properly and after getting on our state Medicare), but she’s had a slew of illnesses. Currently she’s dealing with a serious leukemia diagnosis and is getting treated for it — luckily all covered by her state health insurance.
I remember years ago my mother and I both trying to talk sense into her about how she was spending her money and her complaining about our “financial rectitude.”
If it came down to it, I’d help her (financially or otherwise), but there’s been so much tension between us all our lives it wouldn’t be comfortable. Other sister has things well in hand at the moment and has plenty of means to do so. Having her live with us would be kind of a nightmare (and DH, who is generally a kind and compassionate person, vetoed that idea vehemently — even though he likes her a lot), but it could be done if necessary.
I’m sure my sisters think of me as some sort of stingy villain, and maybe I am, but so be it. I’ve had my own emotional issues and don’t want to risk getting sucked down the drain.
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My mother does not like having it brought up and refuses to accept reality. She knows there's a problem, but I'm to blame for "throwing it in her face". I believe that may be a direct quote from a few years back.
I would say there is significant worry on her part. She doesn't just accept the future, other than to say that when she's old and poor I should let medicaid pay for her nursing home so I don't go broke too. She grew up very poor and always felt like a piece of trash (has mentioned feeling that way and others judging her). I think the spending is compulsive, to prove she has what she couldn't have when she was young or to try to fill some deep personal void.
An in law of mine (hoarder, neglectful parent) had some traumatic abandonment issues as a child after finding out her adoption story. She has never gotten over it either. I would argue that there are mindless spenders, but for many / most there's something much deeper going on.
Very thoughtful reply, fuzzy math. Your mother and the in-law sound like they are 'acting out' by spending money. Acting out because of a pretty serious issue.
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For a lot of people who blow their cash when the future comes, they just accept it. It's just the way it is. It's like a lot of people who smoke. "When your time comes, it comes. Nothing you can do about it." In some ways its a very relaxed way of accepting the here and now. It becomes very easy to just hang out. It's probably easier to laugh with such people and be offered a brief interlude of relaxation.
I agree. I had a boyfriend years ago and a neighbor who were both like this. Lots of friends, laid back, wonderful to spend time with. I have many happy memories with both of them. Ultimately the lack of money responsibility tanked the relationship/friendship. It was impossible to stay close emotionally and not help them financially. They expected me to be generous because they were. They shared and gave freely with their time and possessions. They both spent everything they had + more on fun stuff (motorcycles, pretty things) or took long breaks from work to pursue hobbies. Eventually they seemed to be constantly broke and needing a bail out but giving them money never helped for long. I broke up with the boyfriend and drifted apart from the neighbor when their home was foreclosed and they had to move. I still miss them both sometimes though.
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Should you feel sorry for people who just blow their money?
These are not stupid people. It's a different set of values. Do you live in the present or the future? If you are living now and letting the future take care of itself, you spend the money. A lot of people spend too much time worrying, myself included. Worry is usually a concern for the future. If you can eliminate that worry with an attitude change, you may be happier.
For a lot of people who blow their cash when the future comes, they just accept it. It's just the way it is. It's like a lot of people who smoke. "When your time comes, it comes. Nothing you can do about it." In some ways its a very relaxed way of accepting the here and now. It becomes very easy to just hang out. It's probably easier to laugh with such people and be offered a brief interlude of relaxation. Let's face it nervous worriers bring on nervous worry. They've got stuff on their minds and do not wish to deviate from their thinking path to take the time to joke and smile.
Eat, drink and be merry for tomorrow for tomorrow we die - Phrase paraphrased from biblical verses.
They do what they do and it's their choice.
It's fine for someone to make a choice to blow all his or her money in the present - in fact maybe it is, in fact, the right thing to do in some cases - as long as that person does not ever complain about not being able to afford X, Y or Z. The two paths ought to be mutually exclusive.
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Should you feel sorry for people who just blow their money?
These are not stupid people. It's a different set of values. Do you live in the present or the future? If you are living now and letting the future take care of itself, you spend the money. A lot of people spend too much time worrying, myself included. Worry is usually a concern for the future. If you can eliminate that worry with an attitude change, you may be happier.
