At the risk of coming across as insensitive, I really wonder what happened in this guy's life leading up to this. He lived through the "easy times" where boomers were buying houses on a single income, in fact he had a 10 year head start on them. The article says he only receives $1,100 from social security - so does he have $0 savings / investments at 90 years old? Genuinely curious, not taking a shit on him - this will be me at 90 too, if I last that long.
this post was submitted on 03 Jun 2024
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Orphan Crushing Machine
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Mental or physical problems, ptsd, whatever. Many ways you can get fucked over by life.
Yeah true. It said he was an air force veteran. The world is a scary place.
At 90 he would have qualified to retire in 1996. Very strong possibility he outlived his savings. Similar thing happened to a couple of my relatives who reached that age. They owned their homes. They were smaller homes too. But on fixed income the property taxes were awful. We worked it all out in the end. But it was hard getting them to even open up that help was needed.
The way some countries discard of their veterans I'm not that surprised.
Believe it or not, there are a lot of poor boomers too. It wasn't all peaches and cream like the agists would have you believe. We're actually facing an explosion of homeless elderly people right now because of the skyrocketing costs of living, especially rent. If you're only getting $1000 per month from SSI, with no hope of ever increasing that amount, you're physically and/or mentally incapable of working, and your rent triples in price, what do you do? They have far fewer options than younger people, so they end up on the street.
The poverty trap existed back then, too
$233,000 is not retirement money.
That’s just over $6k/year in interest at a modest 5%.
Or at his age he can take an extra ~$20k+/yr for a while of straight cash. Might be the better choice.
You might want to check your calculator again. $233k * .05 = 11.65k
I agree that this isnt anywhere close to lavish retirement money but if he withdraws $20k/ year plus takes his full social security payments, he can probably replace the cart pusher wages. So that's still retirement money, just a modest retirement.
Thanks. I probably mashed a wrong button somewhere. 11k+ is definitely better, but still poverty added to his SS benefit.
That's retirement money if you die soon enough
Hookers and blow. Go out with a bang.
I mean, he’s 90. So he can safely take $15k/year in addition to his social security (if he lives past 105, he’ll at least be eligible for a care home). That gets him to the $2,500/month point he needs, but he’s completely vulnerable to inflation.
I didn’t want to get into a debate of how long he might live vs how conservative he would need to be with the money. Seems a bit grim of a discussion. I guess he could go out with a bang by spending it all on hookers and blow, but it’s really difficult to gauge how much he could get away with spending to maximize comfort in his remaining years and not leave too much money on the table.
didn’t want to get into a debate of how long he might live vs how conservative he would need to be with the money. Seems a bit grim of a discussion.
That's a conversation we all need to have at some point in our lives. That's literally the heart of retirement planning. Nobody except for the very rich retires without doing that math and making some assumptions.
I’m fine discussing my own mortality. Guessing at someone else’s, even hypothetically, seems like bad form. JMO.
Fair enough.
My friend's grandmother at age 90 is in a fancy retirement home and it costs her $90k a year. She had about 400k left and joked she was going to kill herself before she turned 95. She's currently 94 and I'm really concerned.
Fuck these retirement homes. They are literally set up to suck every last dime out of elderly folks retirement funds and then kick them out to some Medicaid group home. Sorry you’ve got this worry on your family’s shoulders.
He's 90 years old. He doesn't need to worry about making that last for decades. He can put it into a 4% money market account, take $50k per year, and will probably have enough to last longer than he needs.
Is our retirement system fucked?
(rhetorical question, it absolutely is)
air force veteran
Probably not an officer. Officers get a nice pension package when they retire, enough that they can afford private health insurance and not have to sit in lines at the VA for healthcare. I would absolutely loot officers pensions if I were President. And take all that money, and give it to enlisted.
Officers, like enlisted men, only get a pension if they serve for 20 years. But anyone who served on active duty, and received an honorable discharge, is considered a veteran.
He probably didn't do a full 20 years.