Depressing Thoughts about Retirement

[Badger]

The reality for many is simple. They do not have enough money to retire to a life that they envisioned.

Retirement saving are down, way down. Ditto for the percentage of home owners who now retire mortage free. The last stats I saw showed that the fastest growing consumer debt was the 55 and over age group.

So...if you do not save for retirement until you are 60 plus, and are premier members of the consumer class then the chance of you attaining your vision of retirement is highly unlikely.

My daughter called yesterday. Her in laws were visiting. They commented that we were really lucky that we retired early and that we could afford to travel.

Her reply to them.....nothing to do with luck. It was the result of hard work and making good life choices.

+1

Cheers!

 

[pb4uski]

I found this site which suggests considerably more than $150K/year - since you need three shifts.

https://www.glassdoor.com/Salaries/private-duty-nurse-salary-SRCH_KO0,18.htm


I'm sure it varies, so YMMV.

Going through this now as an exercise for my aunt to try to convince my uncle to move to a CCRC in case anything happens to him... my aunt has short term memory loss and could not live alone but as a couple they currently still live in their own home. Both late 80s. His "plan" if something should happen to him is that we would staff up and have 24/7/365 in-home care.

I figure you would need more than 3 people... 24*7 = 4.2... so a minimum of 4 people and more likely 5 to cover off time off and vacations. So if I had a nurse who was 40 hours/week at $40/hour and nurses aides that filled the other 128 hours at $30/hour that would be $5,440/week or $282,880/year.

Per hour amounts above are for pay, payroll taxes and benefits (vacation, etc).

 

[Jimonlimon]

…"isnt it strange that we save our entire lives so that we can retire, and we choose the goal-line as the point in time where we don't have to work to support our current way of life."

One of the fundamentals of retiring early is clearly to avoid living beyond your means, but what if what you want out of retirement involves spending more, traveling more, seeing more, doing more?
.

That’s the heart of my struggle. I’ve earned a defined benefit pension.
If I retire this year (age 58) I’ll have enough to maintain status quo plus a modest increase for 10 years to allow travel, etc. in our first decade of retirement.
If I defer 5 years it would afford a large permanent increase in my retirement income plus we could raise our spending right away. But I’d still have to work 46 weeks of the year. Even luxury vacations would include work stress in the back of my mind.

I’d rather travel cheap backpacking for three months than stay in a luxury hotel for three weeks. My spouse is on the fence- of course she isn’t the one putting in the hours.

 

[Gumby]

That's why even those with DB plans need to save hard for retirement.

 

[dknighd]

I have a step daughter (and her husband), and step grand kids, that think I'm rich. The perhaps funny thing is they have more income than us. We just spend it in different ways. They spend 110% of what they earn. We spend 90%. When I was working I spent about 80% or less. I hope my kids have learned better. I do not understand how anybody could think spending more than you earn was sustainable.



I'm hoping the 10% not spent today, combined with current income, will pay for long term care in the future. I hope we do not need it, but it is always a possibility.

 

[Koolau]

Going through this now as an exercise for my aunt to try to convince my uncle to move to a CCRC in case anything happens to him... my aunt has short term memory loss and could not live alone but as a couple they currently still live in their own home. Both late 80s. His "plan" if something should happen to him is that we would staff up and have 24/7/365 in-home care.

I figure you would need more than 3 people... 24*7 = 4.2... so a minimum of 4 people and more likely 5 to cover off time off and vacations. So if I had a nurse who was 40 hours/week at $40/hour and nurses aides that filled the other 128 hours at $30/hour that would be $5,440/week or $282,880/year.

Per hour amounts above are for pay, payroll taxes and benefits (vacation, etc).

The good news is that you might not need nurse/nurse aid right away. In essence, you probably need someone to "watch" your loved one, do some cooking and light house work. One day, the nurses will be needed. Not sure $40/hour would do it.



With dementia, there are few easy solutions and NO cheap ones. Blessings.