For a lot of people who blow their cash when the future comes, they just accept it. It's just the way it is. It's like a lot of people who smoke. "When your time comes, it comes. Nothing you can do about it." In some ways its a very relaxed way of accepting the here and now. It becomes very easy to just hang out. It's probably easier to laugh with such people and be offered a brief interlude of relaxation. Let's face it nervous worriers bring on nervous worry. They've got stuff on their minds and do not wish to deviate from their thinking path to take the time to joke and smile.
Eat, drink and be merry for tomorrow for tomorrow we die - Phrase paraphrased from biblical verses.
They do what they do and it's their choice.
It's fine for someone to make a choice to blow all his or her money in the present - in fact maybe it is, in fact, the right thing to do in some cases - as long as that person does not ever complain about not being able to afford X, Y or Z. The two paths ought to be mutually exclusive.
Yes, these people are stupid and selfish. Down the road when they are broke and crying their eyes out that they can't afford medicine, can't afford food, can't afford their house. Then what? Are they going to guilt their children and relatives for money? Will they go on Medicaid, food stamps, low income housing. All that stuff is going to cost others to pay for them. They need to get a grip and grow up.
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Should you feel sorry for people who just blow their money?
These are not stupid people. It's a different set of values. Do you live in the present or the future? If you are living now and letting the future take care of itself, you spend the money. A lot of people spend too much time worrying, myself included. Worry is usually a concern for the future. If you can eliminate that worry with an attitude change, you may be happier.
For a lot of people who blow their cash when the future comes, they just accept it. It's just the way it is. It's like a lot of people who smoke. "When your time comes, it comes. Nothing you can do about it." In some ways its a very relaxed way of accepting the here and now. It becomes very easy to just hang out. It's probably easier to laugh with such people and be offered a brief interlude of relaxation. Let's face it nervous worriers bring on nervous worry. They've got stuff on their minds and do not wish to deviate from their thinking path to take the time to joke and smile.
Eat, drink and be merry for tomorrow for tomorrow we die - Phrase paraphrased from biblical verses.
They do what they do and it's their choice.
It's fine for someone to make a choice to blow all his or her money in the present - in fact maybe it is, in fact, the right thing to do in some cases - as long as that person does not ever complain about not being able to afford X, Y or Z. The two paths ought to be mutually exclusive.
Yes, these people are stupid and selfish. Down the road when they are broke and crying their eyes out that they can't afford medicine, can't afford food, can't afford their house. Then what? Are they going to guilt their children and relatives for money? Will they go on Medicaid, food stamps, low income housing. All that stuff is going to cost others to pay for them. They need to get a grip and grow up.
A friend I have posted about on this board lost his job almost six years ago at age 61, and he burned through all assets within a couple of years. He has pieced a meager existence together from modest SS, public assistance, charity, and infusions from family and friends, including some from me, though that has almost completely dried up. The one thing he has never considered during this period was getting a "job job," something not in his field just to put together some money to stabilize his finances. I think that it is difficult for some people to sit back dispassionately and objectively analyze their situation. They know what they want now, and that is the most important thing to them. It mainly gets annoying when they look around and say, "I could have what I want if you would quit unreasonably refusing to fund it." I had cut off contact with this person for a while, but now I occasionally have communication. I have learned a lot about how to set boundaries.
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Just remembered this one.
My elderly mom hired someone to do a lot of the housework. Nice lady in her 60s.
She had divorced her husband but neither of them had any money so they had to continue to live together in the same residence.
Not only couldn't retire but had to live with her ex.
Lordy.
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Should you feel sorry for people who just blow their money?
These are not stupid people. It's a different set of values. Do you live in the present or the future? If you are living now and letting the future take care of itself, you spend the money. A lot of people spend too much time worrying, myself included. Worry is usually a concern for the future. If you can eliminate that worry with an attitude change, you may be happier.
For a lot of people who blow their cash when the future comes, they just accept it. It's just the way it is. It's like a lot of people who smoke. "When your time comes, it comes. Nothing you can do about it." In some ways its a very relaxed way of accepting the here and now. It becomes very easy to just hang out. It's probably easier to laugh with such people and be offered a brief interlude of relaxation. Let's face it nervous worriers bring on nervous worry. They've got stuff on their minds and do not wish to deviate from their thinking path to take the time to joke and smile.
Eat, drink and be merry for tomorrow for tomorrow we die - Phrase paraphrased from biblical verses.
They do what they do and it's their choice.
It's fine for someone to make a choice to blow all his or her money in the present - in fact maybe it is, in fact, the right thing to do in some cases - as long as that person does not ever complain about not being able to afford X, Y or Z. The two paths ought to be mutually exclusive.
