For boomers, it's a new era of 'work til you drop'
LOS ANGELES (AP) -- When Paula Symons joined the U.S. workforce in 1972, typewriters in her office clacked nonstop, people answered the telephones and the hot new technology revolutionizing communication was the fax machine.
Symons, fresh out of college, entered this brave new world thinking she'd do pretty much what her parents' generation did: Work for just one or two companies over about 45 years before bidding farewell to co-workers at a retirement party and heading off into her sunset years with a pension.
Forty years into that run, the 60-year-old communications specialist for a Wisconsin-based insurance company has worked more than a half-dozen jobs. She's been laid off, downsized and seen the pension disappear with only a few thousand dollars accrued when it was frozen.
So, five years from the age when people once retired, she laughs when she describes her future plans.
"I'll probably just work until I drop," she says, a sentiment expressed, with varying degrees of humor, by numerous members of her age group.
Like 78 million other U.S. Baby Boomers, Symons and her husband had the misfortune of approaching retirement age at a time when stock market crashes diminished their 401(k) nest eggs, companies began eliminating defined benefit pensions in record numbers and previously unimagined technical advances all but eliminated entire job descriptions from travel agent to telephone operator.
At the same time, companies began moving other jobs overseas, to be filled by people willing to work for far less and still able to connect to the U.S. market in real time.
"The paradigm has truly shifted. Now when you're looking for a job you're competing in a world where the competition isn't just the guy down the street, but the guy sitting in a cafe in Hong Kong or Mumbai," says Bill Vick, a Dallas-based executive recruiter who started BoomersNextStep.com in an effort to help Baby Boomers who want to stay in the workforce.
Not only has the paradigm shifted, but as it has the generation whose mantra used to be, "Don't trust anyone over 30," finds itself now being looked on with distrust by younger Generation X managers who question whether boomers have the high-tech skills or even the stamina to do what needs to be done.
"I always have the feeling that I have to prove my value all the time. That I'm not some old relic who doesn't understand social media or can't learn some new technique," says Symons, who is active on Twitter and Facebook, loves every new time-saving software app that comes down the pike, and laughs at the idea of ever sending another fax.
"Ahh, that's just so archaic," she says.
Meanwhile, as companies have downsized, boomers have been hurt to some degree by their own sheer numbers, says Ed Lawler of the University of Southern California's Marshall School of Business.
The oldest ones, Lawler says, aren't retiring, and more and more the youngest members of the generation ahead of them aren't either. It's no longer uncommon, he says, for people to work until 70.
"People who would have normally been out of the workforce are still there, taking jobs that would have gone to what we now call the unemployed," he said.
John Stewart of Springfield, Mo., sees himself becoming part of that new generation that never stops working.
"No, I don't see myself retiring," says Stewart, who is media director for a large church. "I think I would be bored if I just all of a sudden quit everything and did whatever it is retired people do."
Then there are the financial considerations. Like many boomers, the 60-year-old acknowledges he didn't put enough aside when he was younger.
For more than 30 years, Stewart ran his own photography business, doing everything from studio portraits to illustrating annual reports for hospitals and other large corporations to freelancing for national magazines and newspapers.
As the news media began to struggle, the magazine and newspaper work dried up. As the economy tanked, his large corporate clients began to use cheaper stock photos purchased online rather than hire him to take new ones. Eventually he took his current job, producing videos of pastors' sermons and photos for church publications. He says he is glad to be one boomer to make a late career change and keep working.
"There were times when the money was really rolling in," he says of his old business. "But somehow retirement wasn't really in the forefront of my thinking then, so saving for it wasn't an automatic thing."
Steve Wyard, of Los Angeles, says he and his wife have planned carefully for retirement.
He's worked for 30 years for a company that sells and services commercial washers and dryers, and she's been with a health maintenance organization for even longer. They've invested cautiously, lived in the same house for decades and meticulously paid down the mortgage.
Plus he's one of the few boomers who figures that, no matter what technology comes along, his job won't go away.
"Everyone has to do the laundry," he says.
Still, he and his wife have two sons, 19 and 21, to put through college, and Wyard, 61, sees that pushing back retirement for several years.
Until then he plans to keep working, which is what every physically able boomer should consider doing, says USC's Lawler.
Union membership, which has been declining for years, now includes only about 10 percent of all eligible U.S. employees, according to the Bureau of Labor Statistics. Meanwhile, the number of defined benefit retirement funds offered by private enterprise have fallen from about one in three employers in 1990 to about one in five in 2005.
With unions no longer in a strong position to fight for benefits like pensions, with jobs disappearing or going overseas, and with Gen Xers and even younger Millennial Generation members coveting their jobs, Lawler warns this is no time for boomers to quit and allow the skills they've spent a lifetime building to atrophy.
