Tag Archives: Great Recession

A Few Lies About Retirement

A few lies about retirement, or, just a few things I know so far from personal experience and common sense.

You can’t retire with a mortgage

Well, here’s the thing. Of course you can retire with a mortgage! I’m not sure I know anyone who is retired who has also paid off the mortgage, although I do know a couple of high-earning folks who probably have. But honestly, they’re a tiny minority in my life.

My late father, my siblings who are retired, and closest friends who are retired all have or had mortgages when they stopped working.

Blogger in front of Liberace's house in Palm Springs — I wonder, did Liberace pay off his mortgage?

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I think this “rule” is a relic of that post-war past when middle class Americans could afford to buy a house with a middle income and live as a family on just that one income for 40 years, then retire for a few healthy years with a defined pension and their social security. And no mortgage, cause they paid it off in 30 years and they never moved!

Those days are ancient history for the vast majority. I know some contemporaries whose parents would have hit this sweet spot. But they’ve largely left the planet by now.

You can’t be a renter and retire: homeowner or else!

This myth is also something I often see in financial articles about retirement. Again, I think this is a bias that the financial press has about homeownership being the correct aspirational goal for everyone.

This is a hard one since we, as Americans, are conditioned to believe this myth from childhood. I used to have this argument with my father all the time. He was very invested in the idea of being a homeowner – well, he was a man with a wife and eight children, of course he’d want a stable home with something like a yard for his kids to play in. Also, I think he liked the security of knowing what the payment would always be.

I have a very different frame of reference. I’ve always been single, I don’t have children or other dependents, and both times I owned homes (condominiums, in my case) I soon felt antsy and trapped and really didn’t want the responsibility to take care of the many things that you get to be in charge of as an owner.

To get back to my main point – it may be desirable for the financial industry if everyone is a homeowner – more money for mortgage brokers, banks and real estate folks – but you can be a renter and retire just fine. I’m doing it, as are countless folks in apartments and senior housing around the country.

And one last point on that – a pet peeve of mine – are those who say you’re just throwing your money away on rent. How ridiculous! You are buying a roof over your head with that money – my current roof costs about $16 a day. If anything, the Great Recession schooled us on how foolish it would be to assume that real estate was always an investment that would appreciate endlessly. In most areas of the country, you’d be better off investing in an index fund.

And finally – for now, anyway, this lie about retirement:

You need a certain amount of money to retire

Is it $1.7 million? Seriously? If that’s true, most people will never be able to retire.

This is the headline for the above linked article on CNBC.com: Most Americans say you need $1.7 million to retire—here’s how much money to save each month to get there

So it might be nice – real nice – to have that cool $1.7 million when you finally stop working, but the truth is one day you’ll find yourself older and not working and realize you’ve “retired,” whether you’ve got the $1.7 mil or not.

Usually the pundits base these numbers on income level just prior to retirement: they’ll say you should have 10x your most recent salary in retirement savings.

I think this – perhaps it’s a good, general, rule of thumb – but at its heart is the wrong metric. What you should focus on is spending level, not income level.

By focusing on income level, the financial gurus perpetuate as a truism that all people spend all of their income. But, let’s say, you make 150K per year and only spend 75K. Wouldn’t it make more sense to pin the retirement numbers on what you actually spent? I think so.

It makes way more sense. But then, of course, it’s a lower number for most people, then you wouldn’t need all these financial advisors and their investment products. Heavens! What then – the gurus who write these things for financial sites like the ones I’ve linked will be making less money.

As with so many things, it’s helpful to follow the money to figure out who’s really benefiting from this kind of advice.

How the Great Recession Inspired My Novel “Benefits”

Remember the Great Recession? It was hard to miss and for some of us, it’s never really ended. My mom used to say that when life deals you a lemon, make lemonade. So I used the Great Recession to inspire ideas for my novel “Benefits.”

I’ve never worked full time since that last layoff, which was right at the end of 2009. I was the Director of Communications at the local branch of a national non-profit. The powers that be axed of the entire statewide Comms staff all at once (there were only four of us). In retrospect, I’m surprised it lasted as long as it did — the non-profit had been hemorrhaging jobs since early 2008.

My Recession Jobs

Conveniently, in 2010, Census jobs were available (I really can’t believe that’s upon us once again — it seems like yesterday, truly), so I walked the hot pavement of Palm Springs as an enumerator for awhile, as well as got some freelance writing gigs, as well as some background acting work — but the job from the Great Recession that inspired my novel “Benefits” the most was working at an antique store (which I still do, part-time as of this post).

Antique Store Becomes Office Furniture Outlet

The antique store inspired Refuge, the made-up office furniture store in Benefits. Plot details at the store are, of course, fictional. The very idea of a former Comms exec (Ben Schmidt) working in retail, however, comes from real life. As a writer, I’ve learned that personal circumstances of many kinds can go a long way in filling up that crucial well of ideas every writer needs to draw on.

This is just one small example — obviously there’s more to the plot than just the store. There’s polyamory, white collar crime, children and family issues — but that’s how this part of the Great Recession inspired “Benefits.”

Scene in antique shop
Author and a tempting serpent
Every day was hat day.
Bend over.
Every day was hat day.

