My Dad would have had a decent retirement having worked all his life for a railroad. Some years, he worked so much ovetime he had more than four hundred and some working days in the year. Toward the end, just before he got his diagnosis,(he died six months after a lung Ca diagnosis at age 52), he was talking (quietly, only to my Mom) about seeing light at the end the tunnel to retire at 60-something with a quarter of a mil in the bank (stocks weren't part of his vocabulary: he died in '80). I remember him comparing himself to some of the other guys he worked with who were struggling with making ends meet. He said his secret to being able to put money in the bank was being able to walk by a store front and just look and then to keep on walking. Tne problem was when you went in and got snagged by the sales people. Remember store fronts? The old days, eh? Now, it's website popups. I "popup" once in awhile here with some attitudes about corporate greed. For me, my Dadis exhibit A as the Company Man who sacrificed his body and health so the scions of that railroad's fortune could sell their interest to Conrail and RE. An irony: early in my legal career, I had lots of railroad cases under the Federal Emplyers Liability Act (like workers comp) where I was opposed on behalf of the railroad to guys seeking big bucks for back injuries. I remembered my Dad literally falling out of bed and crawling across the floor to the bathroom before he could get his back loose enough to stand up and go to work. He was in his twenties. He started out flinging coal into steam locomotives in the late forties and, obviously, yoga and resistance exercises that would have prepped him for this unnatural repetitive exercise weren't part of the program.
He's only about 58. I was just wondering how many people have known people who couldn't wait to retire and then do end up in the hospital or dead?!! It seems that it happens way too often!
The chronic drinking over the years didn't help.