Yes, these people are stupid and selfish. Down the road when they are broke and crying their eyes out that they can't afford medicine, can't afford food, can't afford their house. Then what? Are they going to guilt their children and relatives for money? Will they go on Medicaid, food stamps, low income housing. All that stuff is going to cost others to pay for them. They need to get a grip and grow up.
This is why we have to TAX the hell out of people (while they are actually making income) so that we can pay for EVERYTHING down the road. A high percentage of people are dependent on Social Security despite being told again and again and again all their lives that SS is just part of the equation. Same for Medicaid, Senior Housing, and Food Stamps. On the same note, I'm okay with ALL casino revenues, lottery, and cigarrette taxes going to pay for these things as its often the VERY SAME PEOPLE who do those things (I know, vast generalization).
Right now we undertax, and then simply float the budget. Not a good plan.
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I was recently talking to a woman who told me how angry she was because she was laid off two years ago, no pension, and only two weeks notice. Her house was being foreclosed on because she had to take social security at 62 because she couldn't find a job and ss wasn't enough to cover the house and everything else.
Then she told me she had the same job for 43 years and was making 70k and she and her late husband had bought the house at least 20 years ago. I was thinking wait a minute. You had a job for 43 years and you didn't save a dollar? Not even a penny. Then she said you never think when you are working this could happen to you. No shit you didn't think about it.
She was going on about how ss was only 1/3 of her income (apparently she had never looked at her ss estimate ever) and she was horrified that Medicare is more expensive than medicaid.
I can understand not saving enough, but to not think about retirement at all for 43 years? Not even in your 50's. Or say when you turned 60?
This isn't due to mental illness. This is entitlement. She thought she would work up to the last minute she wanted to and ss would allow her to have the same lifestyle as before. U see this all the time. People in their 60's who are shocked! Shocked! That they were laid of. And they had no savings or not enough. I'm glad ss exists but you can't expect me to feel sorry for these people.
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I was recently talking to a woman who told me how angry she was because she was laid off two years ago, no pension, and only two weeks notice. Her house was being foreclosed on because she had to take social security at 62 because she couldn't find a job and ss wasn't enough to cover the house and everything else.
Then she told me she had the same job for 43 years and was making 70k and she and her late husband had bought the house at least 20 years ago. I was thinking wait a minute. You had a job for 43 years and you didn't save a dollar? Not even a penny. Then she said you never think when you are working this could happen to you. No shit you didn't think about it.
She was going on about how ss was only 1/3 of her income (apparently she had never looked at her ss estimate ever) and she was horrified that Medicare is more expensive than medicaid.
I can understand not saving enough, but to not think about retirement at all for 43 years? Not even in your 50's. Or say when you turned 60?
This isn't due to mental illness. This is entitlement. She thought she would work up to the last minute she wanted to and ss would allow her to have the same lifestyle as before. U see this all the time. People in their 60's who are shocked! Shocked! That they were laid of. And they had no savings or not enough. I'm glad ss exists but you can't expect me to feel sorry for these people.
I didn't have a college education and saving money was something I did my entire life. I spent a lot of money too. Got a job with a fantastic company and worked as a temp for 9 months then they hired me. Then I had to wait a year to get into the 401K. GRRRR, that was the longest year ever. Then about a year later they changed the rules and you could get into it day one. So I lost a year on that but I still did IRA's. As soon as eligible, that very day, I signed up and contributed till it hurt! Thank God I did because that job lasted 18 years minus my one year wait and I had a good chunk of money in my 401K. Plus, I got a pension too. I rolled that money over into retirement savings. I don't get how people 'don't think' about retirement money! It has been on my mind since I started working! I am retired now and doing pretty well.
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I remember Suze Orman saying once that if you have worked for 10 years and you can’t write a cheque for $3650.00, then you haven’t even saved a dollar a day. Sounds even worse when you put it like that.
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I remember Suze Orman saying once that if you have worked for 10 years and you can’t write a cheque for $3650.00, then you haven’t even saved a dollar a day. Sounds even worse when you put it like that.
And thats assuming a zero% return!!!
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I remember Suze Orman saying once that if you have worked for 10 years and you can’t write a cheque for $3650.00, then you haven’t even saved a dollar a day. Sounds even worse when you put it like that.
And thats assuming a zero% return!!!
