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Caught Between The Rock Of Ages And A Hard Retirement

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By STEVE OTTO

The Tampa Tribune

Published: July 21, 2008

I have to figure the politicians are reading the same mail I am. There is a lot of it, it's depressing and it's angry. Last week, most of you took off on a column that talked about retirement and our expectations for making it in a collapsing economy.

A national story had suggested that as baby boomers start thinking about retirement, the old guidelines about needing about 75 percent of their working income was no longer valid and that most of us would require at least 100 percent of what we currently make. I compared it to the pioneers back on the Oregon Trail who had been told they had to make Independence Rock in Wyoming before the middle of July to escape getting caught in the mountains in winter - only to learn the rock had been moved farther down the road when they got there.

"I am 61 years old," wrote Clyde Darville, "and have been self-employed for the last 35 years and have made my own retirement plans.

"It's called the 'Tag Plan' which means when they put the tag on my big toe I am going to be retired."

That sounds a little like the "Drop Program" to me. I know the school system has some program where you can work for a few years after you are entitled to retire after so many years and pick up extra money.

Most of us, like those of us down here at the Type and Gripe Factory, have our own Drop Program, which is similar except you just keep working until you drop and then you are retired.

1 Size Doesn't Fit All

Vincent Schueren of Sun City Center writes that, "The placement of a financial rock is a one-size-fits-all useless guide for retirement. Does Bill Gates really need 80 percent of his income? Can someone making $10,000 be comfortable with $8,000?

"More useful and interesting is to learn how much one is spending. This can be a wake-up call. If your outgo exceeds income before retirement, it will after retirement too."

Cecil Thorpe of Tampa continues today's optimistic trend by writing, "As a fellow Boomer, I too am concerned about retirement. Keeping up with inflation when the only income coming in is from investments and Social Security is not easy. I will run out if I live long enough. I blame it on the Big Evil Drug Companies... Why, if you look at the actuary tables for when we started working we would have plenty to last until we die. ... I think though that this problem of living too long is a short term one as I'm sure that after the government completes its takeover of health care and takes the obscene profits out of drug manufacturing and begins to run health care with the efficiency that they do everything else this pesky problem of living too long will come to an end."

A Boomer Teacher Retires

And this from Lee Millard, not only a boomer but - bless her - a teacher going into retirement.

"Hi Steve. Great column. There are no guarantees/absolutes in life, unless you include paying taxes and dying. Someone is always moving the bar/finish line, and I agree that it can be discouraging. I have found other items in the news more discouraging. As school was ending this year, I read about a woman teacher who retired, and she dropped dead before she left the school premises. She was younger than me. Her money saved for retirement did her no good, except maybe for a lavish burial. While her story may sound like the exception to the rule, is it really? I knew one teacher who died within two months of retirement. Another teacher died within six months, and the stories go on and on. One teacher's husband worked every vacation day he had as a consultant, so he wouldn't live in the elderly poverty his father was experiencing. It didn't work out as he had a stroke before he could enjoy his golden years.

"Who in my generation thought the golden years would ever occur? When I was 6 years old all my school clothes had my mother's name, address and phone number stamped in them with indelible ink. At school I was ushered into someone's waiting car with other schoolmates to go out of the vicinity as part of civil defense air raid drills. I had a box of emergency items stored in my South Tampa school in 1962 because of the Cuban missile crisis. I was always, or so it seemed, wondering if I would be separated from my mother and family. Maybe I was just an impressionable kid, but the world always seemed on the brink of destruction.

"Anyway, I did retire, effective July 1, from teaching specific learning disabled students for 25 years at San Antonio School in Pasco County. I am also a cancer survivor. How long this retirement will last I don't know. I would like to think - in answer to your column on the pioneers reaching the rock - they would have continued on, resilient and unafraid - hopefully like us paving the way into retirement, before we drop dead."

Keyword, Otto Graphs, to read and comment on Steve Otto's blog.

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