Were you ever under the assumption that SS and Medicare would be enough to retire on?

I was taught when I was still in High School that SS and Medicare were only meant to supplement our union negotiated pension and medical benefits through our employer. I had teachers that taught this to us in school and they explained to us that is why it was so important to join a union and negotiate these benefits through a labor contract. Because if you didn't you would be royally screwed some day.

Was anyone else taught about this as they were about to enter the workforce?

Reason I ask is a lot of people appear to have counted on SS and Medicare to be enough to retire and still live a decent life. I was taught SS and Medicare were never designed for that.

If they don't teach this any more I wonder when it ended?

Don

:rofl: :rofl: :rofl:

past couple of decades at least, they taught that we have to give more tax breaks for the rich and treat the rich well or they will take their wealth and go home and then no jobs for us. And pull yourselves up by your own bootstraps.

Marrying a guy with a union pension helped me see the light.

Retirement, pensions, Medicare and/or SS were never brought up by my high school teachers.

What's that? :shrug:

It's great that folks are protected by a union and have a pension. Enjoy it.
But who's protecting those folks who have neither? :shrug:
A lot of talk and action lately over several states trying to take any benefits of union members. But I don't see too many people out in the streets fighting for the rights of folks not in a union or who had their pension taken away.



No, SS and Medicare are not enough.
I'll probably have to work until I am 80 to get SS.
What a mess we're in.

Only Government, State and Union Workers still had pensions, and those are now being cut. Many worked for less (like teachers) so they would get health care and pension benefits later.

Particularly in the building and transportation trades.

pharma, tech (although IBM did offer pensions at one time..believe they are only for the Top Level these days. Big Pharma used to offer pensions, but now only the top Level get them. Everyone used to get them after five years of service.

That's how unions came to be. People who are "protected by a union" are protecting themselves by working together and organizing.

I, for one, don't enjoy fighting for someone who won't stand up and fight for himself.

Let me correct that for you.

A lot of people here at DU seem to be operating under the assumption that those who want to defend (or even expand) those programs want to make them into retirement plans, and also seem to believe that the defenders of those programs already see them as such.

Nobody who is honest about either program sees it a a retirement plan, but plenty of dishonest people are casting it as such in an attempt to justify cuts.

it did not start out that way, but yes i could see that as an eventual outcome.

My parents and teachers said relying on SS would mean not starving but probably eating dog food.

It was good advice.

Both my parents have pensions and saved separately with a 401k.

SS and Medicare were just sumplemental... It was originally put out there for those who needed it.

and suddenly my financial future, being a small business owner, is in question.

ground financially over past 30 years, it was close
to impossible for them to save.

Another point people with 401Ks who were at or near
retirement at the time of Financial Crash lost a lot
in their 401 Ks.

Over the past 20 years I do not believe there was enough
emphasis on the amount a person needs to save for retirement.

Recently I hear a financial planner on one of the business
programs state that a person earning 50K annually would need
to have at least 700, 000 saved to maintain anywhere close
to the same lifestyle as they have. This is the kind of
information they need early.

I went to a Catholic high school and they didn't teach us squat about civics. However I had read long ago that Social Security was originally intended to be one of three sources of retirement income, along with personal savings and a pension plan. The image was that of a three legged stool. I googled it and found this:

http://www.ssa.gov/retirementpolicy/retire-security.html
Retirement Security

Why is Social Security's work on retirement issues important?
(Illustration:Short, three-legged stool showing Social Security, pensions, and personal savings as the legs.)

Retirement income used to fit the model of the three-legged stool—Social Security, a defined benefit pension from an employer, and a personal savings.

For better or worse, it is no longer that simple for a number of reasons:

* The increasing reliance on defined-contribution pension plans shifts financial risks from employers to employees.
* The increasing life spans and lower personal saving rates can lead to people outliving their personal retirement savings.
* Despite longer lives, most workers continue to take their Social Security benefits at age 62 even though that may permanently reduce the monthly benefit. A 2007 survey found that only 19 percent of workers can correctly identify the age at which they will be eligible for unreduced benefits from Social Security.

Building a financially secure retirement has become much more complicated, especially with falling contributions from employers and lower rates of personal saving. Everyone, from workers and employers to researchers and policymakers, is trying to figure out how to build retirement security in the 21st century.

...in that I went to Catholic grade and high schools which had some holes in various social and economic topics.

Anyhow, the general gist I got growing up (late 60's early 70's) was that you either learned a trade to get into a union to get a pension, or you went to college to get a job that paid enough to start an investment account of your own. That was retirement planning. I distinctly remember being lectured about not "screwing around" and how "not getting a good job with benefits" would mean I would have to "work till the day I die". I believed it and had no desire to test the limits or to be a contrarian.

You were also expected to pay all of your bills each month, and almost nobody but businessmen who traveled and some small business owners used credit cards and carried a balance. After all of that, you then put all the rest of your earnings in savings and maybe had a bit of cash left over for dinner out with the old lady, a bike for the kid or maybe a new barbeque grill or some new tools. It was a bit simpler back then I guess.

The savings account(s) were suppose to have all these different percentages based on time and your needs. So, maybe you set up a main account where you kept cash for emergencies like the refrigerator crapping out. Perhaps another "account" on the side you couldn't touch where you put in money for an eventual house and another "account" to buy a newer car every 10 or more years. Those car and house "accounts" were very often "T-Bills" as we called them, so that you'd make a little bit while waiting and the country could use the money in the mean time.