That is definitely food for thought and a great way to put it. Very easy to understand!
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I would argue that there are mindless spenders, but for many / most there's something much deeper going on.
I definitely agree with this and my mom has a similar story. She grew up very, very poor. From the ages of 2-4 she lived in an orphanage after her dad died and my grandmother couldn't afford to take care of her and her siblings. Later, as a single mom she worked two jobs to support my oldest siblings after she left her first husband (who never gave her any child support).
Then she met and married my dad, who was a successful small business owner, and started living a more comfortable life. But she started spending, spending, spending, I think to make up for her deprived early years. And she lavished toys/electronics/etc on me and my brother because she wanted to make sure we never felt the way she did as a child.
She also watched my dad and his siblings argue nastily over my grandparents estate, then had some issues with her own siblings after her mom died (one was accused of stealing my grandmother's jewelry from the house then draining her bank accounts while he was managing her finances in her later years). So my mom has always said she doesn't want to leave any money behind for us to fight over.
Now she lives on her social security and monthly payments my dad's sons give her for buying my dad's business after he died. She blows through all of her money as fast as ever. Once my half brothers' payments end in a few years, I think she's going to be in big trouble.
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I was recently talking to a woman who told me how angry she was because she was laid off two years ago, no pension, and only two weeks notice. Her house was being foreclosed on because she had to take social security at 62 because she couldn't find a job and ss wasn't enough to cover the house and everything else.
Then she told me she had the same job for 43 years and was making 70k and she and her late husband had bought the house at least 20 years ago. I was thinking wait a minute. You had a job for 43 years and you didn't save a dollar? Not even a penny. Then she said you never think when you are working this could happen to you. No shit you didn't think about it.
She was going on about how ss was only 1/3 of her income (apparently she had never looked at her ss estimate ever) and she was horrified that Medicare is more expensive than medicaid.
I can understand not saving enough, but to not think about retirement at all for 43 years? Not even in your 50's. Or say when you turned 60?
This isn't due to mental illness. This is entitlement. She thought she would work up to the last minute she wanted to and ss would allow her to have the same lifestyle as before. U see this all the time. People in their 60's who are shocked! Shocked! That they were laid of. And they had no savings or not enough. I'm glad ss exists but you can't expect me to feel sorry for these people.
The really weird/ sad thing is these people are paying tons in income taxes by not saving. They could have nearly the same take home pay if they'd tax shelter some of it into a 401k. It confuses the hell out of me.
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The really weird/ sad thing is these people are paying tons in income taxes by not saving. They could have nearly the same take home pay if they'd tax shelter some of it into a 401k. It confuses the hell out of me.
Funnily enough I can remember thinking the same thing. After I paid off the mortgage in 2003 I went to max out my 401k and IRAs. Even though I knew I had plenty to live on the fear of "losing" spending power was a big psychological deal for me.
I mean I was 42 at the time and I was tying up a huge chunk of money for the next 18 years.
The crazy thing is Oregon has HORRIBLE state income taxes so there is even a bigger incentive to save pretax money.
Needless to say I did max out our savings and I am so glad I did.
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I mean I was 42 at the time and I was tying up a huge chunk of money for the next 18 years.
The crazy thing is Oregon has HORRIBLE state income taxes so there is even a bigger incentive to save pretax money.
Needless to say I did max out our savings and I am so glad I did.
These stories make me feel very fortunate that my old relatives that grew up in the depression told me some of the tales they did and advised me to put some away. Hard times are waiting to come for us all. Not too many of us have jobs for the length of time that woman did. These are different times.
So,.....Oregon has HORRIBLE state income taxes. I used to live on the state line in Washington. No income tax in Washington and I'd buy my stuff in Oregon with no sales tax.
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My wife got a Facebook friend request from someone with a name and picture she did not recognize. She looked into the profile and found pictures of one of her parents' friends. This man is going through dementia in a terrible way. He wasn't exactly a pleasant person to be around before (old racist), but it's become far worse in recent years. It turns out that he is now creating fake Facebook accounts after his primary account was deleted for what Facebook deemed hate speech (probably accurate).
After calling her mom, we learned that he has been equally unbearable to his wife and has been behaving very lecherously toward other women. The two of them want to get divorced, but said that they can't even afford that, since their only asset is their house, and neither could afford to live on their own. They're stuck living together because of their poor decisions throughout life.