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Goodreads Review: On The Clock – What Low-Wage Work Did to Me and How It Drives America Insane

On the Clock: What Low-Wage Work Did to Me and How It Drives America Insane by Emily Guendelsberger
My rating: 5 of 5 stars

This book is tremendous and timely. A perfect digital-age follow-up to Barbara Ehrenreich’s “Nickel and Dimed – on (Not) Getting By in America.” Through her jobs at Amazon, Convergys (a call center for client ATT) and McDonald’s, Guendelsberger’s story rips the bandage off of any illusion we might have that these “new” jobs created since the Great Recession (although of course, McDonald’s has been around since the ’50s) are anything like fulfilling or even capable of providing anything remotely resembling a middle class income.

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Guendelsberger says at one point that if you are not part of the working class in American you will never truly see what these jobs are like – and I’m grateful I never had to, though some of my earlier jobs as restaurant dishwasher or apartment building doorman were quite soul-sucking in their own regard. A theme throughout is her internal knowledge that “I get to leave” – a realization familiar to me as well, because I always knew those uber-shitty jobs of youth were temporary. For so many people, that’s no longer the case in post-Great Recession America. Highly recommend this book.

View all my reviews

Late Bloomer Millionaires!

Steve Schullo (left), Dan Robertson

This new book, Late Bloomer Millionaires, demystifies the often-confusing process of retirement investing using the exceptional concept of presenting real-life financial data as the primary case study.*

Married partners Steve Schullo and Dan Robertson began investing for retirement in their mid-30s, only to realize later that the advice received from annuity salesmen and other employer retirement “specialists” was actually costing them dearly. Late Bloomer Millionaires chronicles not only their increasing investment savvy, but the actual ups and downs their real portfolios took in divesting from those teacher annuities, through the delirious tech bubble of the 1990s and on into the housing bubble and subsequent Great Recession of 2008.

Through it all, there are lessons to be learned and these nuggets are clearly communicated to the reader, including an exhaustive list of passive investment strategy portfolios based on Vanguard founder John Bogle’s philosophy of index fund investing.

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Late Bloomer Millionaires is for those Baby Boomers who’ve lost retirement savings in the Recession as well as for those who never saved and want to start a program. It’s also the perfect financial guide for someone starting investing at the beginning of their career, who will be able to take the hard-won, candid advice of Schullo & Robertson and not fall into the same traps they eventually overcame.

In addition to explaining in detail how they invested and rolled with the markets, applying lessons learned every time, Schullo & Robertson have specific sections on understanding an employer’s retirement plan as well as a lengthy section on financial consultants, which includes a hypothetical discussion between a 30-year-old newly-minted investor and an ethical fiduciary.

Written partly as autobiography and partly as how-to, Late Bloomer Millionaires is appropriate for an experienced investor as well as anyone new to the subject, and is especially appropriate for the Baby Boomer and LGBT communities, as well as teachers and female investors. The book incorporates appendices, which include sample portfolio allocations and returns, as well as a helpful glossary.

*Disclosure: the authors are also a marketing client of Jim Arnold Communications.

California Economy Finally Shows Signs of Resurgence

Mountain, palm trees and business: Villagefest in Palm Springs, CA

I was gone over the Thanksgiving holiday, visiting relatives in Milwaukee. Honestly, I had the best intentions of blogging from there, perhaps taking a few snaps of local color and making up a story. But I didn’t. It was cold and my fingers were too cold to type. That’s my excuse. I think it’s time I consider the possibility that I may actually be one of those lazy persons you see around. Or, I’ll look at it in another way – these were holidays and no one else was working, so why should I?

Guess how many times I was panhandled per day in Milwaukee? Zero, exactly zero. For the entire trip. Is that because it was freezing, or was it because Wisconsin’s economy and unemployment rate are so much better than California’s?

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“Over 50 and Out of Work” Project

near vacant Palm Springs Mall

I had this photo of the dead Palm Springs Mall in my files, thought it appropriate enough to illustrate this post on on unemployment and underemployment, highlighting a fascinating project, the Over 50 and Out of Work stories and documentary film.

As well all know, the two candidates for president go on and on and on, sometimes talking about jobs but really not offering anything very specific, while huge parts of the population are really hurting, suffering long-lasting unemployment or underemployment. It’s chronic at both the young and the older ends of this spectrum, and these stories on this website are about people over 50 who’ve lost their livelihoods and their continuing struggles to find something new.

Think ageism or age-based discrimination doesn’t exist? Watch a few of these videos. They’re fairly addictive. What do you think?

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Over 50 and Out of Work | Stories of the Great Recession.

AARP jobs information

Become Your Own Job Creator!

Huffington Post Unemployment Links/Stories portal

Recession and workers: One person’s lessons from an economic downturn

link to: Recession and workers: One person’s lessons from an economic downturn

derelict business, location, Texas panhandle

Postcards from the Recession: I really loved this opinion piece from Ann Brenoff, which appeared in yesterday’s Los Angeles Times. She talks about how her life has changed since a layoff, what it’s meant money-wise to her and her family, and also about how priorities have changed.

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I’ll have more on that in future post – something like the “Two Facebooks” I’ve detected – but for now urge you to take a couple of minutes to read Ann’s piece – so that even if you are lucky enough to have a job and it does go away sometime, know there is a life – and a very satisfying one – after.