"My advice is above all don't retire," he says. "If you like your job at all, hold onto it. Because getting back in in this era is essentially impossible."
For a couple making approx $100K a year, they would need to have 'at least' $1M in savings to live the same life style they were accustomed to before retirement. And that is a 'modest' living might I add. If anyone has a financial adviser, they will all tell you the same thing. And that is based on the gamble that you live 20 years past your retirement age.
Also, boomers appear to be more active then retirees from the past. (more stuff to do. Many are more educated ) Many boomers are raising grandchildren. And MANY just plain need the money!!!!!!!!!!!!!!
When the INSANE are running the ASYLUM In individuals, insanity is rare; but in groups, parties, nations and epochs, it is the rule. -- Friedrich Nietzsche
“How fortunate for those in power that people never think.” Adolph Hitler
If the Boomers keep working because it is financially necessary, that will just keep today's college grads out of the workforce longer...Or the young grads learn Chinese and move to China or another developing Asian country for work.
And many in Schenectady city will be forced to work into their 80's in order to pay their taxes because the DEMS absolve the millionaires downtown froom paying any taxes, so the homeonwers hae to pay their own PLUS the taxes of the downtown properties.
Or the boomers in the city will become homeless because they don't have the riches like the animal abuser tax delinquent who can pay a lawyer to put in him to bankruptcy just long enough to avoid paying taxes, but mysteriously he always has the money to buy more houes.
Optimists close their eyes and pretend problems are non existent. Better to have open eyes, see the truths, acknowledge the negatives, and speak up for the people rather than the politicos and their rich cronies.
If the Boomers keep working because it is financially necessary, that will just keep today's college grads out of the workforce longer...Or the young grads learn Chinese and move to China or another developing Asian country for work.
So who's gonna support the boomers after they retire so they can open up jobs for the college grads...........THEIR KIDS??
The boomer's adult kids will need even MORE money to survive!!
At least the boomers will still be generating income/sales tax!
It appears that was the plan all along!
When the INSANE are running the ASYLUM In individuals, insanity is rare; but in groups, parties, nations and epochs, it is the rule. -- Friedrich Nietzsche
“How fortunate for those in power that people never think.” Adolph Hitler
Boomers would be in dire straights if it weren't for DEMOCRAT programs like Social Security and Medicare. Because of these DEMOCRAT backed programs Boomers are retiring at record rate in America.
Just think of how many Boomers there would be stuck in the workforce for life, if the REPUBLICANS had taken away their SS? Remember when G Worst Bush wanted to "privatize social security"? That was just before the "Bush Economic Meltdown" that would have left Boomers holding their retirement SS dollars in worthless stock.
Thank God for the Democrat Party and thank God for Barack Hussein Obama's ReElection!
The modern conservative is engaged in one of man's oldest exercises in moral philosophy; that is, the search for a superior moral justification for selfishness. John Kenneth Galbraith
Boomers would be in dire straights if it weren't for DEMOCRAT programs like Social Security and Medicare. Because of these DEMOCRAT backed programs Boomers are retiring at record rate in America.
Just think of how many Boomers there would be stuck in the workforce for life, if the REPUBLICANS had taken away their SS? Remember when G Worst Bush wanted to "privatize social security"? That was just before the "Bush Economic Meltdown" that would have left Boomers holding their retirement SS dollars in worthless stock.
Thank God for the Democrat Party and thank God for Barack Hussein Obama's ReElection!
What a joke... Anyone who doesn't change their investment allocations as they near retirement is a MORON. The stock market goes up and down, but it does it over a period of years and may very well catch people when they are ready to retire...it''s their responsibility to take care of their nest egg. I consider SS nothing more than a supplement to my retirement....which it was originally supposed to be. It was the Democrats that convinced people it should be something more. That fallacy allowed people to believe that they should have two new cars in the driveway, let the banks tell how much they can borrow for house and go from there, and push off saving for retirement so they could live "large" now....and look what we have ... Programs that are unsustainable, but need to to be sustained somehow because people were convinced they were entitled to them... all supported by a 60 year low percentage of people in the work force... yeah, thank god
"Arguing with liberals is like playing chess with a pigeon; no matter how good I am at chess, the pigeon is just going to knock out the pieces, crap on the board, and strut around like it is victorious." - Author Unknown
The same people that blamed the evil banks for selling mortgages to people that couldn't afford them, are the same people that blame the individual for relying on the government sold Social Security as retirement. Difference is, people had a choice to purchase a mortgage, people have no choice but to pay into Social Security. Social Security is FAILING, and the FDR worshipers are doing all they can to convince people otherwise.
