The $33,000 Retirement

Note, that’s the total amount of retirement savings – not the annual spend in retirement.

intercst

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Sure I lived on hardly any money when I graduated from high school. My cousin gave me free room and board. I threw parties at his place and cooked up the meat and fish I hunted or caught and everybody else brought the beer. It was cheap living and I loved the life but then I had to grow up and get a real job.

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“I grew up in an old Italian house. If you make a dollar, you put 25 cents in the bank. I’ve been saving all my life,” says Alto.

Yet only wound up with $33K. Was Tony Scaramucci his financial advisor or something?

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That’s what I was thinking. How can anybody work into old age and not have something substantial?

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Playing the stock market.

The Captain

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Tony is worth over $200 M, especially with Bitcoin hitting high’s. He put lots of his client money in Bitcoin and mostly sitting with 10x+ gains.

My grandfather worked all his life, into his 70s. He was a “cutter” in the garment business in NYC. He worked VERY hard all his life. He had his regular job M-F 8-6/7, and then he did piecework on the weekends, Saturday night after the sabbath ended, he would go in for 3 or 4 hours, Sunday afternoon, he would go in for a few hours. And my grandmother worked at a fabric store for all the decades after their kids were able to take care of themselves. And they weren’t able to save much at all because these were jobs that didn’t pay very well. They had well under $50k saved at retirement. They lived in a rental most of their lives, and when my dad was out of work in the mid 70s, we (my parents + 4 kids) moved in with them for nearly a year. Later, just before retirement, they moved into a small apartment underneath one of their kid’s homes (one of those single family homes with a small apartment on the first floor). My grandfather was in one of the garment worker unions, and the pension money was directly managed by the union bosses. But one year, the union bosses absconded with all the money, so he had no pension at all after he retired, other than a very small monthly check (it was under $400 a month) from Austria to recoup for his few years of literal slavery in the 1940s.

A few years after they retired, my dad, my uncle, and I bought them a small retirement apartment in Florida (on the second floor) where they spent the winters (it cost us $34k + closing costs). A few years later, my grandfather couldn’t handle stairs anymore, so that apartment was sold, and a different one on the first floor was purchased ($52k + closing costs). Then a few years later, a sibling of my grandmother died, and my grandmother inherited about $120k from her estate (the sibling had no children). They used that $120k to buy a nicer apartment in the same complex, and to do a little remodeling. They spent more and more time in Florida, and less and less time up north, so a nicer apartment was optimal at that point. When they died, their only assets were that apartment plus a bank account of about $1500.

So that’s one way to work into old age and not have a substantial amount saved.

LOL!

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Skipping the instant replay, I wasn’t referring to people’s Grandfathers. My own Grandparents were like yours and many others of that era. The dude in the article is younger than I am. Now, I’ll admit to being the Low-rent specimen in this group in all probability but I stopped working at 38 and didn’t have a high paying job. The dude in the article is a modern era specimen. Not someone born in 1893 on the Adriatic

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Most of my family also worked hard but the difference is that mostly they worked their own businesses. The outcome between Labor and Capital is staggering. With technology the gap just widens. The step is not all that difficult, if you are plumber instead of looking for a job, get a van and work house to house. Back in the day, Yellow Pages got me a lot of clients.

BTW, my step father was also Austrian.

The Captain

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Where are the customer’s yachts? The Mooch made his bones basically running a hedge fund of hedge funds and extracting amazing fees for his services.

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Okay, but this era has plenty of similar examples. I have a few nephews that never went to college. One works hard at a restaurant, he’s really good at it, but I’m not sure if he has the drive to ever run his own business. Another nephew works as a construction helper, on and off, but despite much urging he has declined specializing in something like plumbing or electrical work where he could eventually become an apprentice and perhaps join a union (or start his own business). There are tons of middle-aged folks, including some of my own younger cousins (I’m the eldest grandchild on both sides), that simply do not save much at all. They drive SUVs and pickup trucks, they have $1000 car payments, they like fancy drinks at starbucks, they LOVE home delivery of food by app ($$$), and they like their vacations. But they don’t like saving money for the future. Plenty of them out there. You can tell by their median 401k balances.

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How he will feel when he is determined to be one of those abled-bodied men who shouldn’t be covered by the ACA?

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There is a reason why the parable of the ant and the grasshopper has been around for 2,500 years.

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I was thinking “the story wants the reader to feel sorry/empathy for the “victim” but those numbers don’t add up”:

{ 61, he knew he couldn’t go back to lifting 100 to 150-pound boxes

Alto, who turned 62 in late June. Alto will receive his first pension payment later this month and his first Social Security check in August.

In the meantime, he is drawing about $150 a month from the $33,000 he saved in his 401(k) and supplementing that with money in his savings account.

discounted health insurance through the Affordable Care Act for about $200 a month.

He and his wife rent a three-bedroom house for $1,200 a month. }

His wife, homemaker, get SS on his ticket?

It might not be lavish, but it ain’t just 33k either.

I’m not impressed by this as a “Hallmark story”.

:money_bag:
ralph

Our hero is 61? 62? And slinging 100-150 boxes?
Ummm… Sure.

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HA! Yes. If that’s true He should have made a lot more money giving strongman demonstrations tearing phone books in half and bending railroad spikes with his bare hands like Jack La Lainne used to do

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I like the 3 little pigs.

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I’m 64. I pick up my 100 lb son multiple times daily with no problems.

If you do that kind of weight lifting regularly, you can certainly keep it up into your 60s.

—Peter

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But after having surgery to treat two hernias at 61, he knew he couldn’t go back to lifting 100 to 150-pound boxes in his shipping and receiving job.

I can’t imagine he was paid very much.
I assume his employer was poor or abusive to employees. No fork lift or pallet lift?
We really need more information.

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I’m 75, and I lift my 70lb eBike onto my car’s bike rack easily.

MS

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Im 62 and laid a concrete patio about a month ago, mixing 90 90# bags of cement by myself using a mixer I bought at Harbor freight.

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