If you are already retired leave us a comment telling us how you are doing.
Many people worry that they won't have enough money once they retire.
That could be true if you are in the USA and will only have social security for retirement income. If you will also have a pension and/or investments likes a 401(K) or a 403(B) through your job you may be in good shape financially for retirement. For 30 years I worked at a place that has pensions and that pension is one reason I stayed there. Lots of enjoyment in my job and with my co-workers but some blood, sweat and tears too! I retired from full time work a few years ago. If you are still young you might want to consider working at places that offer pensions, cuz I notice we get old fast. Ha ha!
If you live in the USA one good thing is that when you retire you will no longer pay into social security, so that is hundreds of dollars each month you will not have taken out of your check. Plus you will not have hundreds taken out for Medicare and money taken out for unemployment / disability insurance (in California they take money out for that). Plus where I worked charges $60 a month for parking which of course I no longer pay. That cost was due to my work place being on top of a wooded hill surrounded by forest and grass lands and they built multi-story parking buildings to save the forests, the parking being expensive to construct.
All this is to say that you may have more money in retirement than you thought you would have.
If you will only have social security as income, I hope you are saving money as a nest egg. If your job allows you to put pretax money in to a 401 retirement account be sure to do that. Some employers match the money you put in to a 401 account, that is a great incentive to put in the maximum you can. If it is pretax, that means that 100 dollars put in your 401 account will not result in take home pay of 100 dollars less, but a smaller amount will be taken from your paycheck, perhaps 90 dollars. Even 20 dollars a month in a 401 plan adds up over time. When our children were young and finances were tight, we managed to put in even a small amount like 20 dollars a month.
Hope you like the happy photos of Kermit in the snow and people hiking.
This post is about USA retirement. I am interested in people who live in other countries and how retirement works in your countries. If you don't live in the USA I would love to hear how retirement finances are good or bad in your country.
9 comments:
I'm glad to see you blogging today. You were quiet for a while and I was beginning to worry.
Retirement sounds so wonderful, but I won't have the option for another 25 or 30 years. At least I still have some time to save for it!
I don't think we have enough to retire on, but we were shocked they deduct taxes from SS and have to pay monthly for Medicare. I though we already did that. It wouldn't be possible for us to live alone on SS. Yes, we do get old fast and still help our kids out, the reason we couldn't save as much as we should have.
We are retired and love it.
My husband has worked hard his whole life and we have saved and have a good retirement plan.
Life is Good. : )
Very interesting post, and some good advice. When you are young, in ministry, live in parsonages and think you will never get old....you don't always plan ahead. That is our story. So when retirement aged slipped up...we had never bought a home, so had no equity to buy, since we had enjoyed the parsonage being part of our "ministry package".
However we do have a small retirement from the Ministers and Missionary Assoc. We both have Social Security, and I worked most of my adult life and have a 401K. But needless to say, it was a shock to see the price of renting. God is faithful and we live in a beautiful complex which is a Senior Low Income facility, and we thank the Lord every day for his grace in our lives.
We made sure our kids did not make the same mistake and they all own homes.
Good advice Terra. I am 55, my hubby is 58 so it's something we are thinking about. We too keep adding money to the 401K
Such a great post, Terra. I am not retired yet, but I turned 60 on October 27th. Here in Canada I have been hearing that it is not easy for those who retire. With the cost of living like rent, food, Hydro, public transportation, car payments, etc., it seems that everything goes up at such a rapid pace the income (and this is not just for retired people, either), just doesn't seem to catch up with it.
Great advice! Thanks. :)
Important topic Terra. We are both retired and collecting social security. I don't have a separate pension but my husband does. Howver, I've saved for retirement for 30years. Social Security would never be enough alone for most people IMO.
Both my husband and I are retirement age, but he is still working and plans to for quite some time. I'm not drawing SS. Medicare has been a good thing, but I'm starting to realize that he and I are an anomaly for not being on any medications at all. The exorbitant price of medications can hit retired people really hard.
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