I think Elizabeth Warren is the single voice of reason and the best person we have running for political office to represent the interests of the middle class and the NQR generation. She gets it. It is all about our underlying social contract.
This past weekend, Joe and I went to see Marga Gomez in her one-woman comedy show called “Not Getting Any Younger” at The Marsh Theatre in San Francisco. It was, without a doubt, one of the most hilarious and entertaining shows that I have seen in a very long time. If you have a chance to catch this before it closes October 23, I’d really urge you to do so. I’m still laughing about the story of putting up with a young salesclerks calling her Ma’am, driving her toward murder at a Forever 21 department store.
Marga Gomez’s
NOT GETTING ANY YOUNGER
September 8 – October 23!
The Marsh, San Francisco Studio
“This is Gomez at the top of her game.” – San Francisco Chronicle
“Gomez has the audience in hysterics” – Doug Konecky SF Theater Blog
“Amazing. She’s like a lesbian Lenny Bruce”– Robin Williams
“Hysterical! Adore her!”– Eve Ensler, author Vagina Monologues
” Deliciously Cheeky …One To Watch” – New York Times
I’m part of the boomer demographic (< 55 years old) for whom Congress has discussed changing the rules of Medicare and Social Security. Are you kidding me? There is nothing that gets me (and every other boomer) riled up as much as even having this discussion.
I have contributed to SSI/Medicare through payroll taxes every paycheck for 38 years since my first job in high school. My employers have contributed an equal percentage. Today the rate is 15% of gross income before taxes, up to the maximum threshold which increases each year – split between employee/employer. If you’re self-employed, you pay the whole thing.
If you averaged only $30K per year income over a 49 year working life, that’s close to $220,500 in contributions made. If you calculate the future value of $4,500 per year (yours & your employer’s contribution) at a simple 5% (less than what the government pays on the money that it borrows), after 49 years of working, you’d have $892,920.
If you took out only 3% per year, you would receive $26,787.60 per year and it would last better than 30 years. If you bought an annuity and it paid 4% per year, you’d have a lifetime income of $2,976.40 per month.
The folks in Washington have pulled off a bigger Ponzi scheme than Bernie Madhoff ever had. Entitlement? Are you kidding me? We have all paid cash for our social security insurance. Just because they borrowed money from the fund, doesn’t mean the solution is to cut our so-called “entitlement”!
There are a lot of other ways to solve this matter proposed by many economists – such as Robert Reich (UC Berkeley), Paul Krugman (Princeton prof and NY Times columnist) and others. It’s time Congress started listening to them, instead of Grover Norquist.
I think a lot boomers are living in fantasy-land when it comes to the realities of a retirement without earning supplemental income. We’ve always been about living in the now. But If you’ve estimated how much income you’ll need to maintain your standard of living after you retire — and how long that income must last with our extended life expectancy, it’s a pretty daunting revelation.
For a 55-year-old who earns $150,000 a year, planning to retire at 65 on 80% of current salary, and looking for that income to last until age 95 (who knows) – the number is, shockingly, around $3 million – if you assume a 4% annual withdrawal rate. I’m excluding social security, any pensions, and any home equity you can take out when you downsize (good luck with that). I’m also not including taxes on the IRA withdrawals (which you have to pay on your gains unless it’s a Roth IRA).
I know $150,000 is a lot of money in many parts of the US, but in the SF Bay area it’s enough to live a solid middle-class lifestyle, where the median home price is in the $650K range and gas is $4.20 a gallon. But if you think that’s crazy and you can get by on half of that amount, or $75K a year, you’ll still need a cool $1.5 million. If you’re in some other area of the country where the cost of living is even lower, then maybe you can cut it in half again, and get by with a mere $750K target in your nest egg. Having that amount might give you about $30K total income per year – again excluding social security, pension (if any) and taxes.
And how do we stack up against that? Here are a few enlightening measures (from various sources noted) to give a general picture:
We need to get real, or plan to live on a lot less.