The SS and Medicare stuff (at the time I became aware of them, not time of their inception) were never suppose to be much more than a supplement for inflation or to allow you to handle the extra burdens of being old. No one ever told me to stay employed and SS and Medicare will take care of you. If anything, I was warned the relying on SS and Medicare "was no plan at all" and was told "don't come to us for money" and "don't expect to live off the government". Times were different back then.

Anyhow, 401k's are crazy these days and pensions are disappearing. I have no answer, other than the SS and Medicare programs were never designed to carry one through retirement. They were designed before the baby boom occurred which is quite a strain. There is no cradle to the grave system in the USA and I'm not sure there should be. Based on that, I generally advocate:
-expanding them to make them usable as sole retirement accounts replacing union pensions and corporate 401k's completely
or
-deleting them entirely so we can have our money back

If we are in fact keeping them, but not expanding them
-stabilize them and get some PSA's going that these are not retirement accounts
-get something new going that is public (not private); is tax free to withdraw from at retirement assuming you already paid taxes on the initially invested money; is your money and not part of some weird shifting column % based means tested spread the wealth scheme ie: you get what you saved + interest with no fees; people can optionally choose to join or not join. I'm no investor, smarter people can figure out the details.

My life is decent enough for me although it's likely others would not find it so.

You will be able to cover that 20% that Medicare doesn't cover?

I sure couldn't. I don't have a couple of hundred grand laying around.

Don

I have nothing so there is nothing to be taken from me. If I have a $200,000 hospital bill, well good luck getting that.

I've also resigned myself to the fact that I will not live forever, that life is unfair, and that worrying about future things that may never happen and cannot control does not in any way make my life better.

and retirement age for me is a joke. I will work till I die.

their own home and live on their SS. They have a small home but have a good life. When one of them passes on, though, the situation would be untenable.

Medicare only covers 80%.

They have a lot of money laying around to write a check to pay the 20% that Medicare doesn't cover?

Don

eom

Is it something that is free or is it a policy that has to be paid for?

Don

objected. It's certainly not perfect but it is working for them at this time and my father in law has had some major health issues.

their homes and the equity in them would serve as a means of saving for retirement. So, when they were ready to retire and downgrade to a smaller living arrangement they could sell their large homes and have enough to retire to a smaller home, pay cash for it and still have an amount that would suppliment their social security and live a comfortable life. All things considered, it did not work out that way for many.

Medicare came long after I graduated. Most people take SS and, now, Medicare into consideration in planning for their retirement. Income for retirement should be a mix of pension, saving and investment.

have SS available when we reached retirement. Decided that I would not count on that and worked at being prepared for my retirement. I think most people want to hope that it is going to be there to help. We have encouraged our children to prepare themselves.

Since I've paid into it all these years, you know ...

I guess I was a fool ... fool me twice ... we don't get fooled again.

Bake

to people who never had pensions or could afford to save much. People live paycheck to paycheck and wages haven't risen substantially for at least 25 years. How on earth do you expect people to be able to prepare for retirement? Especially with the 401 (k) disaster.

'Insurance' so to speak against starvation/homelessness. Enough to live on but not to retire in luxury.

I have always assumed pensions/retirement accounts/401ks/personal savings would be the bigger part of my retirement.

Maybe you haven't noticed.

But the cold, hard facts of their lives forced that option upon them. People who had pensions yanked from underneath them, or who had to deal with hard medical realities, or who simply worked in jobs where no pensions were given out. All these people and more were not assuming that SS and Medicare would take care of their full retirement, but instead, due to the blows of live, were forced into that option anyway.

I wasn't taught anything about financial planning or retirement, either. Certainly no talk of unions or pensions in the rural school district where I went to school.

... are not really for people who save and plan for retirement on their own, I have always believed. At the very least, it is merely a supplement. Its real value is to keep people who don't plan (and a large percentage don't or can't) from losing what little they have and ending up on the streets. Hard for me to understand how any collective group - let alone a political party - could muster widespread opposition to that, except that it doesn't really make anyone any money, so it must be bad for America.

With my 401k, company retirement account, savings, and the absence of catastrophic medical issues, I will hopefully have the kind of retirement I want.

it has always been a part of our retirement plan. I resent the threat that it might not be available when everyone has paid into it.

However it seems they have always wanted everyone to be heavily vested in the stock market and TPTB have pushed that direction my whole life. I would no sooner own a 401k than pour barrels of oil into tide pools or set fire to a redwood forest. I want no part of profiting from mass destruction of our environment, third world child labor, wars of choice, factory farming or big pharma.
Other people seem to have no qualms reaping a reward from those practices and sometimes I wish I could be like them.
I have tried investing individually in companies that I know aren't destructive to the planet but the returns while gratifying have been meager.
At this point I feel like the best choice might be trying to procure some land and growing my own food. Just try to live off the grid as much as possible and do the least damage to the earth and it's residents that I can for the duration of my stay.

Incomplete post

Hopefully I will be living on a farm with younger generation and VT will have single payor in place by then. Otherwise, I will work until I can't anymore and then I will just quietly go away.

I thought the cigarettes would do their job long before SS ever kicked in. (I was a very messed up kid.)