Welcome to life in America, aging baby boomers

[Ohiogal]

For a rapidly growing share of older Americans, traditional ideas about life in retirement are being upended by a dismal reality: bankruptcy.

The signs of potential trouble — vanishing pensions, soaring medical expenses, inadequate savings — have been building for years. Now, new research sheds light on the scope of the problem: The rate of people 65 and older filing for bankruptcy is three times what it was in 1991, the study found, and the same group accounts for a far greater share of all filers.

Driving the surge, the study suggests, is a three-decade shift of financial risk from government and employers to individuals, who are bearing an ever-greater responsibility for their own financial well-being as the social safety net shrinks.

The transfer has come in the form of, among other things, longer waits for full Social Security benefits, the replacement of employer-provided pensions with 401(k) savings plans and more out-of-pocket spending on health care. Declining incomes, whether in retirement or leading up to it, compound the challenge.

Cheryl Mcleod of Las Vegas filed for bankruptcy in January after struggling to keep up with her mortgage payments and other expenses. “I am 70, and I am working for less money than I ever did in my life,” she said. “This life stuff happens.”

More:

https://www.nytimes.com/2018/08/05/business/bankruptcy-older-americans.html?nl=top-stories&nlid=74838209ries&ref=headline

[Ohiogal]

1. I had read a while ago

that Chile was experimenting with giving all seniors a universal basic income. I suppose that would be anathema to our extremist conservative lawmakers over here.

[MichMan]

2. Isnt that essentially what SS is?

[Ohiogal]

4. Sort of

although the amount of your SS is based on your employment history .... a UBI is the same for everyone, whether they worked or not.

A UBI would be great for women who spent their lives taking care of children and elderly parents and who never had a "paying job". Studies on senior poverty in this country show that the overwhelming number of seniors living in poverty are women. (although that could be that there are just more women seniors than men....)

Anyway, it was an experiment, and I wonder how it has been working out.

[marble falls]

3. So its my SSI and VA benifits that pooched your dreams. Not the trillions ...

spent on defense. We spend the equivalent of the total spent by the next ten nations together. What have we spent on price supporting corn that basically supports the corn syrup addiction the soda companies use to make billions and the medical treatment for all the bad health it causes all by itself?

We aren't going broke because of boomers, we're going broke because of the political kowtow our economy does for corporations and the wealthiest.

Great. We need answers and the most popular one is generational conflict.

[SammyWinstonJack]

5. Boomer Bashing, never gets old, apparently.

[marble falls]

9. What I find especially agravating is the "Welcome" bit, I'm a young boomer at 70...

being preached to by a member of a generation that tweets pictures of what they're eating is an odd experience.

We stopped an Asian war. They elected cheetolini.

[Ohiogal]

10. I hear you

but in all honesty it's been shown that a much higher percentage of seniors support Trump than younger folks.

I'm a senior -- 61 -- and I am as liberal as they come. But in interacting with older folks every day -- where I swim, chatting in a store, or upon talking with parents of friends -- almost every one supports what Trump is doing. My sons (age 31, 28, and 24) are all of the same beliefs as I am.

I realize my experience is anecdotal. But I do believe that it was proven that younger generation does not overwhelmingly support Cheetolini.

[marble falls]

11. No one overwhelmingly supports Trump. Take a look at those who are showing up for the ...

Trump rallies: 20 to 40 year old white males. And five or six "blacks for Trump".

And we can't forget there were a lot of young folks who just didn't vote because "Hillary". They helped to elect him, too. As did the Jill Stein voters, by and largely not too terrible old.

[Amishman]

12. Boomers elected cheetolini, just look at vote breakdowns by age

?w=1000&h=990

The orange idiots' greatest margin was with boomers. If the election had been just Gen X and millennials, we would be enjoying President Hillary Clinton

[Madam Mossfern]

13. Except the older voters

were only 15%, while the 45-64 year olds were 40%. I think to get a clear picture, one would need the actual numbers.

[Squinch]

6. I don't think the article is saying your benefits are the cause.

[dembotoz]

7. Costs go up, medical in particular, ss not so much

The vice is not nice

[llmart]

8. Other scenarios I've witnessed in my experience...

It's still a fact that the majority of the time women outlive men. Many of those women relied on their husbands to handle the financial aspects of their marriage (not me). When their husbands are no longer around, they have no clue how to insure that the money lasts. There's a woman in my senior community who confided in me, when she was moving out of her condo to go live with her daughter, that she had been "too generous" with a son of hers and now no longer could afford to live in her home. She owned her home outright but could no longer afford the utilities, taxes and condo fees. Another woman's husband died right after he turned 65 and she had never held a job outside the home. He left her a 401K worth about $100,000 and she thought that was so much money that she continued to live an extravagant life, shopping addiction not under control, and five years later she's wondering where the money went.

I could go on and on. Let's not forget what is now being called "grey divorce" where women, such as I am, are divorcing after many years of marriage. I am financially stable but that's because I spent a lifetime handling the money in the family, making sure I got everything that divorce law allowed me without backing down because it was "too uncomfortable to fight for", and last but certainly not the least, I was frugal most of my life and need very little to make me happy and content. I worked with women not that much younger than I am and they were clothes addicts and shopping addicts, and chotchkie addicts, etc. If they would have ever stopped to add up all the money wasted on "stuff" they would have had more set aside for retirement.

People also don't want to consider downsizing. They talk about how they've lived in this 2500 square foot house for 40 years, raised their children there, blah, blah, blah but never consider how expensive the utilities are for a large house. We have to be willing to be realistic.

I am not disparaging the people who are forced to file for bankruptcy for legitimate reasons. I also realize that women still make much less than men do, or that we are a generation where women were still traditional housewives for part of their lives if not all their lives. PBS did a great documentary called something like "The Retirement Crisis". It was eye opening.