Good Article Summarizing Threats To U.s. Dollar

Had you invested that money or lived your life working at one job long enough to obtain a good retirement plan, there's still a chance that your retirement plan would have gone broke, but, either way, you'd be sitting around now lamenting that you hadn't done anything interesting with your life.

I could have stayed with the paper company and retired with a good retirement program or, even later, I might have remained with the college, since no one ever gets fired from a state college, and retired from there. But no, I got bored doing what I was doing and wanted to try something more interesting. So now, I still work at 71 and hope that my job continues for a long while yet. Otherwise, the way I calculate it, I could survive on my Social Security alone, but it wouldn't be so easy. Either way, sitting around worrying about it isn't going to help one bit. It was my choice and I can't do it over, so I may as well appreciate the fact that I have lived my life doing things that I enjoyed doing.

 

This is an excellent viewpoint, @Ken Anderson . I also grumble because of the $500 SS pension; but it was because i chose to get married, have children, and stay home to raise them.
Until my children were grown and I was divorced, I never had any kind of work that would give me social security. I expected to share my ex-husband’s SS pension and IBEW retirement pension ; so I didn’t really even think about that I was not getting anything for retirement for only myself.
Then, I didn’t have any skills , so mostly worked low-paying jobs or commission ones. Not the best way to plan for retirement; but it kept me alive.

Given the choice, I would still do the same thing over again, and be able to have the wonderful memories of being with my children in the years when they were growing up.

Since we have been hearing about possible food shortages, and rising cost of living for quite a while now, I have been trying to save what money I can, as well as stock up on storable food, things that are easy to cook, and that we would eat. If the economy crashes, most people are going to be in some kind of crisis, but all we can do is plan for what we are able to do.

 

I think you misread my post.

 

I think Ken was acknowledging the path you took. The point is that some folks do the things that you have done, knowing that future sacrifices might have to be made, and some do otherwise and still have no guarantees. Retirement programs and pensions go belly-up (or there's fraud) all the time. I have a 401k account and there's always the threat that the Fed will confiscate those accounts because whoever has one is "privileged." So in some cases, all the sacrifices and all the good times one has passed up are for naught. It almost happened to my mother when she retired from Sears.

Sears had a pension plan. You could cash out, or you could stay in the plan. She cashed out. Sears' plan later went belly-up, so anyone still in it was screwed...and they have none of your travel experiences to look back on that they traded for their current situation...it was "done to them." My father also worked for a retail company his entire life that had a retirement plan. He died before he hit retirement age, but that company, too, went out of business.

One never knows. There are no guarantees.

 

The same old cycle. They give us a taste of fear so we know what it's like, we get short-term relief, then there's a "definite crisis" on the horizon, so call your [Republican] representative and tell him to cave on the entire Federal budget, 'cause the government is gonna screw you if you don't. I've witnessed this many times in my life, and I'm almost 10 years younger than you. I guess there's a difference between seeing it be done to others, and the reality of having the blindfold on and the cigarette in your mouth as you feel the cold stone wall against your back hearing the sound of rifles being loaded.

 

It's clear that you're pretty much committed to panicking, so I'll leave you to it.