After the demise of company pensions in all but a few union industries, I had to take responsibility for my own retirement planning and saving, like most of the baby boomer generation. I have regularly contributed to the max in my 401K. We also used to receive a company match – but that went out the window in cutbacks by my employer a couple of years ago. The financial turmoil of the past few years has decimated my account balances, despite my attempts to continue contributions and diversify the types of investments, the industries, the geographic concentration, domestic vs. international, and dollar cost averaging. Whatever. I feel tricked.
I feel as though all my investment money (and the billions aggregated from all of the boomers) have served as nothing more than Wall Street’s cannon fodder. Our money became “play funds” for investment managers and Wall Street traders, who took a massive piece of it for themselves in the process. When the trading charades collapsed, we then supported these institutions through financial bailouts with even more of our money.
Ominously quiet, the baby boomer generation has sat idly by on the sidelines watching their economic future being ruined by the actions of Wall Street amidst government policy and regulations driven by a plutocracy of the wealthiest campaign contributors.
For the past couple of weeks, there has been a quiet protest brewing in New York City with people angry with Wall Street. Yesterday, as these protestors began moving to Union Square, it became somewhat chaotic and the NYPD stepped in with a heavy hand to stop the assembly.
I hope that our government leaders will start to pay attention to people’s anger and frustration. The inequality of income distribution in the US is statistically one of the worst in the developed world – on par with some countries in Africa. People are hurting in every demographic in this country – but in particular we are destroying the economic future of millions of young college graduates and the economic security of 76 million boomers.
Watch what is happening in New York. It may have started out of frustration by the young and the unemployed, but the baby boomers interests are intermingled with Wall Street even more. We can not sit quiet and idly by. We need to peacefully raise our voices, and let the political and corporate leaders of this country know that enough is enough. The plutocrats don’t get to both ruin everyone else and keep us quiet.
Welcome to the NQR blog... the rantings and musings of my experience as one of the “Not Quite Retired” (NQR) generation – the 75 million-or-so, U.S. baby boomers.
I’m right in the middle of the boomer demographic, born in 1957. About half of the 75 million are in front of me, and the other half are right at my heels. It has been an undercurrent throughout my life.
Being in the middle of this pack provides me with a good perspective from which to share the experience as this generation moves towards some traditional definition of “retirement age”. With the NQR blog, I aim to do that – and give a voice to the hopes, joys, frustrations, and concerns of this generation; a chance to rant a bit; and an opportunity to dream a lot.
Mix in my left-coast interpretation of the world today and my inter-racial gay partnership, and there’s a lot of ground to cover.
I hope you’ll join in the conversation, regardless of your perspective.
Cal
I’m Cal. A baby boomer, age 50 – ok, 54.. or thereabouts. By many accounts, I’ve had a very happy life and done alright in this world up till now. I’m fortunate to lead an active, healthy lifestyle, exercise regularly, and have no real serious health issues. I have an awesome partner, Joe, who represents everything I could ever hope for in another person to share life together. We’re an inter-racial couple – he’s Filipino, I’m not. He’s a Bohemian, laissez-faire type. Me, not so much. We met playing on a sports team.
Living in the Bay Area, I work in management consulting and technology, a career with which I’ve done fairly well after almost 30 years. I have an M.B.A. education (paid for on my own) and that credential has helped a great deal. It wasn’t from an Ivy League school, but the return on investment has probably been much better.
I’ve had the opportunity to travel to many parts of the world, and live and work abroad. Europe, South America, Central America, and Asia (a little). I speak a second language (Spanish) fluently, and can get along fairly well in a couple of other languages. Over the years, I’ve pursued a lot of different recreational and academic interests including team sports, individual sports, martial arts, outdoor activities (hiking, camping, survival school included), gardening, landscape architecture, antiques, furniture making, and indigenous cultures to name a few.
I always thought I would be retired by the age of 55. But that’s not happening. My individual situation, the global economy, and our state of affairs in the US have changed that goal, and the choices I have as options going forward. I try to remain confident, yet am fearful; happy with my life, but pissed-off at the circumstances in which we find ourselves today; hopeful and yet a bit scared about the future.
Like so many of my fellow boomers, I have many difficult choices to make, but still want to make the most of life in the here and now. I worry, but also wonder, about the prospects of being forever “not-quite-retired”, an NQR in perpetuity.
Cal
NQR 