What a joke... Anyone who doesn't change their investment allocations as they near retirement is a MORON. The stock market goes up and down, but it does it over a period of years and may very well catch people when they are ready to retire...it''s their responsibility to take care of their nest egg. I consider SS nothing more than a supplement to my retirement....which it was originally supposed to be. It was the Democrats that convinced people it should be something more. That fallacy allowed people to believe that they should have two new cars in the driveway, let the banks tell how much they can borrow for house and go from there, and push off saving for retirement so they could live "large" now....and look what we have ... Programs that are unsustainable, but need to to be sustained somehow because people were convinced they were entitled to them... all supported by a 60 year low percentage of people in the work force... yeah, thank god
Very well said! That depression generation were sold a bill of LIES!! Just ask them and they will tell you that they were told that SS would in fact be the money they could retire on and would live very comfortably...........for them and for the generations to come! BULLCRAP!
The WWII vets will also tell you that they were ALL drafted with the lie of......'if you go off to fight this war....your kids never will! EVEN MORE BULLCRAP!!
And yes.....folks are responsible for their own retirement and social security is a supplement.....at best!!! All I know is that we would have gotten a much better return on our decades of working and putting money into a failed ss program!! Folks should be allowed to OPT OUT!!
When the INSANE are running the ASYLUM In individuals, insanity is rare; but in groups, parties, nations and epochs, it is the rule. -- Friedrich Nietzsche
“How fortunate for those in power that people never think.” Adolph Hitler
The government wouldn't allow anyone to opt out they needed the money in the so called trust to fund their pet projects and not let the fund build up in value like was supposed to happen.
The government wouldn't allow anyone to opt out they needed the money in the so called trust to fund their pet projects and not let the fund build up in value like was supposed to happen.
What do ya mean, the money isn't in the proverbial "lock box"?
The program was never set up to "build up value". It was always paid by the labor of the following generation through debt. The problem is, you reach a point where the next generation questions why they have to do without in order to pay the prior generation that lived much of their lives in excess. The young Ron Paul supporters are staring at that reality, and aren't going away any time soon.
Before the creation of Social Security, some Americans had private or state pensions, but most supported themselves into old age by working. The 1930 census, for example, found 58 percent of men over 65 still in the workforce; in contrast, by 2002, the figure was 18 percent.
The elderly also relied heavily on their families. ''Children, friends and relatives have borne and still carry the major cost of supporting the aged,'' the Committee on Economic Security, the Roosevelt administration panel that developed Social Security, reported in 1935. ''Several of the state surveys have disclosed that from 30 to 50 percent of the people over 65 years of age were being supported in this way.'' (All of you out there with Boomer Parents... and since your kids are staying home because they can't find a job, be sure to make room for grandma and grandpa in your home.)
The Depression swept this world away. Many of the elderly could no longer find work. Those who had been lucky enough to have a pension or some savings saw them disappear. And many who relied on their children saw them buckle under the strain.
''We can never insure 100 percent of the population against 100 percent of the hazards and vicissitudes of life,'' Roosevelt declared. ''But we have tried to frame a law which will give some measure of protection to the average citizen and to his family against the loss of a job and against poverty-ridden old age.''
The modern conservative is engaged in one of man's oldest exercises in moral philosophy; that is, the search for a superior moral justification for selfishness. John Kenneth Galbraith
Must be the peeps on this blog site are independently wealthy.....and not a commoner...
People are not morons, stupid, etc., working hard for a living and never having a chance to
invest because of putting kids thru college, illness, unemployment....happened in all generations.
Ponzi scams.... desperate times call for desperate measures..... rob Peter to pay Paul
anyone experience that????....God bless .
Why don't you do a search on how compounded interest works...You do not need to "sacrifice" all that much if you start early enough...the problem is, most people don't think about it when they get their first full time job....and that's not anyone's fault but their own. We all make choices in how we spend our income... I GUARANTEE that I can take 95% of the people who claim they can't save anything for retirement and make a 10% cut in their budget to make it happen. Now, they may not like the changes I would make, i.e. getting rid of cable TV, not buying brand name groceries, selling one car and using public transit, etc... but it CAN be done....Wringing your hands is just an excuse in the vast majority of cases.
And BTW, in my 30 years of full time working , I have changed jobs 7 times and been laid off 5 times. So, I am hardly independently wealthy. People need to stop swallowing the evening news with a spoon, stop worrying about other people and make their own way.
"Arguing with liberals is like playing chess with a pigeon; no matter how good I am at chess, the pigeon is just going to knock out the pieces, crap on the board, and strut around like it is victorious." - Author Unknown
Logged
) Many boomers are raising grandchildren. And MANY just plain 
