Stupid boomers; how is this possible?

Mike Smith said:
Y’all are doing it wrong. I had 5 kids, taught them to be responsible. That’s my retirement.
Click to expand...
My father in law said his retirement plan was his five daughters... there’s a monthly amount, split five ways, that means he and my MIL won’t have to move in with any of them.

That reminds me... I gotta go mail a check.
 
Crashnburn said:
you're not better off taking pension and "SS" earlier.
Click to expand...

As general measure people are living longer and maybe you aren’t better off taking your SS earlier, but that is not a blanket statement that applies to everyone. If you are in poor health, you may be better off taking your SS earlier. >25% will die earlier than their life expectancy. I am watching friends in their early 60s dying at an alarming rate of cancer.

You can also be better off taking your SS early and delaying a defined pension if you worked in a position where you did not pay SS and subject to the Windfall Elimination Provision.

You have to look at your family gene pool as well. If your parents and grandparents did not live to a long life, you may put that into your calculation.

Some occupations have earlier rates of death than others.

Here is another calculation you may want to consider, exactly how much money do you think you need after age 70? Most people’s expenses decline 2% a year after age 70. The reason is simple, they are slowing down.
 
Clip4 said:
Here is another calculation you may want to consider, exactly how much money do you think you need after age 70? Most people’s expenses decline 2% a year after age 70. The reason is simple, they are slowing down.
Click to expand...

I heard someone on the radio (Ramsey maybe? or maybe it was a local retirement guy) talk about breaking retirement up into 3 phases: "Go Go", "Slow Go", "No Go". The first is when retirees do their traveling and everything else they wanted to do with all that time they now have. The 2nd is when that travel and adventure period slows down, and the 3rd is when that lifesyle is over.
 
The CNBC article cites the mean is $193,000, and the median is under $60k. When the mean and median are that far skewed, it means there are some interesting insights.

There's a buttload of accounts in that list that are super-low balances.

Wondering how many are 401(k) accounts from briefly-held jobs, etc.

The article would be much more informative if, instead of an account list, it was householded.
 
Rgbeard said:
The CNBC article cites the mean is $193,000, and the median is under $60k. When the mean and median are that far skewed, it means there are some interesting insights.

There's a buttload of accounts in that list that are super-low balances.

Wondering how many are 401(k) accounts from briefly-held jobs, etc.

The article would be much more informative if, instead of an account list, it was householded.
Click to expand...
But then it wouldn't be nearly as headline grabbing.
 
Rgbeard said:
The article would be much more informative if, instead of an account list, it was householded.
Click to expand...

Because of some moving of money into different investment accounts, I have one rollover IRA with $6.93 in it. Probably skews the data for me!
 
^^ Yeah, that's what I'm talking about. Stuff just like this.

I have two old accounts at zero that will not close. Ever. If zero-balance accounts are included on a report somewhere, that skews median badly, as well.
 
Rgbeard said:
I have two old accounts at zero that will not close. Ever. If zero-balance accounts are included on a report somewhere, that skews median badly, as well.
Click to expand...

Heh - I have two of those accounts as well. Fidelity's response is I can 'hide' them on my main account summary, which while true doesn't sate the OCD in me. :)
 
Rgbeard said:
There's a buttload of accounts in that list that are super-low balances.

Wondering how many are 401(k) accounts from briefly-held jobs, etc.
Click to expand...

Lots of people don't understand what a 401k does. ' sign here' and a couple of $$ disappear from your weekly check. Many of them don't know that they have a 401k until the custodian hounds them for their minimum distribution.

I wish they put all the deferred stuff on the same tax footing. Allow people to choose whether their deferred money goes into a company plan or an IRA. Lots of friction loss in the system from money being spread around in company administered plans.

The article would be much more informative if, instead of an account list, it was householded.
Click to expand...

What's the fun in that. Kills the entire 'stupid boomers' argument.

The IRS should have that data on a global scale of how much the average retiree has in deferred accounts (401k, 403b, 457, IRA, SEP...). Haven't looked for it, but I bet there is some congressional research service report on this.
 
Last edited:
Rgbeard said:
^^ Yeah, that's what I'm talking about. Stuff just like this.

I have two old accounts at zero that will not close. Ever. If zero-balance accounts are included on a report somewhere, that skews median badly, as well.
Click to expand...
Ha, it turns out that I have one as well.
 
How do you not remember you have accounts?
 
EdFred said:
How do you not remember you have accounts?
Click to expand...
Open an IRA, put the minimum into it - once. Don't do an automatic deposit because you aren't sure exactly what you want to do with it just yet. A year later you do your taxes - you collect all your 1099s. But you didn't get a 1099 for that account because it didn't have capital gains. I think I've seen that before on some of my IRAs. I call to ask about a missing 1099 and then get told I won't get one for one reason or another. Another year goes by and the account is basically stagnant other than whatever growth there is. You may go a while without getting a statement, and that's how you forget you have it. But I think that somewhere, sometime, there's always something in the mail as a reminder.
 
PPC1052 said:
There are no SS funds anywhere. All there are are treasury notes-- in other words, IOUs.
Click to expand...

ALL investments are IOUs. And the investment community seems to regard Treasury notes as the safest investment there is.

That means that SS is essentially pay we go. that works when there are 10 employees for every one retiree. But the demographics are such that that ratio will be coming down. Here is a chart showing the dramatic reduction in the worker to beneficiary ratio: https://www.ssa.gov/history/ratios.html Once there are not enough funds taken in in any given year, because there are not enough employees per beneficiary, to meet payment obligations, then congress is going to have to use tax payments to make up the difference. When that happens, all bets are off. Means testing, and significant reductions in benefits are inevitable.

And, no, the retirement benefits are no where near as good as I could have done if I had invested in my own account. It's not even close.
Click to expand...
Does the above analysis account for accrued interest on the Treasury notes? I don't know if it's enough to make it work long term, but it should still be taken into account.
 
You must log in or register to reply here.
Back
Top