Retirement Planning - Lessons Learned

[Bearsixty7]

A few impressions of the Reddit post from a grouchy old man:

Putting 35,000 lbs of boxes onto a conveyer doesn't seem like that big a deal to me. I've certainly done a lot harder jobs in my life.

I keep hearing that we have so many unfilled jobs because they are bad jobs and people deserve better jobs. It used to be that if you were unemployed, you took whatever job was available and kept looking for a better one. I guess it doesn't work that way anymore.

I agree.
It's all a bunch of B.S. that is going to crash this country completely soon due to high unemployment pay. I get that anyone can lose a job and sometimes not be able to find one and unemployment is to help get you by but it should not be a life style!
Just like demanding minimum wage be $15/hr is B.S. there are a lot of jobs that don't require any skill and aren't meant to be a career, they are for highschool kids just getting started in the workforce and earning gas money, etc.
At $15/hr many businesses can't charge enough for their product or service to stay in business.

The Kiosk's at most McDonalds now prove this.

 

[California]

It used to be that if you were unemployed, you took whatever job was available and kept looking for a better one.

No, I think that is the central theme of all those posts. The emphasis is how the employer is blindsided when an underpaid key employee moves on.

People who are already employed, realizing there are far better-paying jobs available now, so they give notice. (Maybe the clearest example is staff nurses working alongside transient contract nurses earning literally double the pay. Why not get listed at an agency and double your income?)

Then their employer is shocked that their good and loyal employee, maybe their best employee that the business really depends on, wants to go where they will be paid more with a realistic opportunity to move up. The loyal employee wasn't supposed to do that!

Times have changed.

This isn't about people who won't work regardless of how high pay they are offered. That's a different problem.

 

[goeduck]

This isn't about people who won't work regardless of how high pay they are offered. That's a different problem.

Agree, the posts are about both. Two separate distinct situations with completely different origins. Everyone should be encouraged to make more money and better their lifestyle by getting a better job. Also, every able bodied person should be working.

 

[Larry Caldwell]

I agree.
It's all a bunch of B.S. that is going to crash this country completely soon due to high unemployment pay. I get that anyone can lose a job and sometimes not be able to find one and unemployment is to help get you by but it should not be a life style!
Just like demanding minimum wage be $15/hr is B.S. there are a lot of jobs that don't require any skill and aren't meant to be a career, they are for highschool kids just getting started in the workforce and earning gas money, etc.
At $15/hr many businesses can't charge enough for their product or service to stay in business.

The Kiosk's at most McDonalds now prove this.

That was last year. This year it's $15.90. Inflation, you know.

 

[MoKelly]

That was last year. This year it's $15.90. Inflation, you know.

But the Fed says inflation is transitory until the supply chain disaster is cleared up sometime in 2030!

 

[lman]

My grandpa used to say that you are only as lazy as you can afford to be. There seems to be a trend lately that you are only as lazy as the government pays you to be.

 

[ultrarunner]

I agree.
It's all a bunch of B.S. that is going to crash this country completely soon due to high unemployment pay. I get that anyone can lose a job and sometimes not be able to find one and unemployment is to help get you by but it should not be a life style!
Just like demanding minimum wage be $15/hr is B.S. there are a lot of jobs that don't require any skill and aren't meant to be a career, they are for highschool kids just getting started in the workforce and earning gas money, etc.
At $15/hr many businesses can't charge enough for their product or service to stay in business.

The Kiosk's at most McDonalds now prove this.

It's already 15 or higher pre pandemic in some west coast districts...

A young mother I know works cleaning offices and her child is in daycare... she was so excited when the minimum wage in the city went up until she found the daycare raised it's price citing increased payroll cost due to wage increase.

 

[ultrarunner]

Employers don't have piles of money at least when it comes to small businesses.

I can cite several examples of coffee shop owners netting less than wait staff or my friend that had an office machine business repairing printers where he netted less that his two employees who also had vacation which the owner never did...

 

[MossRoad]

It's already 15 or higher pre pandemic in some west coast districts...

A young mother I know works cleaning offices and her child is in daycare... she was so excited when the minimum wage in the city went up until she found the daycare raised it's price citing increased payroll cost due to wage increase.

When we started our first in day care back in 1992, it was $100 per week. They said it would go down to $90 when the kid turned 1 year old.

Kid turns 1 year old, price goes down to $90, then 10% rate increase, so back up to $99. This went on for 10 years between our 2 children.

The number that sticks in my head is two-nineteen-ten. That's how much we were paying per week for 2 kids (infant and 5 year old). $219.10.

Today, you'd be lucky to get 1 kid in daycare for that cost.

 

[YLee Kioti]

Well sir we planned to the best of our ability and bought a house in our home town in a new subdivision with a 1/4 acre corner lot.
So far so good. Two years later the small opening between us and our neighbor squeezed in two houses. Then a school was built across the street and traffic was unbearable. Unable to exit driveway for an hour every 8am.
So we went shopping.
Large % of the 401k went into property, rough clearing, a Mueller building with temp (500sq') living area (three years there!) and all equipment for maintaining said property. Farm equipment and all about 42k, plus metal barn was another 75k which included finished out living area.......Oh and had our storage building broken into so about 10k in lifetime accumulation of tools vanished! Yeah thank you sir can I have another......ah yeah.....

So plan for the worse and pray for the best....we never saw this coming......but our ideal retirement area quickly turned into a high traffic, young party animal next door (he's a LEO, so who ya gonna call, right), and rapid taxes pretty much moved us out.

Guess you can never save too much for those unforeseen events in life.
All the best....